58S ANNUAL KECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



to have received any attention, if we except the experimental 

 trial of a short line of the Brooks system (covered wire con- 

 ductors, laid in tubes, with paraffine oil as an insulator), in 



Philadelphia. 



THE ELECTRIC LIGHT. 



The scientific questions which of all others have attracted 

 the most general and widespread popular interest during the 

 past year are those pertaining to the improvement of the 

 electric lighting systems and their possible adaptation for do- 

 mestic purposes. One of the chief causes, doubtless, of the 

 prominence attained by this subject, aside from its own mer- 

 its, is to be credited to the fact of tire introduction in Paris, 

 during the period of the Exhibition just closed, of the electric 

 light for the illumination of public squares, streets, gardens, 

 halls, and places of amusement upon a scale not hitherto at- 

 tempted ; and the possibility that the rapid improvement of 

 the electric light, which will reasonably be expected to fol- 

 low upon the efforts of the numerous inventors who are en- 

 gaged in the effort to solve the problem of adapting it for 

 general illuminating uses as a substitute for gas, might soon 

 be crowned with success, has caused much uneasiness among 

 the gas fraternity, whose important vested interests, it is fear- 

 ed, would in consequence suffer serious depreciation in value. 

 From all that can be learned, however, the difficulties that 

 surround the problem of adapting electric lighting to domes- 

 tic uses, as a practical substitute for coal-gas, are of such a se- 

 rious nature that their removal, although it may be success- 

 fully accomplished sooner or later, is scarcely to be expected 

 as an event of the immediate future. Upon the question of 

 the relative cost of the electric light as compared with gas, 

 the comparison being based upon the quantity of light pro- 

 duced, the electric light has decidedly the advantage of the 

 other. In point of purity likewise it is incontestably superior 

 to gas, over which it possesses other and important hygienic 

 advantages. There are other qualities, however, equally im- 

 portant, which the electric light must be demonstrated to 

 possess before it can figure as a rival to present methods of 

 domestic illumination. It must be susceptible of perfect sub- 

 division. The dazzling glare and intensity of the electric 

 light in its present form, while it may be manageable in large 

 open spaces, halls, factories, and public buildings, where it 



