654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Comparing the actual progress of gas and electric lighting, the gas 

 has achieved by far the greater strides ; and this is the case even when 

 we compare very recent progress. The improvements connected with 

 gas-making have been steadily progressive ; scarcely a year has passed 

 from the date of Murdoch's efforts to the present time, without some 

 or many decided steps having been made. The progress of electric- 

 lighting has been a series of spasmodic leaps, backward as well as for- 

 ward. As an example of stepping backward, I may refer to what the 

 newspapers have described as the " discoveries " of Mr. Edison, or the 

 use of an incandescent wire, or stick, or sheet of platinum, or platino- 

 iridium ; or a thread of carbon, of which the " Swan " and other mod- 

 ern lights are rival modifications. 



As far back as 1846 I was engaged in making apparatus and ex- 

 periments for the purpose of turning to practical account "King's, 

 patent electric light," the actual inventor of which was a young Amer- 

 ican, named Starr, who died in 1847, when about twenty-five years of 

 age, a victim of overwork and disappointment in his efforts to perfect 

 this invention and a magneto-electric machine, intended to supply the 

 power in accordance with some of the " latest improvements " of 1881 

 and 1882. I had a share in this venture, and was very enthusiastic 

 until after I had become practically acquainted with the subject. We 

 had no difiiculty in obtaining a splendid and perfectly steady light, 

 better than any that are shown at the Crystal Palace. We used plat- 

 inum, and alloys of platinum and iridium, abandoned them as Edison 

 did more than thirty years later, and then tried a multitude of forms 

 of carbon, including that which constitutes the last " discovery " of 

 Mr. Edison, viz., burned cane. Starr tried this on theoretical grounds, 

 because cane being coated with silica, he predicted that by charring it 

 we should obtain a more compact stick or thread, as the fusion of the 

 silica would hold the carbon-particles together. He finally abandoned 

 this and all the rest in favor of the hard deposit of carbon which 

 lines the inside of gas-retorts, some specimens of which we found to 

 be so hard that we required a lapidary's wheel to cut them into the 

 thin sticks. 



Our final wick was a piece of this of square section, and about one 

 eighth of an inch across each way. It was mounted between two 

 forceps one holding each end, and thus leaving a clear half -inch be- 

 tween. The forceps were soldered to platinum wires, one of which 

 passed upward through the top of the barometer-tube, expanded into 

 a lamp-glass at its upper part. This wire was sealed to the glass as it 

 passed through. The lower wire passed down the middle of the tube. 

 The tube was filled with mercury and inverted over a cup of mercury. 

 Being thirty inches long up to the bottom of the expanded portion, or 

 lamp-globe, the mercury fell below this and left a Torricellian vacuum 

 there. One pole of the battery, or dynamo-machine, was connected 

 with the mercury in the cup, and the other with the upper wire. The 



