Sir jfohn Snell 249 



and it was evident that our carbons were not made of 

 the right substance.' ' 



At the same time in England Swan was using parch- 

 mentized cotton. He actually produced a bulb electric 

 lamp before Edison, but both had similar trouble in 

 obtaining a filament that was sufficiently strong to last. 

 Edison tried some six hundred different varieties of vege- 

 table carbons, including forty sorts of bamboo, while 

 among other things Swan made trial of viscose, the raw 

 material of artificial silk. When his assistant, Topham, 

 at last succeeded in spinning this silk a very fair filament 

 was secured. Yet none of these early carbon lamps was 

 lasting, and years passed before the inventors made a 

 lamp which could be relied on to have a life of more than 

 about one hundred hours. Also the lamps were so fragile 

 that the difficulty of packing them for transportation was 

 very great. 



It is interesting to remember that a committee was 

 appointed by Parliament to examine into the subject of 

 electric light. This committee had before it as witnesses 

 nearly all the prominent scientists of the day, and all, 

 with the solitary exception of Tyndall, testified that in 

 their opinion a practicable system of electric light for 

 private houses was impossible. 



Yet the Edison Electric Lighting Company of London 

 was formed in 1881 ; then the Admiralty took the matter 

 up and allowed the company to tender for the lighting of 

 certain Indian troopships. By 1882 there were no fewer 

 than one hundred and twenty electric lighting stations 

 in the United States, paying dividends of from six to 

 fourteen per cent. 



Then the British Parliament proceeded to pass an Act 

 for facilitating electric lighting, an Act which very nearly 

 killed the invention so far as Britain was concerned. It 

 provided that electric supply should be undertaken only 

 under orders from the Board of Trade, and that any town 



