250 Master Minds of Modern Science 



where such works were started should be able to buy 

 them at the end of twenty-one years at the value of the 

 plant and works, without taking into account the good- 

 will. Of course people were not going to invest their 

 money in order to make presents to municipalities, so for 

 six years Great Britain had scarcely any electric lighting 

 at all. Then a new Act was passed increasing the pur- 

 chase period to forty-two years, and since this gave 

 investors a fair chance of some profit on their money 

 matters began to improve. 



In the early days of electric lighting direct current was 

 used, and the wastage of course was great. It was that 

 remarkable genius Ferranti who first began to use the 

 alternating current transformer system. Most of our 

 readers know enough about electricity to be aware that 

 it is out of the question to use high voltages for small 

 lamps. You would simply burn them out, fusing the 

 filament. Yet the high-pressure alternating current is 

 far more economical than the direct, and can be sent over 

 much greater lengths of cable. Ferranti was the first to 

 employ transformers to ' step down ' the high voltages to 

 lower, thus making them suitable for domestic use. He 

 did this first in the Bond Street district in London in the 

 year 1885, showing that it was possible and practical. 



Ferranti was a particularly far-seeing inventor. He was 

 the first to realize that electric supply stations for a great 

 city like London must be placed outside the area to be 

 supplied, in some position where coal and water can be 

 obtained easily. To-day, practically all the great supply 

 stations are on rivers from which the water for the boilers 

 and for condensing purposes can be pumped up easily, 

 and most of them have their own railway sidings, where 

 coal can be dumped at the foot of an elevator by which it 

 is carried upward, to be dropped into the furnaces as 

 required. 



It was Ferranti who succeeded in starting the large 





