68 SELLEES — TRANSMISSION OF ENERGY BY ELECTRICITY. [Feb. 3, 



been making, and I think you will be interested' to learn that he has 

 successfully transmitted 130 horse power over eighty-four miles of 

 bare copper wire, supported upon our special insulators ; the length 

 of the circuits being eighty-four miles, the conditions are of course 

 such as we should encounter in transmission over forty-two miles. 

 The result was obtained by connecting up in series the respective 

 circuits from the power plant to the town of Pomona and the city 

 of San Bernardino. About 3200 insulators supported the con- 

 ductor carrying 10,000 volts, and the fact that this was done with- 

 out the slightest evidence of break-down was noteworthy and 

 important." Since then on some of the Western lines 20,000 

 volts have been considered moderately low voltage, and 40,000 

 volts have been used successfully, and this all since the year in 

 which bids were first asked for polyphase alternating-current 

 dynamos under stated conditions by the Cataract Construction 

 Company for the Niagara Falls Power Company at Niagara. 



Mr. Edward D. Adams, the president of the Cataract Construc- 

 tion Company, to w^hom the above letter was addressed, was thor- 

 oughly alive to the advantage of the use of the alternating-current 

 system in 1890, but in financiering the great development at 

 Niagara Falls he held his mind open for truth, which he steadily 

 pursued from the beginning, sustained by those interested with 

 him, regardless of his own pecuniary interest and that of his 

 personal friends. 



My own interest in electricity began in early boyhood. As soon 

 as I was able I followed the discoveries of Faraday and others 

 experimentally, using instruments made by myself for the purpose. 

 From 1846 to nearly 1849 ^ ^^s engaged to superintend rolling 

 iron and making the telegraph wire that was used in the first lines 

 established west of the Allegheny Mountains. Keeping in touch 

 with progress of the uses to which electricity has been applied, I 

 have noted how powerfully the growing needs excite the inventive 

 faculty of those engaged in any one branch of science ; in general, 

 also, the slow application to actual practice of knowledge given to 

 the world by men seeking truth and laying the foundation of 

 exact scientific methods. Our modern knowledge of thermo- 

 dynamics does not express what was used to perfect the steam 

 engine, as the best results and the greatest advance in the use of 

 ;Steam came before the students of thermo-dynamics gave us the 

 anodern text-book on the theory of steam. So it is with the trans- 



