432 Mr. Alan A. Campbell Swi7iton [April 19, 



Faraday remarked to Holmes, " You have made a man of my baby." 

 As will be seen, this " baby " of Faraday has now developed into a 

 whole army of very giants. 



Improvements in electric generating machinery continued to be 

 made, together with better arc lamps, till a great impetus was given 

 to the whole science of electric lighting by the invention of the 

 Jablochkoff candle. It was with this device, supplied by the identical 

 Gramme alternating dynamo, which, by the kindness of the Institu- 

 tion of Electrical Engineers, is here this evening, that the Victoria 

 Embankment in London was first lighted on December 13, 1878. 

 From that date onwards small electricity supply undertakings for 

 lighting specific areas with arc lamps, both at Charing Cross Railway 

 Station in London, where the Brush arc lamps were supplied with 

 energy from a station across the river, and in various parts of the 

 country, became fairly common. They were, however, mostly of a 

 temporary nature, and public electricity supply for all purposes, in 

 the modern sense, was still unknown. 



It was not, however, unanticipated. The first person to imagine, 

 or at any rate to patent, a public electricity supply to all and sundry 

 was St. George Lane Fox, whose specification is dated the 9th October, 

 1878. From the claims and the drawings attached to Lane Fox's 

 specification, one of which drawings is shown in Fig. 1, it is clear 

 that he anticipated a general supply of electric current by mains, 

 branches, and sub-branches to numerous lamps, using the earth as 

 return, storage batteries of accumulators being employed to assist the 

 generators at the periods of maximum load, a constant pressure being 

 maintained by a curious regulating device worked by an electrostatic 

 voltmeter, and meters based on the principle of the voltmeter being 

 provided for the purpose of measuring the current taken by the 

 various consumers. It is curious to note, however, in spite of the 

 considerable detail that is gone into in the specification, there is no 

 mention of switches or any means of turning the light on or off. 



It was during the year 1878 that a panic occurred amongst the 

 holders of gas shares, the idea having got abroad that electricity was 

 going to supplant gas, and that immediately. A great, but, as it 

 turned out, only temporary depreciation of gas stock resulted. 



In 1880 the British Museum was electric lighted by Messrs. 

 Siemens, and the South Kensington Museum on the Brush system, 

 of course, in both cases with arc lamps. 



There were also about that time a few private installations. For 

 instance, as early as January 1879 the late Lord Armstrong, at 

 Cragside, had utilized the energy of a waterfall to prodnce electricity, 

 which was brought over a distance of 1500 yards, along overhead 

 wires, into his library for the production of the arc light. By 

 December 1880 the arc lighting had ])een abandoned, and forty-five 

 25-c.p. Swan incandescent lamps substituted — an installation which 

 has continued in permanent use from that date, being added to from 



