436 Mr. Alan A. Campbell Swinton [April 19, 



comes to the conclusiou that in the densely populated areas, such as 

 St, James's, there should be a generating station for about every 

 quarter of a square mile, which would mean, taking into account 

 parks, squares, and sparsely inhabited areas, which need not be con- 

 sidered, that there should be about 140 generating stations to supply 

 London. As a matter of fact, London is at present supplied by 

 fourteen companies and thirteen local authorities, and some of these 

 have several stations. There are, however, nothing like 140, and it 

 would be much more economical if the number that there are were 

 reduced, and the whole generation concentrated in two or three 

 stations. 



Sir William Siemens is more happy in his estimates of the capital 

 required, which he puts at £14,160,000 for London, and £64,000,000 

 for Great Britain and Ireland. These figures may be compared with 

 the £20,000,000 for London, and £67,000,000 for the whole coun- 

 try, which are approximately what has actually been expended at the 

 present time. 



So far from assisting electricity supply, the Electric Lighting Act 

 of 1S82 had the immediate effect of crushing enterprise in that direc- 

 tion, the period of seven years for which licences, or the twenty-one 

 years for which provisional orders were granted to promoters of 

 electric supply undertakings being found quite inadequate to enable 

 money to be raised for such purposes. Between 1883 and 1888, when 

 the Act was amended, only ten licences were applied for, all of wdiich 

 afterwards expired or were revoked, and though in the first year there 

 were a considerable number of applications for provisional orders, 

 not one of these was carried into effect, capitalists refusing to find 

 money for undertakings which had only a tenure of twenty-one years. 

 No doul)t, also, this unsatisfactory result was assisted by the severe 

 reaction that had set in from the speculative mania in electric lighting 

 affairs of a few years earlier. 



It was not until 18.S5 that Sir Coutts Lindsay laid down an 

 installation in Bond Street to light the Grosvenor Picture Gallery 

 and the premises of some of the neighbouring tradesmen, which 

 installation in its subsequent development had probably more in- 

 fluence than anything else on the fortunes of electricity supply, not 

 only in London, but in the country generally. Quite a novel system 

 of distribution was employed, the current being alternating and dis- 

 tributed at high pressure by means of overhead wires, and transformers 

 (or secondary generators, as they were called) on the Gaulard and 

 Gibbs system being used to reduce the pressure to suit that of the 

 lamps. One of these actual Gaulard and Gibbs transformers is on 

 the table. 



To begin with, the system did not work well, and, on the advice 

 of Lord Kelvin, Mr. S. Z. de Ferranti was called in to assist. The 

 station was immediately reorganized and fitted with machinery of 

 much greater capacity, and so successful was the outlook that, early 



