1912] 071 Electricity Supply : Past, Present and Future. 439 



trie liijhtinir of ships, but in 1887 the whole of the electricity for 

 lightinii: the Mining, Engineering, nnd Industrial Exhibition that was 

 held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne was generated by a number of Parsons 

 machines ; while a little later the Newcastle and District Electric 

 Lighting Company was formed, whose works on the banks of the 

 Tyne were the first in which steam turbines were employed to afford 

 a public supply of electricity for general lighting and other purposes. 

 The first machines employed in this station were only of about 100 

 horse-power, while others of an improved type, which were first em- 

 ployed at Cambridge and at Scarborough, were of about double this 

 power, and were considered as veiy large. The first steam turbines 

 to be employed in London were used for the lighting of Lincoln's Inn 

 Hall, where they worked for many years, to be followed not long after, 

 in 1891, by three others, each of 50 horse-power, at New Scotland 

 Yard, which still exist, and to-day are providing electricity for lighting, 

 printing, and other purposes, for the Metropolitan Police. 



Fig. 4 shows a more recent steam turbine installation in London, 

 being the interior of the engine-room at the Chelsea Power Station, 

 where 75,000 horse-power of Parsons turbines supply power to the 

 Metropolitan District and other Railways. 



Some fifteen years ago, in evidence that he gave before the 

 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in connection with Sir 

 Charles Parsons' application for a prolongation of his patent, Lord 

 Kelvin characterized the Parsons turbine as the most important de- 

 velopment in steam engines since the days of James Watt. At the 

 time this seemed a somewliat bold assertion, but in the light of ex- 

 perience it has proved, to be a fact. 



Just as it was on the banks of the Tyne that the steam turbine 

 was first applied to the public supply of electricity, so it has also been 

 on the banks of the Tyne, and in the adjacent areas of Northumber- 

 land and Durham, that the greatest existing development in this 

 country of electricity supply for industrial purposes has taken place. 

 Not the least of the causes that have led to this is the fact that, apart 

 from London, where the circumstances are very special, in Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, alone among the great manufacturing cities of Great 

 Britain, has electricity supply remained in the hands of private enter- 

 prize, and not become municipalized. The results have been very 

 remarkable, as is clear from the following illustration kindly supplied 

 by Mr. Charles Merz, the distinguished engineer, with whose name 

 this great work will ever be associated. 



Fig. 5 is a map of the district covered by this vast power-supply 

 undertaking, which extends as far north as Morpeth, as far west as 

 Consett. is bounded on the east by the sea, and extends right away 

 down through the county of Durham to Stockton-on-Tees, Middles- 

 borough, and Cleveland. There are seventeen generating stations, 

 of which six are coal-fired stations, and the remainder most interesting 

 waste-heat stations, where steam for m-^kiiig the electricity is obtained 



