92 Professor Alex. B. W. Kennedy [April 21, 



devoting time and thought to the matter, which may even enable 

 us to multiply many fold the amount of light which we can obtain 

 from a given quantity of energy. 



There is yet another direction in which possible economy is to 

 be looked for, a very fascinating one, and by no means an un- 

 promising one. Look for a moment again at Fig. 5. Except only 

 the process at the lamp itself, all the transformations have fair 

 economy, so good that one sees at once that no radical defect 

 exists in them. But cannot some of these be done away with 

 altogether ? It is the number of them that tells, and brings down the 

 final result. 



If an ordinary gas engine be substituted for a steam engine we 

 cut out one transformation altogether. The boiler losses disappear, 

 or rather, such corresponding losses as exist occur in the gasworks. 

 At the same time we substitute the higher efficiency of the gas 

 engine for the lower of the steam engine, which may be a very 

 important matter. It is practically equivalent to cutting G out 

 altogether. 



Of another kind is the possibility at present much talked of, 

 the substitution namely, not only of a gas engine for a steam engine, 

 but at the same time also of a gas producer for a boiler, so that the 

 motor fluid should be producer gas made on the premises and not 

 steam or coal gas from public mains. There seems no doubt that 

 the combination, although it does not much reduce the number of 

 transformations, gives under certain conditions a very high economy of 

 fuel indeed. I do not think the evidence before us is as yet suffi- 

 cient, although I hope it shortly will be, to enable us to say how 

 far under ordinary working conditions the actual combined efficiency 

 of the whole plant will be distinctly greater than that of existing 

 systems. 



[The lecturer dealt with the question of the utilisation of dust- 

 bin refuse, of the economic efficiency of electric tramways and of 

 compressed air transmission, illustrating these by diagrams. He 

 discussed also the effect of "load factor" on economic problems. 

 He then concluded as follows : — ] 



To sum up the whole matter in the way of possibilities and 

 impossibilities, there does not seem to be anything very startling 

 before us in the way of possible economies, except in the two direc- 

 tions of efficiency of lamps as light producers, and of bringing up 

 gas engines to their theoretical maximum. In other respects matters 

 are running along lines which I have endeavoured to indicate, and 

 along which they will doubtless develop more or less rapidly, but 

 always less and less rapidly as they get nearer their limiting effi- 

 ciency. There is no one point in w 7 hich we have not some measure- 

 ments which enable us to set bounds to the possibility of improvement 

 along any known lines, and thus we have means for gauging the 

 value of the pretensions made by each new method, or scheme, or 



