A QUARTER CENTURY OF ELECTRIC LIGHTING. 



BY LOUIS BELL. 



[Louis Bell, consulting electric engineer; born Chester, N. H., Dec. 5, 1864; resides 

 in Boston, where, besides his active life in his profession, he has found time to write 

 many scientific and technical essays chiefly for the Engineering Magazine, in which 

 the article here published first appeared; also author of the following books among 

 others : The Electric Railway, Electrical Power Distribution ; Power Distribution for 

 Electrical Railways; The Art of Illumination. The following article is republished 

 from the Electrical World by special arrangement.] 



The growth of a new art is a startling phenomenon. The 

 famihar manufacturing enterprise of a nation may, under 

 normal conditions, be expected to keep pace with the growth 

 of the population in numbers and in wealth and save for com- 

 mercial disaster now and then, or for artificial stimulus by 

 governmental action, to move forward at a fairly regular rate. 

 But the irruption of a new art like electric lighting is a very 

 different matter. It grows in response to a law of demand 

 that bears no definite relation to anything and while, of 

 course, this growth is affected by local causes and by the con- 

 ditions of general prosperity, it depends largely on intrinsic 

 factors in the art itself, the effect of which cannot be pre- 

 dicted, but becomes visible in the fullness of time. 



One may study the phenomenon of such growth as a 

 pure matter of statistics, but while such an examination may, 

 like other statistics correctly show effects, it fails utterly, as 

 statistics usually do, in showing the causes which produce 

 them. Cause and effect can be correlated, but only by study- 

 ing the circumstances which are current with the figures. The 

 relations between figures and facts are far too complicated to 

 be self evident. 



Starting, then, with the broad facts that about twenty 

 six years ago incandescent lighting by central stations began, 

 and that to-day the whole business occupies 3,700 stations, 

 represents an investment of more than half a billion dollars, 

 and draws a gross yearly income of nearly ninety milHon 

 dollars, it is worth the while to attempt to trace the reasons 



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