158 LOUIS BELL 



account of itself in competition with gas, but it was not yet 

 able on account of the inheritant Hmitations of a low pressure 

 distribution to work advantageously in the smaller places 

 where absence from gas would give it an advantage of com- 

 petition. At the present time over three quarters of the cen- 

 tral stations are in such places and have the field to them- 

 selves. 



Desperate efforts were made, with indifferent success, to 

 build up an incandescent light system on arc circuits. Such 

 lights have never been wholly satisfactory even for street 

 lighting, and the danger of high potential wires kept them 

 for the most part out of buildings. The greatest impetus 

 that the art of electric lighting received after the invention 

 of the incandescent lamp was the introduction of the alter- 

 nating current transformer system in 1885, when the first 

 plant went into operation in Great Barrington, Mass. The 

 next two years saw the system put into practical shape, and 

 thereafter the growth of small stations was startlingly rapid. 

 The number of new plants started in 1885 was but 55, the 

 next year it was 100, the next 147, the next 160, and in 1889 

 it arose to 208. A large part of this activity was represented 

 by small alternating current plants. Bad as they were from 

 our modern standpoint, their old 50- volt lamps did good serv- 

 ice, for they were far easier to turn out successfully than the 

 more delicate 110-volt lamps of the direct current system. It 

 is interesting to note that in some of the very earliest Edison 

 plants 8 and 10 candle power lamps were freely used, but 

 difficulties of manufacture and the customary gas standard 

 of 16 candle power soon forced the small lamps out of use only 

 to appear years later. 



Meanwhile, arc lighting had prospered, machines capable 

 of operating forty lights or so in series had come into use ; the 

 lamps were of far better quahty than before ; and, reinforced 

 by the power of working an incandescent system with alter- 

 nators, the old arc stations took on a new activity. With the 

 alternating system, too, came alone by stress of competition, 

 various improvements in incandescent lamps, including the 

 flashing process now universally used, and Mr. Weston's 

 structureless cellulose filament, now, after various modifica- 



