QUARTER CENTURY OF ELECTRIC LIGHTING 159 



tions, in universal use. These improvements are the basis of 

 scientific lamp manufacture, and the fierce fight that was 

 waged between the natural and artificial filaments now seems 

 a curious bit of ancient history. The first ten years of central 

 station lighting, with their ferocious strife of systems, were 

 years of tremendous progress, and desperate competition, 

 often unwise and injurious, but serving to keep the art mov- 

 ing forward and strengthened its hold upon the public. 



Fortunately, the one great improvement in gas lighting, 

 the introduction of the incandescent burner, had not yet come 

 to active service, else electric fighting would have had a far 

 harder struggle for existence than it actually found. And 

 when the incandescent burner actually did come into competi- 

 tion with electric lighting, its life was so uncertain and its 

 color so vile that it made small headway until electric lighting 

 was in better shape for hard fighting. Even now, in spite of 

 repeated alleged improvements, the color of the incandescent 

 gas lamps is ordinarily so bad as to put them at a hopeless 

 disadvantage. 



But better things were in store for electric lighting. The 

 war of systems drew to a close by the cripphng of some 

 combatants and honorable truce among others. The electric 

 railway had come to strengthen the hands of the electrical 

 industries in general, and the troublesome problems of alter- 

 nating current distribution, of proper insulation for machinery 

 and for lines, and of machine design, were being rapidly 

 threshed out. There is no absolute dividing fine between 

 the old and the new, but about 1890 electric fighting took a 

 firmer hold and began the period of its most effective growth. 



The period was not signalized so much by brilliant dis- 

 covery as by the application of sound common sense. The 

 first step of importance was the introduction of large dynamos, 

 generally direct coupled. Although direct coupling had been 

 tried by Edison in the very beginning of central station work, 

 dynamo design was not then far enough advanced to ensure 

 success, but these later direct coupled units revolutionized 

 the central station business, simplifying problems of distribu- 

 tion, improving regulation, increasing station efficiency, and 

 generally putting incandescent electric lighting on an econom- 



