G68 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
machines were introduced with success at Cape la Hev'e, 
near Havre; and the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, 
determined to have the best available apparatus, decided, 
in 1868, on the introduction of machines on the Alliance 
principle into the lighthouses at Soiiter Point and the 
South Foreland. These machines were constructed by 
Professor Holmes, and they still continue in operation. 
With regard, then, to the application of electricity to 
lighthouse purposes, the course of events was this: The 
Dungeness light was introduced on January 31, 1862; the 
light at La Heve on December 26, 1863, or nearly two 
years later. But Faraday's experimental trial at the South 
Foreland preceded the lighting of Dnngeness by more than 
two years. The electric light was afterward established at 
Cape Grisnez. The light was started at Souter Point on 
January 11, 1871; and at the South Foreland on January 
1, 1872. At the Lizard, which enjoys the newest and most 
powerful development of the electric light, it began to shine 
on January 1, 1878. 
I have now to revert to a point of apparently small 
moment, but which really constitutes an important step in 
the development of this subject. I refer, to the form 
fiven in 1857 to the rotating armaTure by Dr. Werner 
iemens, of Berlin. Instead of employing coils wound 
transversely round cores of iron, as in the machine of 
Saxton, Siemens, after giving a bar of iron the proper 
shape, wound his wire longitudinally round it, and ob- 
tained thereby greatly augmented effects between suitably 
placed magnetic poles. Such an armature is employed in 
the small magneto- electric machine which I now introduce 
to your notice, and for which the institution is indebted to 
Mr. Henry Wilde, of Manchester. There are here sixteen 
permanent horseshoe magnets placed parallel to each 
other, and between their poles a Siemens armature. The 
two ends of the wire which surrounds the armature are 
now disconnected. In turning the handle and causing the 
armature to rotate, I simply overcome ordinary mechanical 
friction. But the two ends of the armature coil can be 
united in a moment, and when this is done I immediately 
experience a greatly increased resistance to rotation. 
Something over and above the ordinary friction of the 
machine is now to be overcome, and by the expenditure of 
