246 THE SCIENTIFIC PAPERS OF 



manner which must have struck home to the minds even of those 

 among the audience who had not before given particular attention 

 to the subject. He had followed the energy pent up in the coal 

 in former ages through its transformations in the steam-engine 

 and the dynamo machine, where it was manifested as an electric 

 current, passing through the conductor into the lamp regulator, 

 where, through the resistance offered to its passage, heat was again 

 generated, being the very form of energy with which they started, 

 with the difference, however, that the heat produced in the elec- 

 trodes of the lamp was of a much more intensified nature than the 

 heat developed by the combustion of the coal. Hence, after all, 

 electric lighting meant nothing else but carrying energy from the 

 coal to the carbon in the lamp. But simple as the problem 

 appeared when thus put, it had required the combined ingenuity 

 and labour of philosophers and of practical electricians, extending 

 not indeed over centuries but over decades ; and even now a point 

 had only been arrived at where it could be said that electric light- 

 ing was feasible. At the present day, advances Avere made more 

 rapidly than had ever been the case before, and before long it 

 might be possible to say that electric lighting was an accomplished 

 fact. The great experiment soon to be made in the City of London 

 would be an event of the greatest importance, and the greatest city 

 in the world was now leading the way in utilising this new agency 

 in a way which would leave no doubt as to its efficacy. Photometry, 

 the sub-division of the electric light, and various applications of 

 electricity, had also been touched upon in the paper, and though 

 most of the propositions put forward in it would be accepted by 

 all who understood the subject as natural facts, still, naturally 

 enough, in so new a science, there were other points which were 

 controvertible, and which he (the Chairman) would like to argue 

 with Mr. Preece, but that he feared to try the patience of the 

 meeting. They had sometimes argued questions very strongly, 

 but had always been very good friends afterwards. If he had 

 understood aright, Mr. Preece hoped, and great philosophers had 

 entertained the same hope, that the divided light would ultimately 

 equal the centralised light in economy. He begged to differ from 

 that conclusion. Divided light meant light brought nearer to the 

 eye, and the eye could not bear a light of such intensity in close 

 proximity as it could bear at a distance. Mr. Preece had very well 



