Jan. 9, 1879] 



NATURE 



231 



point by one dynamo-electric machine. Endeavours to 

 cut up the electric light into a large number of small 

 lights, although of great interest, must, he thinks, in- 

 variably result in engineering failure, as nobody could 

 afford to pay for the luxury received. Thus, in the 

 opinion of so competent a judge, all methods hitherto 

 employed for using this method of lighting in public, are 

 failures, involving a waste of power and money, with 

 inadequate result. Having satisfied himself of the diffi- 

 culty and impracticability of the division of the electric 

 light, Mr. Schwendler tried diffusion, i.e., a few large 

 lights (each light produced by one machine) are placed at 

 different points of the space, and by optical means the 

 light is diffused over a large area. This method he 

 finds perfectly practicable. There is naturally a large 

 amount of light lost (by absorption), but, he states, this 

 loss will bear a constant ratio to the total light produced, 

 nay probably may decrease with the intensity. The 

 actual plan by which Mr. Schwendler proposes to do it, 

 and has done it during the trial, is to construct a silvered 

 glass reflector in which a powerful electric light bums, 

 throwing direct and reflected rays up to a white ceiling or 

 any other convenient white surface. A number of such 

 arrangements is to be put up in the most convenient 

 places, and where they have the greatest effect. The 

 form and size of each reflector wUl depend on the locality 

 where it is to be used. 



Any repairs required in course of time Mr. Schwendler 

 believes can easily be effected by an ordinary mechanic. 

 Only one man, he states, is actually required in each 

 station, to take charge of the steam engine, dj-namo- 

 electric machine, laipps, and reflectors. Mr. Schwendler 

 appends to this precis several details with reference to 

 the adaptation of electric lighting to Indian stations, and 

 also on some of the scientific results obtained by his 

 experiments. Altogether his report is likely to be the 

 most important contribution to a thorough knowledge of 

 the public utilisation of electric lighting that has been 

 made since the question has been resuscitated during the 

 last year or two ; and we should advise aU interested in 

 the subject to wait for his report before taking decisive 

 steps to the adoption of any particular system. 



NOTES 



The Emperor of Germany has approved of the election of 

 Mr. Darwin and Prof. Owen as Foreign Members of the Berlin 

 Academy of Sciences. 



We are glad to learn that M. Raoul Pictet is quite restored to 

 health. The University of Geneva has conferred upon him the 

 honorar)- degree of Doctor, and he has just been made a Chevalier 

 of the L^on of Honour by the French Government, in recog- 

 nition of his eminent serN-ices to science, and especially of his 

 successful experiments in the liquefaction of gfases. 



A COMPETITIVE examination is going on at the Paris Con- 

 Bervatoire des Arts et Metiers, for the appointment of a professor 

 f physics and meteorology at the National School of Agricul- 

 -'.re. The examination has been conducted on a new principle 

 by a jury presided over by M. Boussingault. Each of the seven 

 candidates has expounded before the jury his programme of 

 iectures to be delivered, and each of them has in turn deUvered a 

 lecture on physics, and another on meteorology, after a prepara. 

 tion of four hours. The competition is open to all without any 

 condition of age, qualifications, and nationality ; but the jury- 

 men are instructed to attend, in giving their verdict, to the 

 d^rees obtained by candidates and their previous work or 

 discoveries. 



The Municipal Council of Paris has voted a subvention of 

 z,ax> francs to M. Joseph Vinot, editor of the Ciel, for a series 

 of popular lectures on astronomy, to be delivered at the Salle des 

 Ecoles, rue d' Arras. Admiral Mouchez, who was present at the 

 last lesson, announced to the pupils, numbering from 400 to 5oo» 



that he will take measures to admit them to the observatory 

 seriatim, in .order to initiate them into the use of the large 

 astronomical instruments so ably described by their professor. 

 In one of the last reports read before the Paris Municipal 

 Council it was stated that it would be necessary to establish 

 somewhere in Paris an observatory of popular astronomy entirely 

 devoted to the public exhibition of celestial phenomena, other 

 estabUshments being entirely devoted to investigation. 



Prof. S. P. Thompson' has reprinted his valuable address 

 on " Technical Education," given at the Social Science Con 

 gpress last October. In this time of intense depression, when 

 trade seems to te drifting from our shores, and people are 

 wondering how it is that other nations are outstripping us in 

 departments that used to be considered as peculiarly British, 

 Prof. Thompson's remarks on the ignorance of our mechanics 

 are pecidiarly appropriate. One telling instance he gives of the 

 lamentable want of intelligent skill that prevails among work- 

 men and manufacturers in this country : — "I was recently in- 

 formed by Prof. Graham Bell that he is about to return to 

 America to resume his researches in telephony, his principal 

 reason for quitting his native shores once more being that he 

 found himself, in this country, unable to get his ideas carried 

 out, unable to procure workmen capable of comprehending and 

 carrj'ing out new ideas, such workmen, in fact, as he was able 

 to employ during his four years' residence in America. He 

 pointed to the laboratory of Mr. Edison as an example of an 

 institution to which there is no parallel in this country, though 

 there are several in the States, a laboratory equipped with a 

 staff of trained workmen, Americans, Germans, or Englishmen, 

 whose business is not to work on old lines, but to carry out and 

 put into practical form new and imtried devices. No wonder 

 inventions multiply when inventors have so powerful an aid as 

 this to further their designs ; and, mark this, Mr. Bell returns to 

 set up a similar laboratory because he cannot find in his native 

 country men whose technical training would qualify them for his 

 particular work." In a note Mr. Thompson gives the following 

 paragraph from a letter of Prof. Graham Bell to a friend in 

 America which has been going the round of the American 

 press : — " If you want to know why inventors are more nume- 

 rous in America than they are here, come and live for six months 

 in England. If you wish to know how it feels to be brimfull of 

 ideas, and yet to be unable to have one of them executed, come 

 to England. If you wish to know how it feels to have to wait 

 for a month to have the simplest thing made, and then be 

 charged a man's wages for two months, come to England. You 

 will here be unable to see the interior of a workshop or to come 

 into direct contact with your workmen, and the people seem in- 

 capable of working except in the ruts worn by their predecessors. 

 They are absolutely incapable of calcidating any new design 

 without the most laborious oversight from the inventor, and their 

 masters, instead of encouraging invention, do all they can to put 

 a stop to it by refusing admission to the workshops and charging 

 the most exorbitant prices for experimental work, avowedly 

 because 'they don't want such kind of work,' 'it gives more 

 trouble than it is worth ; ' and ' if you must have new things 

 made you must expect to pay for them ! ' It is in vain that I 

 say I am wiUing to pay anything to have my work done, and 

 that what I object to is having to pay for not ha^•ing it done. 

 It is the same everywhere. Not only is your work not done, 

 but you have to wait so long for the simplest things that your 

 ideas cool, and you get quite exasperated at your inability to do 

 anything." The moral of all this is obvious. 



The widow of the late Prof. E. Eichwald has presented the 

 remarkable palaeontological collections of her husband to the 

 St. Petersburg University, which already possessed a part of 

 them. These collections, collected by the late Prof. Eichwald 

 since 1825, number no less than 30,000 specimens of fossils from 



