APPLIED SCIENCE 



I. THE MARVELS OF ELECTRICITY 



The Age of Electricity 



OUR age is the age of electricity. The remarkable revolu- 

 tion which the practical application of electricity has 

 effected in recent years is one of the wonders of modern 

 life. To Electrical Engineering Science the civilisation of to-day 

 owes more than is readily realised. It has solved many great 

 problems which modern conditions of life called into being, and 

 which had to be solved if further progress was to be looked for. 

 Professor J. A. Fleming, who has given fifty years to studying 

 the problems of electricity, has said that the outlook for electrical 

 engineering has vast possibilities "which may materialise at any 

 time and make ancient history of our present achievement," great 

 as that is. The records of the past half-century are wonderful 

 enough ; the next fifty years of electricity, it is interesting to learn 

 from such an authority, "is a subject for attractive meditation." 



Space and time have been almost annihilated ; the transmis- 

 sion of energy, the development of production, and distribution of 

 electrical power all suggest great possibilities. We have seen in 

 previous sections of this work the interesting stage Physicists and 

 Chemists have reached in their investigations into the constitution 

 of the atom, and how these investigations have transformed our 

 fundamental conception of matter. The discovery of the electron 

 as a mobile constituent of the atom of matter has, Sir Ernest 



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