July 26, 1900] 



NATURE 



297 



Northumberland burr was left dominant, and remained so 

 during the whole of May. Then a Lancashire wave 

 rolled in, and it was not until the beginning of the fourth 

 week in June that the " 11 " and the " y " formed part of 

 so many of the words that even counsel who had come 

 through the Severn Tunnel to Westminster to plead their 

 cause found some difficulty in pronouncing the names of 

 persons and places. 



But the advocates of the universal supply of " elec- 

 tricity in bulk " had not it all their own way, since op- 

 posed to them was a band of skirmishers who delivered 

 well-planted criticisms aimed at exposing the grasping 

 character of some of the projects and the desire— not 

 even thinly concealed — of some of the promoters to crush 

 out all small existing systems of electric distribution and to 

 establish huge monopolies for purveying electric energy. 



So that one had to moderate the enthusiasm called 

 forth by the near prospect of electric energy being re- 

 garded as a public necessity, and therefore being gener- 

 ally distributed like water or gas, with the exercise of a 

 cautious regard for the interests of those undertakers — 

 to use the legal term — who had already been entrusted 

 with spending the money of the ratepayers or of share- 

 holders in establishing electric distribution systems in 

 their own areas. For they contended that this proposal 

 to supply the small and scattered manufacturers with 

 very cheap electric power, which it was alleged would 

 enable them to compete successfully with their more 

 powerful rivals, could not be commercially realised, and 

 that these power distribution schemes had for their ob- 

 ject the catching of the popular vote and the passing of 

 Bills which would enable their promoters to pick out 

 those of the customers who were the plums among the 

 consumers already supplied by means of the existing 

 electrical undertakings. 



For nine weeks the Committee listened to the argu- 

 ments /r£» and con., and the tolerance which they showed 

 in patiently hearing questions asked by counsel which 

 had been already asked in their absence and replied to 

 by witnesses who were unaware that the same questions 

 had been answered at length days before, showed how 

 willing the members were to devote their time to a full 

 understanding of the points at issue in order that they 

 might be able to ultimately deliver a sound decision. 



The articles of commerce, which we are accustomed 

 to purchase may be divided into those that have weight 

 and volume and those that have not, and it is generally 

 in connection with the former that our system of weights 

 and measures is employed — a pound of mutton, a yard 

 of cloth, four ounces of letter carrying, a thousand cubic 

 feet of gas, a mile of railway journey. But the advance 

 of civilisation has gradually led us to regard as equally 

 suitable for buying and selling other conveniences which 

 it would be far more difficult to meter for the purpose 

 of ascertaining whether we had received our fair supply. 

 A year of police supervision, a length of street improve- 

 ment, a winter of snow removal, a Reason of South African 

 campaigning are considered as being furnished at a fair 

 price only when the grumbling in connection with the 

 supply is not too great and the articles in the Times are 

 not too severe. 



But there remains one commodity which, although it 

 has neither weight, volume, nor linear dimension, can be 

 metered with extreme accuracy, and the public demand 

 for which is daily becoming greater and greater, and 

 that is— energy. Hitherto the working of factories has 

 been associated with water and coal, and either the 

 factories have been built near the stream or in a coal 

 region. When, however, such a site could not be con- 

 veniently found, then it has been the custom to carry 

 at a dear rate a black, bulky, dirty substance by rail or 

 water for miles to the factory, and, after strewing a 

 certain portion of its dirt over the neighbourhood in the 

 NO. 1604, VOL. 62] 



form of a descending cloudy to cart the remainder away 

 as dusty ashes. 



So accustomed are we to all this — so little does it 

 strike us as incongruous that scuttles full of black lumps 

 should be regularly brought into a drawing-room, no 

 matter how valuable the pictures or rich the curtains 

 and carpets, that we forget that our successors will look 

 with more scorn on our customs than we do on those of 

 our ancestors, seeing that, at least, their floor-coverings 

 of rushes, intermingled with old bones and other refuse, 

 could not be much injured by smoke or by dust. 



Electric-lighting, electric-heating, electrically-driven 

 machinery are all undoubtedly clean, but will the two 

 latter pay as well as the former .^ On this point the evi- 

 dence before the Committee of the House was somewhat 

 conflicting. What, in fact, is the cost of carrying coal 

 compared with the cost of electrically conveying the 

 energy, or the " essence of the coal " as one of the 

 counsel poetically termed it ? Further, what is the 

 saving produced by combining steam-engines, and work- 

 ing one very large engine instead of many small ones 

 at different places .'' 



Briefly, then, apart from all question of dirt, is it 

 cheaper to burn the coal at the pit's mouth, and to convey 

 the energy electrically to each of many machines situated 

 within a radius of, say, ten miles from the electric 

 generating centre, or to load the coal on railway trucks, 

 carry it in different directions to many factories, unload, 

 stoke the furnaces at many places, and distribute the 

 energy from the many steam-engines by shafting, belting, 

 rope-gearing, compressed air, or an electric current 

 generated at the individual factory ? 



At first sight one would be inclined to answer that 

 without doubt the electric driving of individual machines 

 over an area of, at any rate, fifty square miles from a 

 single centre must be the cheaper. For can we not 

 employ quite thin electric mains and still have only a 

 small percentage loss of energy in transmission, by using 

 a very high electric pressure and sending through the 

 mains a comparatively small current, whereas we have 

 no means of compressing coal, so that not merely its 

 volume, but also its weight and its cost of transport, can 

 be greatly diminished for a given amount of coal-energy 

 conveyed ? No doubt ; but Great Britain has its Board 

 of Trade, and that body not unnaturally looks with dis- 

 favour on the overhead wires in Western America, which 

 are maintained at so high an electric pressure that it is 

 only the spitting and brush-discharge that occurs which 

 prevent a higher pressure being employed. For that is- 

 how the commercial limit of 40,000 volts has been arrived 

 at in the United States for overhead electric transmissior* 

 of energy. 



Eleven thousand volts is the highest potential difference 

 that has hitherto been allowed — even for buried con- 

 ductors — by our Board of Trade, and even that pressure 

 has been employed in connection with only two systems 

 of transmission, viz. the one from the London Electric 

 Supply Company's generating station at Deptford to 

 their transforming stations at Trafalgar Square, Bond 

 Street, &c., and the other from the Metropolitan Electric 

 Supply Company's new generating station at VVillesden 

 to their transforming stations at Amberley Road, 

 Manchester Square, &c. 



The promoters of the four Power Bills, therefore, do 

 not contemplate using at the outset a higher pressure 

 than 10,000 volts, or sending more than 1000 kilowatts 

 — that is, 1340 horse-power — through a single under- 

 ground cable. The evidence as to the cost of such a 

 cable showed that it could be made and laid for some- 

 thing like 1400/. a mile ; some of the witnesses said 1000/., 

 while others thought that was a "promoter's figure," since 

 they had not succeeded in getting similar cables con- 

 structed and laid in trenches m their own districts under 

 1800/. a mile. 



