moon was as beautiful and as bright as the real moon, 

 or even better. The press was also eloquent in its 

 praise. But by degrees, of course, this luminary was 

 forgotten. Meanwhile at the present time this lantern- 

 moon is proving the germinal ray of electric science. 

 Did Lento vsky foresee this, I wonder when he reared 

 his moon over the stage? 



While Yablochkoff was striving to improve the Drum- 

 mond light, the American Edison devoted himself to the 

 practical application of electric light by means of incan- 

 descent wire. I remarked before that originally in 

 text-books of physics electric incandescent wires were 

 employed as an illustration of combustion by galvanic 

 current, consequently we see that Edison had to find a 

 system of applying electricity in such a way that the 

 wire subjected to its current should glow without com- 

 bustion. The problem was more difficult than that which 

 Yablochkoff had to solve but by various means, the appli- 

 cation of different systems of electricity, the preparation 

 of wires from charcoal, by means of lessened inductors 

 and thickened wires, the difficulties were overcome and 

 a system of prolonged incandescence became established. 

 Edison's system docs not abolish the process of com- 

 bustion but defers it remotely, so that a wire can su- 

 stain a thousand hours, more or less, of incandescent 

 heat. But here I must explain that though the first ex- 

 periments with the Drummond light and incandescent wire 

 were made with galvanic currents, as the later experiments 

 proved that all the visible qualities of electric pheno- 

 mena by galvanic currents appeared also in experiments 

 with currents received from powerful magnets, both the 

 celebrated electricians of whom I have been speaking 

 made wide use of a system of magnetization easily ma- 

 naged by the aid of steam electro-motors. Edison in his 

 experiments and discoveries utilized both systems, and 

 event the Volt arc. 



For the bulk of spectators Lentovsky's electric moon 

 was a pleasing panorama or picture which soon dropped 



