HISTORICAL SKETCH. 3 



practical conditions, still many years will be required before 

 it is generally adopted, and even then it cannot always be 

 applied ; but as people become accustomed to that brilliant 

 light which makes the gas-jets appear as dull as these before 

 made the street oil -lamps, it will be found necessary to in- 

 crease the number of gas-burners in places where they are 

 obliged to be used, and it may be that the consumption 

 will even exceed that of the present day. We have already 

 seen that the electric lighting of the Avenue de T Opera has 

 stimulated the improvement of the gas-lights in the Rue du 

 4 Septembre, and there is no doubt that people will in future 

 not rest satisfied with the present illumination. 



Although the discovery of the immense luminous power of 

 the electrical discharge taken between carbon electrodes is 

 not new, it was only in 1842 that experiments were made of 

 sufficient importance to enable the possibility of its employ- 

 ment as a means of public illumination to be foreseen. The 

 results obtained at that period by Deleuil and Archereau in 

 their experiments, carried out on the Qitai Conti and on the 

 Place de la Concorde, astonished all who witnessed them, and 

 people already asked themselves whether by operating on a 

 very large scale it might not be possible to produce artificial 

 suns, each capable of illuminating a whole quarter of the 

 city. But at that period the supply of electricity necessary 

 for the production of the light involved considerable expense, 

 the means of rendering the light uniform were very primitive, 

 and competent persons had little faith in the possibility of 

 applying it to public illumination. In 1857, however, the 

 magneto- electric machines of the Alliance Company, origi- 

 nally constructed for a purpose quite different from the elec- 

 tric light, soon showed, after numerous improvements had 

 been effected in it by J. Van Malderen, that this light could 

 be produced under favourable conditions, and also that under 

 such conditions it was, light for light, cheaper than gas. 

 Thereupon the idea of applying it to public illumination was 

 reverted to ; but the difficulty of dividing it and distributing 



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