6 2 ELECTRIC LIGHTING. 



Lontin, Gramme, Siemens, &c. We shall of course begin 

 with the Alliance machines, the earliest of all 



The Alliance machines. The comparatively powerful 

 effects produced by the magneto-electric machines of Pixii 

 and of Clarke at once suggested the idea of using them as 

 economical generators of electricity, and it was supposed 

 that by making them of a large size and driving them with a 

 steam-engine, not only might the cost of electricity, which is 

 so great with batteries, be considerably reduced, but currents 

 of much greater regularity and constancy might be obtained. 

 By the year 1849 Nollet, professor of physics in the military 

 school at Brussels, proposed in fact to construct a Clarke's 

 machine on a large scale, and by introducing into it the im- 

 provements which the progress of science and his own ex- 

 periments had suggested, he invented the machine which is 

 now known as the Alliance Machine. Unfortunately his 

 labours were arrested by death, when he was about to see 

 his scheme, not indeed successful, for its success was not to 

 be immediate, but to see it submitted to practical tests. Bold 

 speculators, helped by rich and powerful persons, succeeded 

 indeed in floating a scheme, founded on Nollet's machines, for 

 extracting gas from water. This was a mad notion, but for 

 that very reason it found adherents, and it was the Company 

 then formed which, under the name of The Alliance, set up 

 by the year 1855, in buildings belonging to the Hotel des 

 Invaltdes, the first large magneto-electric machines known in 

 Europe. Of course the results obtained were miserable, to 

 say the least, and in 1856 the Company was compelled to 

 go into liquidation. 



It was reorganized some time afterwards, and having ap- 

 pointed Berlioz as its manager, it endeavoured to profit by 

 the considerable materials it had formed. I was then con- 

 sulted, and indicated to Berlioz the application which he 

 could make of them to the electric light and to electro- 

 plating. But for that purpose many improvements had to 



