COMPARATIVE EXPERIMENTS. 115 



parts of the machine is arranged, and especially its commuta- 

 tors ; and, moreover, it admits of being easily repaired. 



To us it appears extraordinary that a machine with com 

 imitators can realize the advantages referred to in this Report; 

 and we believe that if this machine had been removed from 

 the realm of scientific experiment and placed in that of prac- 

 tical use, the conclusions would have been very different. 

 We think, too, that the question is far less understood in 

 America than in Europe; and this is also the opinion of 

 several American men of science.* 



* John Trowbridge, in the Scientific American of the nth January, 1879, 

 thus expresses himself on this subject : 



With regard to the electric light America is far behind Europe as regards 

 the progress recently made, and unless some great invention is suddenly made 

 in this country and sanctioned by the Patent Office, we must not look for 

 novelties here. 



This inferiority exists not only in the number and variety of the lamps 

 which have been brought before the public, but also in the arrangement of 

 . the dynamo-electric machines. We see in Europe, side by side with various 

 forms of Siemens' machines, those of Gramme, of which Schuckert's machine 

 is merely an interesting form, and which have been so arranged as to supply 

 alternately reversed currents, a condition necessary for the regular consump- 

 tion of the carbons used in the electric lamps. We see also the Lontin 

 machines, which give the same results. It seems that to obtain the same 

 quantity of light less motive force is required with the foreign than with the 

 American machines, and a lower velocity is required for working them, which 

 is a great advantage. 



America has not yet been able to produce an electric regulator working 

 as well as that of Serrin, and the foreign carbons are superior to those met 

 with here. We have not yet seen the carbons metallized by electrotyping 

 processes, which prevent their heating beyond the point of combustion, and 

 which have long been known in France. The Brush lamp and the Wallace 

 lamp, the best known in America, answer well for the purposes of general 

 illumination ; and in this country there are not more than a dozen establish- 

 ments lighted by the electric light, while on the old continent they are 

 reckoned by hundreds. Nor has illumination by incandescence succeeded 

 in America, whether the carbons have been placed in a vacuum or in nitro- 

 gen, whether wires of platinum and iridium or filaments of platinized asbes- 

 tos have been used. The carbons fall to pieces or crack after a certain 

 time, or perhaps the metal fuses. However, the two plans we have just 

 mentioned, carbons and incandescent wires, have been tried In Europe, and 

 have been found more costly than the system of lighting by gas. 



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