APPARATUS FOR THE ELECTRIC LIGHT. 1 45 



cularly in the middle, and it was observed that the residue 

 showed a notable part of the carbon to have been ignited, 

 hence a considerable loss in the strip of carbon. 



Edisorfs System. In the year 1845 Draper had endea- 

 voured in America to take advantage of the incandescence 

 of a platinum wire, rolled in a spiral form, as a focus of 

 electric light, and in 1858 there was much said of a system 

 invented by De Changy, which 'was merely the same thing.* 

 Latterly Edison has taken up the notion, and has made 

 noise about it in the newspapers great enough to lower very 

 considerably the shares of the gas companies. But this 

 system, besides lacking novelty, only very imperfectly solves 

 the problem, and in the chapter on incandescent electric 

 lamps will be seen the means he used, not to produce the 

 electric light, for everybody knew that, but to prevent the 

 platinum spirit from melting when the intensity of the heat 

 exceeded the melting point of platinum. t Hospitalier has 

 also invented a kind of regulator for the same purpose, but it 

 is more complicated, and makes the apparatus a sort of 

 incandescent electro-magnetic lamp. We think that all 

 these methods of electric lighting founded solely on the 

 effects of incandescence leave much to be desired, and we 



* In the Compies rendus de r Academic dcs Sciences de Paris, 2/th Feb., 

 1858, it will be seen that Jobard, of Brussels, had announced to the company 

 that De Changy had just solved the problem cf the divisibility of the electric 

 light by help of the incandescence of platinum spirals. (See my Expose" des 

 applications de I' Electricity t. IV., p. 501, ame Edition.) 



f It appears, according to some American newspapers, that the pretended 

 marvellous discovery of Edison is not serious. Here is what we read in the 

 New York Herald of 5th Jan., 1879: Mr. Edison has received from the 

 Electric Light Company 100,000 livres in order to continue his experiments. 

 He has already spent, it is believed, 76,000 livres up to the present time, 

 and he has yet produced nothing but promises ; but it may be taken as 

 certain that none of these will be fulfilled, and that no important revolution 

 as regards the electric light will come from Menlo Park for the next 50 years, 

 at least if one may judge by the present rate of p'rogress. What will be 

 done there will depend in a great measure on the conclusions arrived at 

 after all the researches and experiments conducted in the whole world, the 

 results of which are continually sent to Mr. Edison. 



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