ELECTRIC CANDLES. 217 



ELECTRIC CANDLES. 



JablochkofFs electric candles, which have lately been so 

 much spoken of, are certainly not the ideal of the electric 

 light ; but on account of the a'bsence of all mechanism, and 

 the comparative regularity of their action, they can be applied 

 to public illumination, and assuredly this could not have 

 />een done with any electric lamp invented up to that time. 

 It is they, and the influential company working the invention, 

 that have enabled those beautiful experiments to be under- 

 taken, and those splendid illuminations to be made of the 

 Avenue de f Opera, of the Arc de I'Etoile, of the Chambre des 

 Deputes, of the shops of the Louvre, of the Theatre du 

 Chdtelet, &c., which astonished all the visitors to Paris during 

 the Exhibition of 1878, and proved that electric lighting was 

 not the chimera that those interested in gas companies wished 

 to think it. It was the Jablochkoff lamps that excited that 

 rage for electric lighting in every country, which will, as sure 

 as fate, shortly lead to the substitution or at least the 

 partial substitution of gas illumination by electric illumina- 

 tion. These candles are, moreover, much used, being now 

 daily lighted in more than 1,500 lamps. We must there- 

 fore devote a long chapter to them. 



If two perfectly straight carbons are placed side by side 

 parallel to each other, and separated by an insulating layer 

 capable of being fused or volatilized by the passage of ie 

 electric current between the two carbons, a lamp without 

 machinery is obtained, which gives light like a candle, that is 

 to say, it burns progressively until the two carbons are en- 

 tirely consumed. This is the principle of the Jablochkoff 

 candle represented in Fig. 62. 



Numerous experiments have been made to ascertain what 

 is the best insulating material to place between the carbons, 



