November 3, 1898] 



NA rURE 



use saves two journeys. The bell attracts attention, the tele- 

 phone transmits the order. Hot water is obtained in half the 

 time and with half the labour. Fire and burglar alarms are 

 fixed to our doors and windows ; clocks are propelled, regulated 

 and controlled. Even lifts are hoisted for the infirm and aged. 

 Ventilation, and in warmer countries coolness, are assisted by 

 fans. Heating appliances ate becoming very general where 

 powerful currents are available. Radiators assist the coal fire 

 by maintaining the temperature of a room uniform throughout 

 its length and breadth. Ovtns are heated, water is boiled, flat- 

 irons become and are maintained at a useful temperature, break- 

 fast dishes and tea-cakes are kept hot, even curling-tongs have 

 imparted to them the rtquisite temperature to perform their 

 peculiar function. 



Electric Light. 

 But it is in supplying us with light without defiling the air we 

 breathe in our dwellings with noxious vapour, that electricity 

 has proved to be a true benefactor to the human race. The 

 Legislature has facilitated the acquisition by municipalities of 

 those local industries that affect the welfare of the whole com- 

 munity, such as toad-making, sewerage, the supply of water, 

 tramways, and, above all, electric light. 



It is on boaid ship that electric light has been pre-eminently 

 successful, and where it filled such a crying want that its intro- 

 duction met with no check. It was almost immediately and 

 universally adopted. Search lights, prompted by the great 

 development of the torpedo, were introduced into our Navy as 

 early as 1S75 by Mr. Henry Wilde. The first ship to be fitted 

 with internal electric lighting was the Ivjicxibk in 1882. In 

 1884 the Admiralty ordered it to be applied to all H.M. war- 

 ships. The first application of electrical power was in the case 

 of H.M.S. Barjiein-, where motors were used for working guns 

 and for the supply of ammunition. It has subsequently been 

 partially extended to the working of gun-turrets, ventilating 

 fans, capstans, and boat-hoisting gear ; but hydraulics, the child 

 of our venerable Past- President, Lord Armstrong, is the form 

 still more generally preferred and used for power in our Navy, 

 though other nations make a much more extended use of 

 electricity. The technical reports received by the United 

 States Navy Department indicate that the electrical appliances 

 on their warships worked very successfully during the recent 

 war. 



Lighthouses. 



The introduction of electricity into our lighthouses has not 

 been such an unqualified success as into our ships. No new 

 electric light has been installed on the coast of Great Britain 

 since St. Catherine's (Isle of Wight) was fitted up in iSSS. 

 Other electric lamps are to be found at the South Foreland, 

 at the Lizard, and at Soutar Point, only four lighthouses in all 

 upon our coasts. 



This is due chiefly to the great prime cost of its installation 

 and to the annual expense of its maintenance. But the sailor 

 himself is not enamoured of it. It does not assist him in 

 judging distances. It is too brilliant in clear weather, while in 

 bad weather it penetrates a fog no further than an ordinary oil 

 lamp. Moreover, great modern improvements have rapidly 

 followed each other in other apparatus, lenses and lamps. A 

 third order light of to-day can be made superior to a first order 

 light of ten years ago. Oils have improved and gas has been 

 introduced. Lord Kelvin proposed that lighthouses should 

 signal their individuality to passing ships by flashing their 

 number in the Morse alphabet. But the Morse alphabet, in 

 1875, was as unknown as Egyptian hieroglyphics to our nautical 

 authorities. The same end was obtained with less mental 

 exertion by occulting and group-flashing systems. 



A new and very promising plan has recently been introduced 

 in France, called the " Feux-eclairs " or "lightning flash" 

 system. It has been installed in many places, but especially at 

 the two Capes dominating the Bay of Biscay. Nothing more 

 brilliant or more effective is to be seen anywhere than the lights 

 that rapidly sweep across the horizon, like well-directed flashes 

 of summer lightning, with a motion that conveys the idea of a 

 wave of sonie illuminated spirit-arm warning the navigator 

 away from the rocky dangers of Ushant. 



Our Trinity House has not yet introduced this plan. Any 

 change of our well-considered and deeply-important coast- 

 lightning system is not to be hastily eflected. We are very 

 proud of our well-guarded shores. Every headland and land- 

 fall, every isolated rock, all dangerous shoals and banks and 

 narrow channels in lines of trade are so illuminated that navi- 



NO I 5 14, VOL. 50] 



gation by night is as safe and easy as by day. Lighthouses and 

 lightships stud our channels. Most of them are placed in 

 direct communication with our Post Olhce telegraph system, so 

 that the speediest help can be secured in moments of difficulty 

 and danger. 



We, however, want improvement in fogs and storms. Here 

 electricity steps in. I wrote, in 1893, of wireless telegraphy : — 

 "These waves are transmitted by the ether; they are inde- 

 pendent of day or night, of fog or snow or rain, and, therefore, 

 if by any means a lighthouse can flash its indicating signals by 

 electro-magnetic disturbances through space, ships could find 

 out their position in spite of darkness and of weather. Fog 

 would lose one of its terrors, and electricity become a great 

 life-saving agency." We are nearing that goal. 



Traction. 

 Electrically worked railways originated in Europe. The first 

 experimental line was constructed by Dr. Werner Siemens in 

 Berlin in 1879. When I visited America in 1884 there was 

 only one experimental line at work in Cleveland, Ohio. Now 

 there are more miles of line so worked in Cleveland alone than 

 in the whole of the United Kingdom. The reason for this is 

 not difficult to comprehend. The climatic influences of the 

 States, the habits of the people, the cost of horseflesh, the 

 necessity for more rapid transit, soon proved the vast superiority 

 of electric over every other form of traction. Horses and cables 

 will soon disappear. The successful progress in the States and 

 on the Continent has proved contagious, and everywhere our 

 great cities are rising to the occasion. The relative merits of 

 overhead and underground conductors, and the use of storage 

 batteries, are practically the only important engineering questions 

 under discussion. The underground conduit system has been 

 materially helped by the practical object-lesson to be seen in 

 New York, where the tramways are being very successfully 

 worked on this plan. The trolley system is much more 

 economical. Its erection does not interfere with the traffic of 

 the streets. The principal objection to it is its anti-aesthetic 

 appearance, but it is wonderful how ideas of utility and the 

 influence of custom make us submit to disfigurement. What is 

 more inartistic than a lamp-post, or more hideous than the barn- 

 like appearance of many a railw ay terminus ? 



The corrosion of water- and gas-pipes, the disturbances ot 

 telegraphs and magnetic observations, are serious questions 

 arising from the introduction of powerful currents into the earth, 

 but fortunately the remedies are simple, easily attainable, and 

 very effective. 



I have alluded to the proposed working of our underground 

 railways. The success of the Mersey Dock line, and of the 

 .South London and Waterloo lines, have placed the question 

 beyond controversy. The problem to be solved is how is the 

 conversion from steam to electricity to be effected without 

 interfering in any way with the existing traffic or with the 

 existing permanent way ? This is not to be solved on paper. 

 It must be determined by actual trial, and this is about to be 

 done on the short line connecting Earl's Court and High Street, 

 Kensington. Electric traction as an economical measure in all 

 cases of dense traffic is so certain that every great railway 

 company must consider, sooner or later, the working of their 

 surburban traffic by electricity. This experiment on the 

 Metropolitan Underground Railways, therefore, should interest 

 them all. It is a question deeply aftecting the interests and 

 comfort of the public and the condition of the congested traffic 

 of our streets. 



The storage battery fulfils a very important function in the 

 economical working of an electric railway. It equalises the 

 pressure on the circuits. It meets the fluctuations of the load. 

 It takes in current when the load is light ; it lets out current 

 when the load is heavy. It thus secures the continuous working 

 of the engines at their full constant and most economical con- 

 ditions, and it enables the engines to be shut down altogether 

 when the load is very light, as it is at night, in the early 

 morning, and on Sundays. 



In Buffalo the battery is charged by energy from Niagara, 

 twenty-one miles away, and the local engines are shut down for 

 twelve hours every day, and for ten hours on Sunday. 



Electro-Chemistry. 



The transference of electricity through liquids is accompanied 

 by the disintegration of the molecules of the liquids into their 

 constituent elements. The act of conduction is of the nature of 



