May 16, 1912] 
NATURE 
251 
Government were unwilling to appoint any com- | raised for such purposes. Between 1883 and 1888, 
mission for the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge 
until full opportunity had been given to these Uni- 
versities to make necessary reform for themselves. 
In the five years that have since elapsed various pro- 
posals for constitutional reform have been brought 
before the Senate of the University of Cambridge by 
the council of the Senate, but they have been, with- 
out exception, rejected by the Senate; and it is clear 
to us that no further attempt of the kind is likely to 
be successful. We therefore make our present appeal 
for the appointment of a commission. 
ELECTRIGIZY SUPPLY > PAST, PRESENT, 
AND FUTURE. 
T was in 1882 that Parliament passed the first of 
the Electric Lighting Acts. This Act was in 
part based upon recommendations made by a Select 
Committee on Lighting by Electricity that sat in 
1879, and as an instance of the want of proportion in 
the ideas that then prevailed it may be mentioned 
that before that committee Mr. Joseph Rayner, the 
Town Clerk of Liverpool, explained that one of the 
reasons why the Corporation of Liverpool were seek- 
ing for Parliamentary powers to supply electricity 
within their borough was because they were in a 
specially advantageous position to do this, as they 
had an engine which was used during the daytime 
for working a fountain, and might well be used for 
supplying electricity during the night, that engine 
having a capacity of 20 horse-power. At the end of 
last year the electric supply plant of the Corporation 
of Liverpool amounted to about 50,000 horse-power, 
which, when compared 
engine, affords a commentary on the _ parochial 
character of the ideas in accordance with which the 
first of the Electric Lighting Acts was framed. 
In the year 1882, also, the first electric supply 
station for supplying incandescent lamps on a public 
scale in London was established by the Edison Com- 
pany on Holborn Viaduct. The Holborn station was 
equipped with two Edison dynamo machines, and it 
is interesting, as giving an inkling of the notions 
then prevailing, that these machines were described 
by the then editor of one of our chief engineering 
papers as “‘enormous,”’ it being added, evidently as | : : ’ 
| wards went into the hands of a receiver, leaving un- 
a matter of wonder, that ‘‘no less than tooo full 
size or 16-candle incandescent electric lamps were 
maintained constantly in operation from one 
machine.”’ It may be mentioned that each of these 
dynamos was driven by a high-pressure Porter 
engine of 130 horse-power, which shows that even 
in 1882 ideas had not progressed very far beyond 
those to which I have already alluded in connection 
with Liverpool three years earlier. The design of 
these early Edison machines, with their multiple- 
magnet limbs each with its separate winding, is also 
illustrative of the ignorance then prevailing on 
electromagnetic subjects, it being obvious in the light 
of modern knowledge that the arrangement was 
altogether inefficient and absurd. It was the late 
Dr. John Hopkinson who first put the design of 
continuous-current dynamos and their magnetic 
circuits on a sure foundation. 
So far from assisting electricity supply, 
Electric Lighting Act of 1882 had the 
effect of crushing enterprise in that direction, the 
period of seven years for which licences, 
twenty-one years for which provisional orders, were 
granted to promoters of electric supply undertakings 
being found quite inadequate to enable money to be 
1 From adiscourse delivered at the Royal Institution on Friday, April 19, 
by Alan A. Campbell Swinton. 
NO. 2220, VOL. 89] 
the 
with this 20 horse-power | 
immediate | 
or the | 
when the Act was amended, only ten licences were 
applied for, all of which afterwards expired or were 
revoked, and though in the first year there were a 
considerable number of applications for provisional 
orders, not one of these was carried into effect, 
capitalists refusing to find money for undertakings 
which had only a tenure of twenty-one years. No 
doubt, also, this unsatisfactory result was assisted by 
the severe reaction that had set in from the specu- 
lative mania in electric lighting affairs of a few years 
earlier. 
It was not until 1885 that Sir Coutts Lindsay laid 
down an installation in Bond Street to light the 
Grosvenor Picture Gallery and the premises of some 
of the neighbouring tradesmen, which installation in 
its subsequent development had probably more influ- 
ence than anything else on the fortunes of electricity 
supply, not only in London, but in the country gener- 
ally. Quite a novel system of distribution was 
employed, the current being alternating and dis- 
tributed at high pressure by means of overhead wires, 
and transformers (or secondary generators, as they 
were called) on the Goulard and Gibbs system being 
used to reduce the pressure to suit that of the lamps. 
To begin with, the system did not work well, and, 
on the advice of Lord Kelvin, Mr. S. Z. de Ferranti 
was called in to assist. The station was immediately 
reorganised and fitted with machinery of much 
greater capacity, and so successful was the outlook 
that, early in 1888, the London Electric Supply Cor- 
poration, Ltd., was formed with a capital of 
1,000,000l. sterling, and what were then considered as 
immense works were started upon as far away as 
Deptford, six miles from the centre of London, the 
scheme being to transmit the electricity from where 
land, coal, labour, and water for condensing could be 
cheaply obtained, at a pressure of no less than 10,000 
volts, with suitable substations where it could be 
transformed and thence distributed at lower pressures. 
The great courage shown by those responsible for the 
venture was deserving of a better fate—but alas for 
the uncertainty of human endeavours! While the 
working of the station at Deptford was still in its 
inception, the plant at the Grosvenor Gallery became 
| ignited by a short circuit and was burnt out; while 
the London Electric Supply Corporation soon after- 
finished, and never to be finished, the 10,000 horse- 
power sets of dynamo and engine which Mr. Ferranti’s 
genius had dared to devise. 
- Though so very unsuccessful financially at its first 
start off, there can be no question as to the enormous 
influence that the Deptford undertaking had on the 
history of electricity supply, not only in London or in 
this country, but throughout the world. Here, at 
length, was an electricity supply proposition on a scale 
similar to those of the great undertakings that furnish 
gas to the Metropolis, with generating plant and 
means of distribution designed for the sale of elec- 
tricity over a large portion of London. The more 
cautious procedure adopted by other concerns which 
sprang up about the same time and later was no 
doubt more successful from a business point of view, 
but the impulse given by this ambitious scheme 
became manifest from the great competition that was 
shown for provisional orders for different parts of 
London, leading to the public inquiry that was held 
by the Board of Trade immediately after the passing 
of the amended Electric Lighting Act of 1888, in 
which the period of twenty-one years, after which the 
undertaking was subject to purchase without any 
allowance for goodwill, was extended to forty-two 
years. 
