284 



NATURE 



\_Jan. 22, 1 8 So 



or will be, but Suisse's is now the only one which works 

 re CT ularly at the Lyons railway terminus, in conjunction with 

 a 'few of Lontin's regulators and with Lontin's generator. 

 The results of the illumination are quite satisfactory, 

 eighteen lamps being fed at an expense of 36 kilogrammes 

 of charcoal per hour during fifteen hours every day, and 

 with an expense of 9 francs per hour, including three 

 francs of royalty for the Lontin Company. When this 

 extensive space was illuminated by gas, the expense at 

 19 centimes per cubic metre was 6 francs per hour, 

 and would have been nine francs if the gas were charged 

 30 centimes, or the full price. The economy for the 

 Company results from the immense augmentation of the 

 light distributed. They were enabled to diminish by 70 

 per cent, the number of hands engaged in night work, 

 and the risks from fire are reduced to nothing. Lontin's 

 system will be tried within a few days, in competition 

 with improved gas, on the platform of the passengers 

 department. 



At the exhibition of the Palais de l'Industrie, Lontin's 

 machine is working regularly every day from two to 

 the closing hour, which varied according to the hour of 

 sunset. No accident has been recorded. Siemens's 

 machine has been very seldom at work, owing to several 

 circumstances which prevented the public from making 

 a direct comparison. The engineer of M. Siemens's fac- 

 tory having been selected as one of the jurymen, Siemens's 

 machine was ipso facto out of competition ; consequently 

 we will not risk giving any definite opinion at present, 

 confining ourselves to known facts. We visited Sierriens's 

 light at the works established by the universal firm at 

 Passy, and we were very much satisfied with the effect 

 which we witnessed. The illuminating power and regu- 

 larity were out of question. 



All the work of the Jablochkoff candle is done with 

 Gramme machines, which have been fitted with a current 

 inverter. 



Lontin, Suisse, and other regulators are worked with 

 continuous currents, which is considered as more advan- 

 tageous. 



Three different magneto-electric generators are before 

 the public : Gramme, Lontin, and Siemens, based on 

 similar principles, having a strong similarity in many 

 respects, each of them claiming priority. We cannot 

 presume to give a definite opinion on their special value, 

 or on the value of their respective claims. The question 

 can only be settled by the city or the Government 

 deciding for the illumination of some part of the city or 

 of some large public buildings. 



We can state, at all events, that the Meritens Company, 

 has started new machines, which we witnessed working 

 with regularity at the Continental Hotel on the occasion 

 of a great ball ; that the Alliance machine, although 

 excellent for lighthouses, has proved too heavy, too ex- 

 pensive, and too cumbrous for ordinary purposes. The 

 Lontin machine is rotated at a rate of 200 or 250 turns 

 per minute, and its rival from 700 to 800, which is a 

 decided advantage in its favour. 



It is not our province to adjust the claims relating to 

 the manner of exciting almost any number of currents 

 with a single generator and an electro-magnetic divider. 

 But all the visitors to the Palais de l'Industrie have been 

 astonished by the regularity of the Lontin light and its 

 facility of combining the several arcs. 



The other day the Ouest Railway Company established 

 in the terminus of La Rue Saint Lazare three rival lights : 

 Lontin, Parisian Company's improved lights, and Jab- 

 lochkoff candles. 



We decline to give a definite opinion of the respective 

 merits of the Lontin and Jablochkoff systems before the 

 moment when the numerous measures officially taken 

 with a new photometer and the expenses in coals, electric 

 carbon, and oil will be made public ; but we can say that 

 gas-light seems to be one-third dearer, and one-half only 

 in general intensity. 



Some of the great expectations raised when the Ja- 

 blochkoff light was first exhibited have proved groundless. 

 The shares of the gas companies have recovered from 

 their depression, and reached at least their former value. 

 But it cannot be said gas has conquered electricity, as 

 electric lighting, with all its variety of origin and regula- 

 tion, is gaining ground daily. Siemens's agents are at 

 present fitting a large factory at Meaux with their regu- 

 lators and generators. The works of installation of the 

 Senate and Chamber of Deputies would have been im- 

 possible without the help of the electric light. A new 

 influential daily paper, Gil Bias, has opened on the 

 Boulevard de l'Opera an " Halle aux Nouvelles," with 

 no less than eight Jablochkoff candles. There is no 

 part of Paris where electric lighting has not been exhibited, 

 and its appearance is no longer a novelty, which is an all- 

 important thing for its propagation. 



In the meantime there are other inventors trying to 

 generate electricity by new means. M. Beaudet has 

 started a bichromate battery which he calls u/ipolarisabk, 

 perhaps without any real ground, but which, at all events, 

 keeps in tolerable regulation for many days. M. Clamond 

 has continued to produce a real electric light out of a 

 series of thermal elements, which was considered as a 

 mere impossibility a few months ago. We cannot say if 

 the scheme of lighting by electricity out of a stove which 

 warms an establishment, or a furnace which creates 

 steam, is a Utopia, but we witnessed during some hours a 

 light generated by the Clamond process, and a large work- 

 shop uses no other lighting process during the present 

 winter. 



The Municipal Council of Paris should open a public 

 competition for lighting a large place or building, and 

 invite all inventors of regulators and magneto-electric 

 machines to place their apparatus in the hands of a com- 

 petent commission, otherwise the question of electric 

 lighting will remain in the dark for years, as it will be 

 impossible for private individuals to decide which is the 

 cheapest light produced and the best regulator. 



W. DE FONV1ELLE 



KOTES 

 We regret to have to announce thedeatli of Mr. George Wharton 

 Simpson, the editor of the Photographic News, which took place 

 at Catford Bridge on the 15th hist. He was well known to the 

 large circle of amateur and professional [photographers as an 

 able chemist, a lucid writer, and a careful experimenter. As one 

 of the very earliest followers of photography, he was fully 

 acquainted with all the many phases through which that technical 

 science has passed, and we believe that very rarely, if ever, did 

 he err in a matter of photographic history or technology. There 

 existed between the readers of his journal and himself a feeling 

 of almost personal friendship, as no question was too trivial to be 

 answered in his notices to correspondents, and the answer given 

 was always of a kindly and helpful nature. To Mr. Simpson we 

 owe, amongst other things, the perfecting of the collodio-chloride 

 process, a process which for delicacy and permanency is up till 

 now unrivalled. Mr. Simpson was also an occasional contri- 

 butor to various daily and other journals, and some of these 

 articles we hope may be reprinted, since they are really succinct 

 histories of progress in the art-science with which he was so 

 greatly bound up. He will not easily be replaced in his editorial 

 position, since there are few, if any, who have lived through the 

 stirring times which have made photography what it is, and have 

 followed it with the attention which he bestowed upon it. The 

 large gathering of literary men and photographers at Abney 

 Park Cemetery on Tuesday last evinced the high esteem in which 

 he was held. 



It is rumoured that Dr. William Ogle, Fellow of Corpus 

 Christi, Oxford, and ^Examiner in Natural Science in the 



