SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 731 



moved from medieval darkness was largely 

 due to the ingenuity of Farmer, Brush, 

 Elihu Thomson, Weston and numerous 

 other American inventors, backed by an 

 energetic people keen to adopt whatever 

 appeals to them. The electric arc, how- 

 ever, was discovered by Sir Humphry 

 Davy (1806). It was the development of 

 the voltaic battery by Grove and Bunsen 

 (1840) that gave the first impetus to 

 electric lighting, and of the dynamo by 

 Gramme and Siemens that made it a com- 

 mercial possibility. Arc lamps had been 

 in regnalar use in the lighthouses of Eng- 

 land and France since 1858; a factory in 

 Paris was thi;s illuminated in 1873 ; wide- 

 spread public interest in arc-lighting was 

 first kindled by the dazzling display at 

 the Paris exposition of 1878. 



Lighting by glow-lamps, like arc-light- 

 ing, had its first great growth in America. 

 Nine years after Edison's announcement of 

 his plan of installing high-resistance lamps 

 in multiple in a constant potential circuit, 

 and his public demonstrations at Menlo 

 Park of the practicability of the scheme, 

 over three million such lamps were in use 

 in the United States.^ The incandescent 

 lamp, however, with the essential feature 

 of a carbon filament in vacuo, seems to 

 have originated, although not yet in prac- 

 ticable form, with Swan in England some 

 years previous to 1879.^ 



To Auer von Welsbach, Nemst and 

 Bremer, in Germany, we owe the use of 

 the oxides of the rare earths as illumi- 

 nants ; to Arons, of Berlin, the mercury arc 

 in its original form; to various inventors 

 and experimenters across the water the new 

 filaments of tantalum, tungsten and other 

 refractory metals that are rapidly repla- 

 cing our filaments of carbon. The Pintsch 

 gas which lights our railroad trains is like- 

 wise a German invention. 



' T. C. Martin, Electrical World, Vol. IX., p. 50. 



" Dredge, " Electric Illumination." 



In the matter of acetylene, although 

 priority for its commercial production was 

 awarded to Wilson in Canada, the process 

 historically considered is obviously trace- 

 able to the scientific researches with the 

 electric furnace at the hands of Moissan in 

 France. The absorption of acetylene by 

 acetone, which makes storage in portable 

 form of that brilliant illuminant practi- 

 cable, is likewise a European idea. 



This summary of facts does not display 

 an exceptional, but a prevalent, condition. 

 It might be duplicated in almost any de- 

 partment of technology. Although we in 

 this country have had a hand in the de- 

 velopment of the art of generating power 

 nearly every important step in the use of 

 steam originated in Europe, as did most of 

 the devices pertaining to boilers and 

 engines; such as gauges, injectors, gov- 

 ernors, condensers and the like. This is 

 not strange, in the case of the reciprocating 

 engine, which is an old-fashioned machine, 

 a relic, the continued use of which is due 

 chiefly to the extraordinary tendency of 

 the race to cling to the things of the past. 

 It is true, however, to no less extent of the 

 invention of internal combustion engines, 

 steam turbines, Avater turbines and of the 

 whole family of electrical devices for the 

 transmission of power. Generator and 

 motor, transformer and storage battery 

 alike had their inception overseas. It is 

 the same in artificial refrigeration, in teleg- 

 raphy, in photography; indeed, in nearly 

 all the arts that are based upon the funda- 

 mental science of physics. In the great 

 fields of industrial chemistry, especially, 

 European preeminence is universally ad- 

 mitted. 



All this does not mean that we do not 

 deserve our popular reputation as an in- 

 genious people, facile and versatile, quick 

 to grasp and put to use any novelty. No- 

 where else in the world has cunningly de- 



