July 21, 1893.] 



SCIENCE. 



3S 



In this table but few innovations will be observed, c is made 

 equal to ch ; dh and zh are used for the sonant th and sli ; and h is 

 placed where it belongs, before the w in the combination wh. The 

 letters q and x are not needed, but may still be used to avoid the 

 avvkwai'd kw and ks. 



In teaching this alphabet to children, and in spelling, the two 

 characters which represent the long vowels and diphthongs should 

 be pronounced as one sound, and not separately. 



The following extract will give an idea of the appearance of the 

 printed page in this system : — 



Soundz at levning. 



Swiet waaz dbe sound, hwen oft, at ievning'z kloez. 



Up yondur hil dhe villaj murmur roez. 



Dhair, az I past with tairles steps and slo, 



Dhe mingling noets kaem sofnd from belo ; 



Dhe swaen responsiv az dhe milk-maed sung, 



Dhe sobur hurd dhat loed tu miet dher yung, 



Dhe noizi gies dhat gabbld o'r dhe puel, 



Dhe plaeful cildren just let lues from skuel, 



Dhe waac-dog'z vols dhat baed dhe hwisprlng weind, 



And dhe loud laaf dhat spoek dhe vaekant meind ; — 



Dhies aul in swiet konfyuzhun saut dhe shaed, 



And fild iec pauz dhe neitingael hf d maed. 



Oliver Goldsmith. 



My object in this paper is not to present a finished system, but 

 to show that the spelling reform is practicable, and to suggest a 

 modification of the alphabet which will bring the desired relief. 

 The time and energy wasted by a child In learning to spell would, 

 if otherwise employed, be sufficient to give him an ordinary edu- 

 cation. Let us do something at once to relieve education of this 

 great burden. 



The plan here proposed has the following additional advan- 

 tages: — 



1. The printed and written pages have no very unfamiliar look. 



3. Print and script are easily read at sight by one who sees 

 them for the first time. 



3. One can learn in a few minutes to write in this system. 



4. Its adoption will make no existing books obsolete or useless 

 except a few primary school books. 



5. It will give no special offence to the philologist. 



6. It will lead easily to a better and more philosophical pho- 

 netic system. 



ELECTRICAL NOTES. 



The displays of high- voltage electricity which formed so promi- 

 nent a feature of the late electrical exhibition held in the Crystal 

 Palace, are not absent from the present one, but neither the dis- 

 play of Professor Elihu Thomson nor that of the Westinghouse 

 Company approach, so far as spectacular effect is concerned, the 

 exhibiiions of Messrs. Siemens and Mr. Swinburne at the Crystal 

 Palace. These latter were truly magnificent displays. They 

 were, however, produced by high potentials obtained in the ordi- 

 nary way, by transforming up, and on this account the experi- 

 ments of Professor Elihu Thomson possess much more interest 

 from a scientific point of view. The method used by the latter, 

 as most eleclricians are aware, consists of passing a very rapidly 

 alternating current through a few turns of a coarse copper wire 

 wound round a glass tube placed in oil. Close to the coarse wire 

 primary is wound a secondary of finer wire, and in this a very 

 high voltage is induced by the current in the primary. This sec- 

 ondary current is also of very high periodicity, and all the Spot- 

 tiswood and Moulton effects can be produced with it. 



Owing, probably, to the resonant qualities of the room in which 

 tbe Westinghouse exhibition takes place the noise of the discharge 

 produces a very disagreeable effect on the nerves, even of those 

 accustomed to working with high-potential discharges, so much 

 so that one cannot help wondering at times if the powerful surg- 

 ings in the ether do not directly excite the nerves as a battery 

 does. It is true that in most of the high-frequency experiments 

 no such effect is observed, but this may be because the quantity 

 of current is in general very small. Meantime the coat-tails of 



the spectators can be seen, as Rudjard Kipling would put it, 

 "crawling with invidious apprehension." 



One of the signs of tbe times is the exhibit of electrical heating 

 and cooking apparatus shown by the Ansonia Electric Company 

 in the gallery of the Electrical Building. Here we see all man- 

 ner of utensils, baking ovens, gridirons, chafing dishep, sauce- 

 pans, coffee pots, etc., all arranged so that by simply attaching 

 a plug to an ordinary lighting circuit they are put in operation at 

 once. The subject is such an important one that the writer has 

 thought it best to go into it more in detail {vide infra). Mean- 

 while it may be mentioned that the exhibit is well worth a visit. 



The new Helios arc lamp, exhibited by the same firm, will also 

 attract attention. This may be said to be, perhaps, the first 

 thoroughly successful arc lamp for alternating currents. It is 

 almost absolutely noiseless, and almost absolutely steady, more 

 so than most direct- current lamps. Thtse results are accom- 

 plished by the use of a low potential and of especially soft car- 

 bons. 



It will be remembered that some j ears ago Mr. Edison brought 

 out the kinetoscope. In this instrument a combination was 

 made of the well-known zootrope and the phonograph, so that at 

 the same time that the motions of the moving object were seen, 

 the accompanying sounds were heard. The apparatus was ex- 

 hibited at some of the charitable entertainments in New York 

 through the influence of Mrs. Edison, but since then compara- 

 tively little has been seen of it. It has now been more fully de- 

 veloped and forms a part of the Edison exhibit in the gallery of 

 the Electrical Building. 



Among the instrument- makers the exhibit of Messrs. Queen & 

 Co. stands preeminent. Their display is on the ground floor near 

 the entrance, and includes almost every kind of electrical instru- 

 ment made. A number of new instruments have been lately 

 brought out by the Arm. First among these we may mention 

 Professor Ryan's electrometer, for use in making alternating- 

 current curves. This instrument, which has already been de- 

 scribed in the electrical papers and has been in use for some time 

 at Coi'nell, consists of an electrometer whose needle is charged 

 through a very fine platinum or silver wire to the potential of 

 the alternating current machine, at any part of its revolution, by 

 means of the ordinary commutating device. So far it does not 

 differ very greatly from the ordinary electrometer. It is a zero 

 instrament, however, and is brought back to its original position 

 by the action of a current in a surrounding coil of wire, which 

 acts on a small magnet fastened to the electrometer needle. The 

 instrument being once standardized, the potential can be found by 

 measuring the current passed through the surrounding coil, and 

 this, from the nature of the operation, is a very short process^ 

 While the instrument has been known for some time, this is the 

 first occasion, we believe, that it has been placed on the market. 



It is to be hoped that some firm will do the same for the dy- 

 namometer method of Dr. Duncan, which has been used with so 

 much success at Johns Hopkins. 



Another very fine instrument is the cylindrical bridge. It is a. 

 very mechanical piece of work, and looks as if it could be de- 

 pended on. With the Carhart commutator, standard ratio coils, 

 and one of the new Ayrton-D'Arsonval galvanometers the elec- 

 trician has a most complete apparatus for the measurement of 

 resistances to almost any degree of accuracy. 



These latter instruments (the Ayrton-D'Arsonval galvanometers), 

 will probably interest the electrician mere than anything else in 

 the line of measuring apparatus. With electrical railways running 

 in every direction near one's laboratory, the path of whose earth- 

 returns varies from day to da.v, with every sprinkle of rain or 

 difference of temperature, the use of an ordinary sensitive gal- 

 vanometer has been entirely out of the question unless in the 

 neighborhood of a very strict law and order society, when a little 

 work might be done by getting up to the laboratory at some un- 

 earthly hour on a Sunday morning. For this reason the tangent 

 galvanometer has faded from the scene, and is now only used as 

 a means of illustrating certain principles of electricity, its place 

 being taken by Lord Kelvin's balances. And now the Thomson 

 galvanometer must go before these new instruments, for the dif- 

 ference in sensibility is so small that there is practically no advan- 



