ELECTRICAL ADVANCE IN THE PAST TEN YEAES.^ 



By Elihu Thomson. 



The variety of service to which electricity has already contributed 

 cau not fail to impress every one. We communicate by telegraph over 

 the land and under the seas. Our electric signals may bring into 

 almost instantaneous action the machinery of a modern fire depart- 

 ment, or simply note the flight of time in a clock system. 



The stock ticker records the changing values 5 the police telegraph 

 anticipates the criminal in his flight. The same agent, which in the 

 telephone carries the inexpressibly feeble overtones of the voice to 

 great distances with the speed of light, conveys energy equal to thou- 

 sands of horsepower and distributes it for lighting our streets, our 

 factories, our shops, and our homes. The electric search light may 

 rival the sun in the brilliancy of its beams, or a tiny incandescent 

 lamp may not equal one-tenth of a candle light. Electric motors ven- 

 tilate our buildings, drive our machinery, and run our elevators. We 

 travel swiftly on electric cars, proi^elled by current from wires which 

 also furnish the means for lighting and heating the cars. 



In mills and factories the power is carried to the different buildings 

 oftentimes by electricity, and electric railways distribute the raw mate- 

 rials and deliver the finished products for shipment. In mines, coal is 

 cut and transported to the pit's mouth by electric power, and the same 

 power works the ventilating fans. Metals are welded and forged by 

 electric heat, and some are smelted from their ores by electricity. The 

 electrolytic bath either refines crude metals or coats and protects them, 

 as in nickel plating. 



Power is now transmitted over great distances by wire, and the 

 energy of waterfalls is made available for innumerable uses far from 

 its source. New and valuable products arise from the high heats of 

 the electric furnace. That i^aragon of nature, the diamond, can now 

 be fashioned in an electric crucible from plain black soot. 



Nearly all the larger electrical work has been the result of the past 

 twenty years of progress. Before directing our attention to the great 

 work of advance in recent years, we may recall some of the more 



' Reprinted from The Forum, January, 1898, by permission of The Forum Pub- 

 lisliing Company. 



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