126 ELECTRICAL ADVANCE IN THE PAST TEN YEARS. 



notable events in applied electricity which occurred in the late seventies 

 and immediately thereafter. It was then that the commercial begin- 

 nings of arc lighting took place. The incandescent lamp or burner and 

 tbe electric main for supply of current soon followed. The telephone 

 itself, considered as a practically working speech transmitter, belongs 

 to the period referred to. Its birth was first made known at the Cen- 

 tennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. The almost ideal power 

 of electric motors was applied in a limited way. The fruits of the 

 pioneer work of that period have ripened in recent years. The exi)eri- 

 mental work in electric railways, begun in the early eighties, resulted 

 in the enormous electric traction development of to-day, when almost 

 all our street railways are operated by electricity. 



In this connection, it is very interesting to note that, at a convention 

 of street-railway men held so recently as 1887, a discussion of electric 

 traction as applied to horse railways was vigorously criticised as a waste 

 of time whicb, it was urged, might* have been better applied to practi- 

 cal subjects, instead of to such a fanciful or theoretical one. In fact, 

 the contention was that the care and feeding of horses should take pre- 

 cedence of so unimportant a subject as electricity, considered as the 

 motive power of a car system. Yet, in less than five years from that 

 time, the horse question had everywhere become an exploded one. A 

 convention of the same association in the present year assumed in its 

 papers and discussions the universal application of electricity to street 

 car propulsion. Had the advent of the electric railway marked the only 

 great advance within the ten years just past, that period might still 

 be well characterized as one of gTcat technical progress in electricity. 

 Had the decadence of horse traction occupied a much longer period than 

 it did, the advance could justly be deemed rapid. 



Many of the largest street-railway systems were transformed in a 

 few months' or in a year's time. The advance still goes on by exten- 

 sions of existing lines, by the establishment of additional interurban 

 and suburban traffic facilities, by the increase of equipment, and by the 

 steady improvement in the quality of that equipment. 



To appreciate the real progress of the past ten years demands a wider 

 view. We must consider many other branches of electrical work 

 besides electric traction. 



What, then, was the condition of the art ten years ago? By com- 

 parison with the present status, ^we may, generally speaking, get some- 

 idea of the growth during the past ten years. In thus looking back- 

 ward, we find that there were telephone-exchange systems, but prac- 

 tically no long-distance extensions. We also find that in the larger 

 cities and towns arc-lighting circuits for street and store service were 

 in use, emi)loying only the constant-current or series system; while to- 

 day arc lights of various kinds are worked on several plans, or with 

 different kinds of current supply. There were, in addition, a moderate 

 number of electric stations, supplying incandescent lamps, together 



