22 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



on the Brighton, South Western, South Eastern, MetropoUtan, Midland, and 

 Great Northern Railways, with dynamos, primary and secondary batteries, and 

 there is no doubt whatever of their ultimate success. There is no reason why 

 the energy of the moving train itself should not produce currents of electricity to 

 illuminate every compartment with the light of day. 



Exhibitions have been both banes and antidotes. They have had much to 

 do with the cause of the late rnania, but they have also encouraged invention, 

 and stirred up emulation. Last year's Fisheries Exhibition did much to educate 

 Londoners to the advantages of the light. This year's Health Exhibition will do 

 more ; and I venture to prophesy — a foolish practice unless you know — that this 

 Exhibition will, as an electric light display, be the best we have ever seen. 



There have been a good many failures in electric lighting, as there must be 

 in the introduction of every new enterprise, but every failure can be traced to 

 imperfect apparatus, or to the employment of inexperienced contractors — in fact, 

 to bad engineering. It is not long since that the wiring of a large building was 

 let to one firm, and the lighting to another, with the necessary consequence that 

 the whole thing "burst up," to use an Americanism, on the night of opening. 



It is difficult to express any opinion on the economy of the electric light. 

 We have not had the experience of any central lighting station of sufficient mag- 

 nitude to justify the formation of such opinion. Any comparison between gas 

 and electricity on this basis is unfair, because gas is produced in quantities suffi- 

 cient to supply hundreds of thousands of lamps, while the largest electric Hght 

 station yet erected does not light up 10,000 lamps. In New York, the price is 

 the same for electricity as for gas, but then gas costs t2s per 1,000 cubic feet, as 

 it did in London, in the memory, perhaps, of some present. Nevertheless, the 

 cost of supplying electricity now is far less than was the cost of supplying gas in 

 the early days of its introduction. 



But why draw a comparison ? People do not compare the cost of gas with 

 that of candles, nor the price of a pheasant with that of a mutton chop. If we 

 want a luxury we must pay for it, and if the price of the luxury is not too great, 

 people will have it. People will have electric light, if it can be supplied to them, 

 not because it is cheap, but because it is, safe, healthy, pure, soft, and natural. 

 And, moreover, they will not object to pay any reasonable price for it, whatever 

 may be the price of gas. Gas is most destructive, unhealthy, and objectionable 

 when used for artificial illumination. The proper function of gas is the produc- 

 tion of heat, and we see in this room how this production of heat can be utilized 

 to form electric currents which diffuse about us a real luxury — pure light. When 

 the electric light can be supplied, questions of sanitation, ventilation, and deco- 

 ration will determine its use, and not questions of price. At present, for house- 

 hold purposes, it is a luxury for which we must pay; but the progress made is so 

 rapid, and the room for improvement so great, that the day is not far distant 

 when we shall cease to regard it as a luxury, and shall demand it as a necessity. 

 — Lo':do>i Electrical Review. 



