344 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. 



THE ELECTRICAL EXHIBITION. 



The International Exhibition now in progress at Philadelphia, under the 

 auspices of the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania, is the fourth of its kind, the 

 three preceding having been those of Paris, Munich, and Berlin. All four have 

 been held within as many consecutive years, and the reflection may occur that 

 they are succeeding each other with too great rapidity. Yet when we observe 

 the remarkable progress made almost from day to day in the utilization of elec- 

 trical force, it becomes obvious that even the developments of a single twelve 

 months may deserve to be gathered up and displayed in a new exposition. One 

 of the most striking thoughts occurring to the visitor in Philadelphia is that 

 whereas ten years ago the magnetic telegraph, that wonder of our age, would 

 necessarily have been the central and all-absorbing feature of an electrical fair, 

 now it is relegated to a modest corner, not for purposes of display, but to fulfill 

 the same matter-of-fact functions that it might in a political convention or a dog 

 show. It is the uses of electricity as a light, a motor, and a conductor of sound 

 that aow claim the chief place of honor and of interest. 



The Exhibition was opened on the 3d of September — to continue until the 

 nth of October — with appropriate ceremonies, in the presence of a vast throng, 

 which included many guests distinguished in diplomacy or in science. It is held 

 in a new and spacious building, constructed for the purpose, at the corner of 

 Lancaster Avenue and Thirty-second Street, close by the old Pennsylvania Rail- 

 road station. This latter is connected with it as an annex, and furnishes not 

 only a fine concert hall and lecture room, but also additional area for electric 

 railway switch and signal exhibits, and others that require much space. The 

 spot is not far from the one on which Franklin, one hundred and thirty-two years 

 ago, drew the electric fire from the sky along his kite string. 



Despite many evidences of incompleteness at the outset, this exhibition will 

 be a worthy successor to the finest that has gone before it. All the dynamos and 

 electric light and telephone systems familiar to the American public — the Edison, 

 the Thompson-Houston, the United States, the Brush, the Bell, the Bernstein, 

 the Excelsior, the Acme, the McTighe, the Weston, and so on — are there in their 

 famihar manifestations. Here may be seen Edison's gigantic machine, the lar- 

 gest dynamo in the world, the thirty ton "Jumbo," seven feet in height, nine in 

 width, and fifteen in length, challenging the old-time supremacy of steam, as rep- 

 resented in the great Porter & Allen engine that furnishes power for a myriad of 

 minor machines and wheels through the building. A dozen or more powerful 

 dynamos and many steam-engines are met from point to point. Here are the 

 Thompson-Houston devices for conveniently combining the arc and incandescent 



