90 



SCIENTIFIC NE\VS. 



[Jan. 27, li 



uf ^ajpers!, flecture^, etc* 



SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS AND 

 ELECTRICIANS. 

 The inaugural address of the session was delivered by 

 the newly-elected president, Mr. Edward Graves, of the 

 Postal Telegraph Department, who stated that he 

 desired to trace the nature of the benefits already con- 

 ferred upon the world by the use of electricity in some 

 of its varied expressions and to gauge the extent of the 

 employment it had given by means of its operations to at 

 least the inhabitants of our own country. It is almost impos- 

 sible, he said, to express the variety of ways in which 

 the action of electricity is utilised. Their name is legion, 

 and they are ever multiplying. Communication between 

 distant places was the first widely-extended purpose to 

 which it was practically put. Originally its operations 

 were confined to points separated by land only. Then 

 intervening rivers, channels, seas, and oceans were 

 successively crossed, until now nearly the whole earth is 

 bound together by submerged chains. Another most 

 prominent utilisation of electricity is for the purpose of 

 illumination. First practically discovered by Humphrey 

 Davy, its powers in this direction were sucessively 

 made practical by Wylde and De Meritens, Pacinotti and 

 Gramme, and by many eminent scientists of later date. 

 Electric-lighting has passed very many stages. Differing 

 from telegraphy, it needed a longer period of trial and 

 experiment after its commercial application began ; and it 

 is, of course, exposed to the competition of other illumi- 

 nants ever seeking, by new methods, to lessen its 

 superiority. Economy of production is, perhaps, the 

 great necessity for its complete development. Telephony 

 has met with wide acceptance and has had a vigorous 

 growth. In electro-metallurgy, electro-plating, electro- 

 typing, and the like uses, electricity operates in many 

 diiferent directions. The substitution of electricity for 

 steam, water, or gas as a source of power capable of 

 driving mechanical engines, and the transmission of 

 similar power to a distance from its source of origin, may 

 be considered as still in the earlier stages of experiment 

 and growth. There is a wide field yet to be explored in 

 this direction. For medical purposes electricity is also 

 extensively employed. Electricity is also utilised to an 

 increasing extent as a safeguard to the lives of the toilers 

 in our coal mines charged with explosive gases. In the 

 great majority of its applications electricity is used as an 

 agent — a tool, so to speak — for producing effects hitherto 

 oljtained less perfectly and less .extensively by other 

 means. Telegraphy and telephony, however, have in- 

 troduced a really new thing into the world. True, the 

 word " telegraph " was applied to an instrument — the 

 semaphore — which preceded that which we mean when 

 we use the same expression ; but its operations were so 

 limited — darkness or fog suspending them entirely — 

 that no real comparison between the apparatus of Wheat- 

 stone and Morse and their so-called mechanical prede- 

 cessor can be instituted. The operations of the telephone 

 as yet are of a limited character, but even as at present 

 developed are of great interest. Electricity has been 

 the means of affording employment to a very large 

 number of persons. It would seem that in the United 

 Kingdom there are at present solely employed in con- 

 nexion with British land telegraphs 23,868 persons; sub- 



marine cable companies (mainly British), 6,000 persons ; 

 telephone companies, 2,500 persons; electric lighting, 

 5,000 persons ; and cable making and allied businesses, 

 5,000 persons ; making a total of 42,368 persons. Add 

 to these the individuals that cannot be classified, who 

 must amount in the aggregate to at least an equal 

 number, we arrive at a total approaching 100,000, in 

 round numbers, of persons dependent for their employ- 

 ment on the various operations directly connected with 

 electricity in these islands alone, besides a very 

 large addition to the output of various trades caused 

 by its consumption of the materials they produce. 

 The employment of 100,000 persons means the support 

 of at least 300,000 of the community. An un- 

 usually large proportion of young, or at least unmarried, 

 people of both sexes minister to the calls of electrical 

 work, and hence the average family is taken at three 

 instead of the usual calculation of four and a-half or five. 

 If these figures represent even an approach to the truth, 

 it is evident that throughout the earth there must be 

 5,000,000 of people at least who would have to seek for 

 other means of subsistence if electricity and its commer- 

 cial applications had not been made known to man. It 

 is little more than fifty years since the powers of the new 

 agent were first turned to practical account, and since 

 that time the record has been one of continuous and un- 

 abated progress. Discovery has succeeded discovery, 

 and invention has followed upon invention. At present 

 many fields are entered upon, but scarcely trodden. 

 Electro-motors and their like have clearly an unknown, 

 an immeasurable, field before them. What is done is as 

 nothmg to what will be done. The fusion of the in- 

 fluences of sound and light, the laws of heat in relation 

 to the power we are considering, and its equally 

 important bearing upon those of acoustics, open up so 

 many directions in which we may look for future 

 researches to make much that now shows, as it were, 

 through a glass darkly clear and distinct, if not to our- 

 selves, at least to future generations. 



ROYAL SCHOOL OF MINES. 

 On the 9th inst. Mr. F. Rutley commenced a course of 

 six lectures to working men, on " The Use of a Collec- 

 tion of Minerals," the lectures forming one of a series of 

 courses arranged under the direction of the Science and 

 Art Department. The first five lectures deal with crystals, 

 and the last will be on some minerals of industrial import- 

 ance. In pointing out the difficulties that so frequently 

 beset the commencement of the study of crystallography, 

 the lecturer dealt on the admirable clearness with which 

 the three introductory cases to the mineral collections at 

 Cromwell Road Museum had been arranged. A careful 

 attention to these would give, he said, the key to the 

 whole subject. Crystallography could never be learned 

 from books, but with the help of some fine specimens of 

 crystals that could be well seen in the theatre, the diffe- 

 rence between bodies in an "amorphous" and a "crys- 

 talline" condition was explained. The blackboard was used 

 to illustrate the way in which some crystals were built up. 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 

 At the special meeting on the 6th inst., after several 

 papers had been read, Mr. J. T. Bottomley exhibited a 

 number of flint-glass globes, manufactured at the St. 

 RoUox Glass Works, Glasgow. These contained curious 

 internal cavities. Mr. Bottomley stated that he personally 



