S'-m-yJ 



MUS. COMP. ZOOli 

 LIBRARY 



THE DEVELflPMEliT Of 



ELECTRICAL TECHNOLOGY 

 IN THE I9III CENTURY: 



APR 16 1963 5. The Early Arc Light and Generator 



HARVARD 

 UNIVERSITY] 



by W. James King 



In 1843 Louis Deleuil showed that he could light the Place de la 

 Concorde in Paris ivith electricity by using Bunsen cells and charcoal 

 electrodes. Only a feiv years later the first commercial successes of 

 the electric light occurred when Staite, of England, and Duboscq, 

 of France, used their arc lights in theatrical productions . 



After Faraday discovered the induction of electric current he 

 devised a magnetoelectric generator, in 1831 . However, the practical 

 development of the generator was slow. It was only after the dynamo 

 principle of self-excitation had been applied to generators, in the 

 I860' s, and after Jablochkoff shoived that many arc lights could be 

 connected to a single generator, in the 1870' s, that the electric light 

 beca?ne economically feasible. 



American developments will be discussed in a subsequent article. 



The Author: W . James Kitzg — formerly curator of electricity. 

 United States National Ts/iuseum, Smithsonian Institution — is 

 associated ivith the American Institute of Physics. 



( \ HE first commercially successful application of 

 _L electricity in the 19th century — to electroplat- 

 ing — created a demand for electrical power that 

 could be only partially satisfied by the expensive 

 method of dissolving metals in acids. The second ap- 

 plication of electricity, to communications, found 



adequate sources of power in such chemical cells, but 

 not the next phase in the development of electrical 

 technology. Even more so than in electroplating, the 

 attempts to produce light by electricity required much 

 sturdier and more potent sources of electrical current 

 than chemical cells. 



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BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



