EARLY CONQUESTS OF ELECTRICITY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3381, 4 July 1927, Page 2

EARLY CONQUESTS OF ELECTRICITY.

(By Sir Kenneth 13. Mackenzie.) This year is the centenary of the death of Count Alessandro- Volta, the famous electrician, who was born at Como in 1745. and was elected a prolessor of Pavia’ University at the early age of 34. In 17CO he paid the Royal Society (whole Copley medal he had received, nine years earlier) the compliment of sending to London the first description of the electric pile which he had constructed. A year afterwards Napoleon called him to Paris to show his experiments on contact electricity, and a medal was struck in his honor. It was in commemoration of his invention of the absolute electrometer that the term “volt” was coined. Pie may fairly be regarded as the father of applied electricity as wo know it to-day. So universal has electric lighting become that it would, indeed, be difficult to imagine how we should fare without it these days. Yet its birth for commercial purposes took place only fortysix years ago, at the great .Exposition d’Elcctricite, held at Paris during the autumn of 1881, in the Palais de Industrie,' long since pulled down. And as one of the very few remaining pioneers' of the industry, a record of the following, facts may prove of interest to those who have followed the conquests of electricity, 1 was directly concerned with most of them. While still a pupil at Elswick, in 1880, 1 placed for , the late Sir W. G. Armstrong, in his house at Craigside, ton of the first Swan lamps, this proving the first private house in England to be so lighted. The first steamship to employ electricity for lighting purposes was, the old Inman liner. The City of Richmond, on which sixteen brush arc lamps were installed for trial by Mr Henry Edmunds, in 1881. But the Amcrique, of the Cieo General Transatlantique, was the original passenger steamship to have incandescent lamps aboard. I fitted fifty in this boat, early in 1882, going with her to Now York and back. Madame Sarah Bernhardt happened to be one of her passengers from Havre. The earliest British passenger liner to be electrically lighted was the R.M.S. Cotopaxi, of the P.S.N. Co., later during* the same year.

The Grand Opera House, Paris, was i:be first theatre to try electric lighting. There, Swan, Edison, and Maxim Co.’s each put in a trial installation at the end of 'Bl. The Swan Co., of which 1 was the engineer-in-charge, ultimately obtained the contract for the _ whole -'•Aiding, and lit it until a public supply company was formed in Paris a couple of years later. The first English oatro to be lit by electricity was the Savoy, in 1882. Here I installed Swan lamps during the production of “Princess Ida.” This also was a private Installation.

The British Electric Co., Ltd., was the first electric; company in England, but the original electric supply company for London was the Metropolitan Brush E.L. and P. Co., Ltd., to which I was engineer during 1883-4, and we had some half-dozen small stations scattered about the City and Westcud. This company did not last long, however, for its ambitions exceeded the then technical possibilities, and the first attempt to distribute electricity by the now general method of transformers was on the Metropolitan Kailway in 1883, where, with M. (foulard, iho inventor, we lighted five stations with arc and glow lamps between Not'd ng Hill (kite and Aldersgate. M. F. • > Besseps came specially over to see with a view to trying the Suez Canal rho same system.

However, tire first attempt at a public supply on that system was carried out in D'Bd-6 by my then partner, the Hon. It. T. D. 'Brougham, and myself as consulting engineers for a private company formed by Sir Co-utts Lindsay. wim owned the old Gro-svcnor Gallery under which the station was erected. Despite the fact that this was not a success, from it grew the first electric supply station at Deptford, cngiff?orcd by Mr Z. de Ferranti, who revolutionised Goulard’s transformers, and made thorn the efficient instruments thev have since become.

The subsequent development of tli

system abroad was carried out bv the Westinghonsc Co. in U.S.A. and by Gamy of Budapest, on the Continent, all of them originating from the Grosvemor Gallery experiment. ! believe I am right in saying that the first private house in London to be lighted by electricity was that of Mr Henry Opponbeim, in Bruton street. The Grosvenor Gallery served it. The Willis Booms in King street, St. .fames’, was the original restaurant to use electricity for lighting purposes. Tin’s was in 1883, a. private plant being installed', as also was the case with Messrs llui.ii a mil Co., in Tokenhuuse Yard, the first offices to be so lighted. Messrs William Wbitelcy was the first simp to install the new illuminant in In this connection it is interesting to note that the old .! ahlochko'f system was adopted. The original hotel to employ electric lighting was The Army and Navy fafterwards The Windsor) in 1883; while the first club to try the method was one in Halifax. Tories, which was supplied by 'Mr 'Edmund’s wnM-;s in the district. These arc interesting facts to be remembered during those days when the marvels or electricity follow one another so rapidly, for they are milestones'll; the ago of electrical conquests which have come upon ns during the last of) years.