AFTER FIFTY YEARS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 1, 1 July 1922, Page 12

AFTER FIFTY YEARS

: ELECTRICITY'S CONQUEST „ : <k BEMiABKABLE PROPHECY. :; fChe celebration, of the jubilee of the ■• British Institution of 'Electrical Engineers .;■ serves as a reminder of the wonderful ad- - vances that have been made by electricity ,' during the last half century, sa-ys The I Times. The name under which tho insti- ,,-. tution was founded—Society of Telegraph Engineers—is in itself significant. At'the / >Ume telegraphy ■ constituted tho chief- ;. [practical application of electricity, and » the heavy ■ currents that are a common-. Z place of to-day were scarcely dreamed of, .'. certainly n'dt'realised^ More than a gen- -". ©ration had -passed! since Faraday's, re- ~ searches at the Royal Institution had led ■ hini to the discovery of the fundamental v .principle of magneto-electric induction, ;-.. upon which the great structure of modern ; .electrical, engineering has. been reared;. ; btlt it had been, applied only tentatively ■■ to the' construction of machines for the !r geheiV'afiion of electricity, and engineers £ had to work with the small currents-that > could!-'be •derived: from primary cells by f chemical decomposition, and not with the "i large ones now obtainable by the transV formatiori of mechanical into- electrical " eliergy. The founders of the new society, •: however, showed' a wise prescience. Their i- memorandum of association declared its Z ■ object.'to"be'the general' advancement of j electrical and telegraphic science and its « applications,' and, speaking at its opening J meeting, Mr. Cromwell vutley assumed *• that science would ultimately » ieinibi'ace-every operation in nature. With V the electrical theory of matter holding ■'* the field,-that''prophecy' had been well . justified on the speculative side. In the '■ ireahri of .practice,, electricity has woven 1 itself inextricably into the textiite of -our civilised life. In. a book published i'last year Dr. J. A/" Fleming drew a ,* striking picture of -what would happen if " by soma freak of nature, iron, the only * metal which for practical purposes is j susceptible to magnetisation, were sud- ■;' denly deprived of that property. Many houses and streets -would be in darkness, : our telegraphs and telephones would be - iiseless, thousands of factories would have 2 to cease working, and mechanical transl jport "Would; conic to a stop—not merely ■" electee tramways and railways, but also ,a motof vehicles, hecause they depend the Pj one on electrical -Ignition of- their fuel' and\i the other on- electrical signalling appara- » tus.——ln;. 50ryearE-.o]ectrici,ty has.,: made - itself-the- ha-ndmaiden of '■'< engineering, « manufacture, Sid industry.,, ;,. : „. ..