ELECTRICITY AND ITS USES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13357, 11 December 1906, Page 6

ELECTRICITY AND ITS USES.

A REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT. * VIEWS OF AN ENGLISH AUTHORITY. Amongst the present visitors to Auckland is Mr. Emile- Garcke, managing director of the British Electric Traction ;Company, which is well known in connection with electrical development. This company ha 6 a capital of £5,500,000, and it is at the back of half the electric companies operating in the United Kingdom, and of many other similar undertakings in other parts of the world. Mr. Garcke, who will remain in Auckland for about three weeks, is making a tour of the colonies, partly for the benefit of his health, and partly for the purpose of inquiring into matters connected with the extension of electrical development in the southern hemisphere. . In speaking to a Herald representative, in connection with the important part- now played by electricity in connection with locomotion, Mr. Garcke said that the progress made by electric traction during the past few years had been one of the features of modem enterprise. This source of power was being largely used, not only for tramways, but also for light railway systems. There was now also a big development in progress for the application of electricity to suburban and branch lines of railways on which the traffic is sufficiently heavy to warrant the installation of this form of traction. It had, he said, been adopted with great success on the North-Eastern railway, on the Tyne lines, and it was now about to be introduced by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company.

A few figures supplied by Mr. Garcke illustrate the extent of the vast development in the application of electric traction. There are now over "2000 route miles of tramways, and light railways in the United Kingdom, the expenditure upon which has been £52,000,000, or about £15,600 per mile of single track. About two-thirds of all the lines belong to local authorities, and the balance to private companies The fares charged have been steadily decreased, and in 1905 the average fare was l.ld per passenger. On many lines passengers were carried for this fare for more than 2£ miles, working people being carried double this distance for Id the expenses are now about 66 per cent, o the gross receipts, and the percentage of net receipts to total capital outlay is about 6.3 per cent., including municipal and company undertakings together. The number of passengers carried has increased from 759,000,000 in 1896 to 2,000,000 000 in 1905 "To enable the volume of traffic represented by these figures to be realised, it may be mentioned," says Mr. Garcke that the tramways carry the whole of the population of the United Kingdom four times over every month; or, to take another standard, the number of passengers is about twice the number of third-class passengers carried by all the railways in the United Kingdom." In regard to the profits of tramway lines, Mr. Garcke states that many of the systems no more than pay their way during the winter months, the whole of the profit being made during the summer season Many lines make little or no profit during five days of the week, and generally speaking only a small proportion of the total profit is made in the forenoon. In this connection Mr. Garcke speaks of the great Joss to companies which is represented by the unnecessary frequency of the stoppage of cars on many systems. The average cost per stop—taking the time at 15 seconds — according to a calculation made byMr. Garcke, about one-fifth of a. penny for current alone.

The utilisation of electricity for power purposes has, however, in our visitor's opinion, shown even a more striking advance than that evidenced in respect to the use of the current for traction. One or two figures quoted by Mr. Garcke are sufficient to illustrate the progress that has been made. "In 1895 the total average cost of generation and distribution for all the undertakings all over the United Kingdom was 4d per unit. In 1905—ten years later— the total average cost was 1.3d per unit. Now, take the Newcastle company. This company ha.s in five years, between 1900 and 1905, increased its output from about 1,000,000 units to over 30,000,000 units; and its costs of production per unit during the same "period have been reduced from 2.3d per unit to about OJk! per unit. The average price charged, still speaking of the same period, has been reduced from 4.1 d per unit to about Id per unit. This has been done almost entirely as a result of the application of electricity to power purposes. Prior to 1900 the company was purely a lighting one, but later it developed into a power supply company, with the results that I have mentioned."

In regard to the competition of gas with electricity, Mr. Garcke says that whilst the latter is destined to become the principal source of power it will not necessarily supplant the use of gas. Electricity, he says, has called into life a variety of new uses, and the sale of gas for purposes for which it is specially adapted—such as heating and other uses—is in no danger of being diminished. There are for gas, as well as for electricity, a number of uses which are as yet only partially developed, and there is an ample field for the extension of both brandies of industry.