THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 6822, 2 March 1883, Page 3

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

The Lyttelton Times has the following on this subject :—Electric lighting is not by any means to be condemned because the electric light has been used for the blowing of bubbles as gaudy and delusive as the famous bubbles of the South Sea days. The credulity of mankind was, as somebody has observed, enlisted by the wonders of invention. A thing has only to be announced as a novelty to at once acquire a scientific sanction. When hundreds of thousands of pounds are given away for a nothing with a name, there is not much hope that the unhappy people who have parted with their money will ever see any of it more. But all these things have nothing whatever to do with the electric light. At the bottom of all the speculation there is the light. The speculation is large, but it is not largo enough to make a bushel to hide the light permanently. That is a fact which it would be foolish for mankind, especially when etherwise interested, to ignore. If they do, they will make acquaintance with thateventually dreariest

of habitations—a li fool’s paradise.” The light may be decried as expensive ; it will become cheaper. It may bo denounced as trying to the eyes \ so is the sun at noonday if you look straight into his broad bright eye. It may be poobpoohed as intermittent, indivisible, unmanageable, not to be depended upon ; it is growing steadier, more divisible, more manageable, more dependably pleasant day by day. All this is more apparent in the colonial field by reason of the absence of the bubbles to trouble the air. In our clearer financial atmosphere another fact is very patent. Gas burners may be improved in various ways, but the price of gas in the colony upsets entirely any equality ever yet pretended in Europe between the relative prices of gas and electricity. Gas, moreover, is necessarily hot, while the electric light is comparatively cool. While the new agent is making way among the nations, there will, of course, be conflict on its path, just as there was conflict with steam, both by land and sea. Those who mistake any particular phase of the conflict for a presage of the defeat of the new agent, will be as much mistaken as were the opposers of progress not half a century ago. Bubble companies will not destroy the electric light any more than they destroyed the locomotive in the days of the railway mania.