ELECTRICITY VERSUS GAS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2736, 28 December 1881, Page 2

ELECTRICITY VERSUS GAS.

M. J ules Bourdin, late student of the Polytechnic School of Paris and a member of the Syndical Chamber of Electricity, says of the above-named exhibition—'" There is no lack of persons who think that electricity is destined to dethrone gas, just as tho latter has dethroned oil and candles. This manner of grasping the progress made in the industry of lighting does not appear to be quite according to facts, and it is accessary to at first disabuse the reader

of a hypothesis which it is easy to perceive has no foundation. Gas has been substituted for oil and candles in every instance where its use has been found to better answer the requirements of public or private lighting; but there have never been more oil and candles consumed than since the introduction of gas. So will electricity, without doubt, replace gas in "cases where it offers advantages as regards quantity or quality, or in reducing the cost < of the light. Far from expecting a diminution, one ought to be fully convinced that the extended use of electricity will of itself have, as a sequence, an immediate increase in the consumption of gas, which in most oases combines at a cheap rate —taking into consideration its valuable property of being, at one and the same time, a source of light, heat, and motive power. Gas companies can therefore look_ the results of the International Exhibition of Electricity calmly in. the face. They will, no doubt, find there numerous subjects of study ; but, as _ far as the actual state the 1 science of electricity’ is in, I think that all fears which the variety of apparatus brought together at the Palais de I’lndustrie is likely to produce are premature.” M. Bourdin justifies this conclusion bj passing in review first of all the various electric currents producing the luminous phenomena ; then ho explains the most interesting machines producing these electric currents ; and lastly, he compares, as regards actual cost, the units of light produced by gas and by electricity. After describing the various appliances, he concludes thus : “ My opinion, for the time being, is that the quantity of coal which is required toj supply the power for the electric apparatus at the exhibition would more than suffice for the production of an equal quantity of light obtained by the direct consumption of gas ; and this is besides confirmed by the new theories in physics, of which I will give a resum* at the end of my detailed examination of the things shewn, without taking up any side.”