GAS AND ELECTRICITY

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13973, 6 August 1909, Page 2

GAS AND ELECTRICITY

ENGLISH EXPrORI ENCE. On July Gth the manager of the fitting department of the W-ljiugton Gas Company, by request, submitted- to the managing director of the, company a long and instructive report on the successes of gas-lighting over electricity in England and elsewhere-. The repoi \ consists mainly of extracts from n - ports of ofticial officers and committees of municipalities. Air Norwood begins with a committee of the City of London, who visite-.i eight Continental cities,which had the? name of being well lighted. The chairman of the committee said that in London Fleet street was the. host hghteel and this was lit with inverted incandescent gas burners under pressure 1 , ami abroad thev found this svstem giving tin- best light. The report deals next with a contest in June last year between London Electrical Light Company and the Gas Company in the neighbourhood, in thelighting of certain streets, and the ceist ol high pressure gas lighting we/rkeil out at less than that of flame arc electricity each being the best light available of its kind. .

Liverpool had had its own eleetrieplant lor many years. Vet it has 'only a little over .3 miles of streets electrically lit. and 400 miles lit hy a gas company. And in RJOS, 3J niili-s of new streets were supplied with gas. while there was no extension of eh-c----tricity. Liverpool is considered te< hemic of the- be-st lighted e-itie-s in .England. The borough of Acton owns its eleetrie: supply, yet in January last, t.lncorporation preferred to light its eletsructor with gas purchased from a. company. in April of last year the chairman of the lighting committee e.l the Council recommended a re-turn to gas lighting, as a means of saving at least £IOOO a year. He said that "street lighting by electricity was a wasteful and inefficient scheme/' Paris is considered a well-lighted city, and of its 52.8U0 public, lamps less than •200 are electric, and light for light, the gas lamps are much cheaper. The city lamp iirspeetor and tramway manager of Newi-astle-on-Tyne made some careful experiments on lour streets, and from these worked out the comparative cost of equal quantities of light from self-intensifying gas-lamps and flame-are: electric lamps, at £979 for the former and £1204 for the latter. The lighting and tramway company therefore, (in March last) recommended that the electric lights now in use he allowed to remain, hut thatother new lighting proposed he deme by gas. ' In .March last the Croydon Ce.uncil passed estimates reducing the e-ost ol public lighting by £2ooo, the saving to be effected by substituting gas for elcetricitv.

A report by an independent expert en tests made of inverted high pressure gas lamps, used at .the Edinburgh anil Franco-British exhibitions, states that "wo have in this new lamp a big advance in efficiency." The Liverpool Dock Roard has adopted this light, and it. has also been adopted for the new Alexandra dock at Cardiff. Finallv, Mr Norwood quotes remarks made bv several Louden newspapers, in describing a thick fog i.i the city, to the effect that gas hgiit was more •••penetrative" than th. .-r:- light; and he concludes bv saving ui.,l he had selected as far as possibl.- the cases of towns which had tneir < .vn . lectrie sitpPlies.