APPLIED ELECTRICITY.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 12, 2 October 1911, Page 848

APPLIED ELECTRICITY.

The illustration on this page will doubtless attract the attention of our readers by reason alike of its variety and comprehensiveness. The Lawrence and Hanson Electrical Company,

whose headquarters in New Zealand are at 45 and 47 Cuba Street, Wellington, dates from the year 1886, when the business was founded in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1909 Mr. H. F. Vickery, A.M.I.E.E. (London), the Manager, came over to establish the local branch, and the Company's operations now extend throughout the entire Dominion.

The marvellous advance in the application of electrical energy to the varied needs and requirements of modern life has rendered it possible to utilise this unseen but powerful force in a greatly increased variety of ways. Its cleanliness, its regularity, the ease with which it can be brought into requisition and the reasonableness of the cost all combine to constitute electricity a most popular agent for all purposes to which it has already been applied. The future will, doubtless reveal many other methods of adapting the subtle fluid to the use and benefit of the human race. The picture gives a portion only of the extensive showrooms of the Lawrence and Hanson Electrical

Company, and a small idea only is given of the extent of the stock carried at the New Zealand branch. A _ large number of electric motors are included in the stock, and these can be supplied from one-tenth h.p., for driving household, sewing, and other machinery, to 10 h.p._ for factories. There are Dynamos, also, of varied sizes, from one kilowatt to ten kilowatts capacity, for generating energy available

for lighting, heating, cooking and other purposes. Motor Car accessories, including accumulators, magnets, sparking plugs, and high and low tension flexible wire, are also kept in

stock. Electric Radiators, in chaste and artistic designs, worked in hand-beaten, oxidised copper, in form either circular or straight, and fitted with four lamps and two switches, so that either two or four lamps may be used at once, are displayed. The XCELL dry bateries constitute one of the finest dry cells on the market, and are largely in use in the Post and Telegraph Department. Another special line is

insulating tape, which is used in large quantities throughout Australia for joints. Generally the Company maintains extensive stocks of all kinds of electrical fittings, lamps, telephones,

and cables, in addition to others already named. Although in Australia the Company are large contractors, the business in New Zealand is confined only to the wholesale trade. It is of general interest to note that the Wellington City Corporation has recently let a contract to the Lawrence and Hanson Electrical Company for supplying plant in connection with the extension of the water supply. At Boseneath a 64 brake h.p. motor, direct coupled to a six inch six stage high lift centrifugal pump, capable of delivering 300 gallons per minute against a total head of 378 feet, is being erected. The same power motor is to be used at Melrose, coupled to a six inch five stage pump equal to 350 galls per minute, at a height of 232 feet, and at Wadestown a motor of 150 h.p. will operate with a seven inch seven stage appliance capable of lifting 500 gallons per minute against a total head of 555 feet. High level residents next summer should therefore never suffer a water , famine. The above not inconsider-' K able list of supply seems an ordi-

nary thing because the various items are familiar now as household words. Even from that point of view the list is remarkable, for where else will you find so many, or dealing with all work from the colossal department which pumps water supplies for large populations, to the driving of the smallest labour saver. The point is that the list is really an epitome of the electric history of the world.