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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
THE FUTURE OF ELECTRICITY AND GAS.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
VÆ VICTIS!
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
POPULAR AMUSEMENTS IN GERMANY.
PRINTERS’ ERRORS.
‘THE KING COUNTRY.’
THE MOULMEIN ELEPHANTS.
GUM-ARABIC AND THE SOUDAN.
ONE BY ONE.
No. 40.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1884.
THE FUTURE OF ELECTRICITY ANDGAS.
More than eighty years ago, Davy first producedand exhibited the arc-light to an admiring anddazzled audience at the Royal Institution; andforty years later, at the same place, Faraday, bymeans of his memorable experiments in electro-dynamics,laid down the laws on which themodern dynamo-electric machine is founded.Though known at the beginning of the century,the electric light remained little more than ascientific curiosity until within the last ten years,during which period the dynamo-electric machinehas been brought to its present perfection, andelectric lighting on a large and economical scalethus rendered possible. The first practical incandescentlamps were produced only seven yearsago, though the idea of lighting by incandescencedates back some forty years or more; but allattempts to manufacture an efficient lamp wererendered futile by the impossibility of obtaininga perfect vacuum. The year 1881 will long beremembered as that in which electric lightingby incandescence was first shown to be possibleand practicable.
The future history of the world will doubtlessbe founded more or less on the history ofscientific progress. No branch of science atpresent rivals in interest that of electricity, andat no time in the history of the world has anybranch of science made so great or so rapidprogress as electrical science during the past fiveyears.
And now it may be asked, where are theevidences of this wonderful progress, at least inthat branch of electricity which is the subject ofthe present paper? Quite recently, the wondersof the electric light were in the mouths ofevery one; while at present, little or nothing isheard about it except in professional quarters.Is the electric light a failure, and are all thehopes that have been placed on it to end innothing? Assuredly not. The explanation ofthe present lull in electric lighting is not