ELECTRICITY: LIGHTING, TRANSPORTATION, AND OTHER USES
Man must have discovered artificial light as soon as he discovered
fire, for the two exist together. The first light was probably produced
by burning sticks or pieces of wood. In his search for more light, man
learned how to make the tallow candle. Lights made in one form or other
from the fats of animals persisted almost to the threshold of the
present. The next step forward was to the use of oil; and the next, to
the use of gas.
The first practical use of gas for purposes of illumination was in
1792. In that year William Murdoch, an English engineer, produced gas
artificially from coal, and with it lighted his house in Cornwall, a
county of England. Nine years afterward a Frenchman named Lebon
illuminated his house and garden in Paris with gas produced from wood.
Street lighting by gas was introduced in 1807 by an Englishman named F.
A. Winzer or Windsor, in Pall Mall, one of the fine streets of London.
The first gas lights in America were installed in 1806 by David
Melville, of Newport, Rhode Island, in his residence and in the streets
adjacent. Baltimore was the first city in the United States to adopt
gas lighting for its streets. This was in 1817.
When gas was first used, there was much opposition to it, as there
usually has been to improvements in general. The citizens of
Philadelphia protested for more than twenty years against the
introduction of gas into that city for purposes of illumination. Some
of the newspapers of the time called gas a "folly and a nuisance"; and
one of the professors in the University of Pennsylvania declared that
even if gas were the good thing its supporters were declaring it to be,
tallow candles and oil lamps were good enough for him. But gas
triumphed, and to-day the world could scarcely do without it, either
for illumination or for fuel.
The electric light had its beginning about 1800 in the experiments of
Sir Humphry Davy, a British investigator. He discovered that if two
pieces of carbon are brought into contact, completing a circuit
through which an electric current flows, and if the carbon points are
separated by a short distance, the points will become intensely hot
and emit a brilliant light. The word _arc_, used in connection with
the arc lamp or light, refers to the gap or arc between the two carbon
points, across which the electric current leaps in creating the light.
Following Sir Humphry Davy's experiments, several arc lights were
invented, with greater or less degree of success, and about 1860
electricity was tried successfully for lighting in some lighthouses
along the British coast. The widespread usage and the usefulness of the
arc electric light, however, are due to Charles Francis Brush, an
electrical inventor of Cleveland, Ohio, who in 1876 simplified the arc
light so as to bring it into general use for lighting streets, large
rooms, halls, and outdoor spaces. Brush was also the inventor of an
electric-dynamo machine that has added to his fame. After the invention
of the arc light, he took out more than fifty other patents. The
incandescent electric light, for lighting residences and small rooms,
came a little later as the invention of Edison.
Thomas Alva Edison is one of the most remarkable men of all times and
places. Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon together did not benefit
mankind as has this quiet American inventor. He was born at Milan,
Ohio, February 11, 1847. His father was of Dutch descent and his mother
was Scotch. The mother, who had been a teacher, gave him all the
schooling he received. Early in life he showed great mental vigor and
ingenuity. When he was twelve years old, he is said to have read the
histories of Hume and Gibbon.
[Illustration: THOMAS A. EDISON]
When Thomas was seven years old, the Edison family moved to Port
Huron, Michigan. He soon became a newsboy on the Grand Trunk railway
running into Detroit. He also became proprietor of a news stand, a
book store, and a vegetable market, each a separate enterprise in Port
Huron, employing eleven boys in all. His spare hours in Detroit,
between the arrival and departure of his train, he spent reading in
the Free Library. Before long he had bought a small hand printing
press, some old type, and plates for "patent insides" from the
proprietor of a Detroit newspaper, and using the baggage car for an
office, he started the _Grand Trunk Herald_, the first and only
newspaper ever published on a railway train. His inquiring mind led
him one day to make some chemical experiments in the car. He
overturned a bottle of phosphorus, set the car on fire, and as a
result was not permitted to use it longer for a newspaper office.
One day young Edison snatched the child of the station agent at Mount
Clemens, Michigan, from beneath the wheels of a locomotive. In
gratitude for this act, the station agent taught him telegraphy. In a
few months his ingenuity, one of the chief characteristics of the great
inventor, led him to string a private telegraph wire from the depot to
the town. Over this wire he forwarded messages, charging ten cents for
each message. Next he went to Stratford, Canada, as night operator for
the Grand Trunk railway. One night he received an order to hold a
train. He stopped to reply before signaling the train, and when he
reached the platform the train had passed. A collision resulted, though
not a serious one, and Edison was ordered to report at the office of
the general manager. Edison hastily climbed on a freight train, went to
Port Huron, and probably has not yet called on the general manager.
Edison worked as telegraph operator at various places. Although he was
a brilliant and rapid telegrapher, his fondness for playing pranks and
making fun lost him several positions. After making his first
experiments with a telegraph repeater, he left Indianapolis for
Cincinnati, where he earned sixty dollars per month, besides something
extra for night work. He Worked next in Louisville and Memphis. He was
poor in purse, for all his money went to defray the expenses of his
experiments. His fondness for Victor Hugo's great work, _Les
Miserables_, gained for him the nicknames of "Victor" and "Hugo."
At Memphis he perfected his telegraph repeater and was the first to
bring New Orleans into direct communication with New York. However, the
manager at Memphis was jealous of him and dismissed him. Shabby and
destitute, he made his way back to Louisville, walking a hundred miles
of the way, and resumed his old position. After he had worked in the
Louisville office for two years, his experimenting again got him into
trouble. He upset some sulphuric acid, part of which trickled through
the floor and spoiled the carpet in the manager's room below. For this
he was discharged. He next went to New Orleans, intending to sail for
Brazil; but the ship had gone and an old Spanish sailor advised him to
stay in America. He went back to Cincinnati, where he made some of his
first experiments in duplex telegraphy, a system whereby two messages
may be sent over the same wire at the same time.
A little while afterward, as poor as ever and as unattractive in dress,
he walked into the telegraph office in Boston, where he had procured
work. His co-workers there, thinking they would have some fun at his
expense, set him to receiving messages from the most rapid operators in
New York. Instead of throwing up his hands in defeat, as his companions
expected, he received the messages easily, with a good margin to spare,
and asked the operator sending at the other end of the line to "please
send with the other foot." He was at once placed regularly on the New
York wire. While in Boston, Edison opened a small workshop, put many of
his ideas into definite shape, and took out his first patent. It was
upon a chemical apparatus to record votes. He tried to introduce this
into Congress, but failed, although he proved that it "would work."
He left Boston not only without money, but in debt, and went to New
York. This was in 1871 when he was twenty-four years old. At that time
an apparatus called a "gold indicator" was in use in the offices of
about six hundred brokers, to show fluctuations in the prices of gold.
The system was operated from a central office near Wall street. One day
this central office was filled with six hundred messenger boys, each
bringing the complaint that the machinery had broken. No one knew how
to repair it. A stranger walked up, looked at the apparatus, and said
to the manager, "Mr. Law, I think I can show you where the trouble is."
The machinery was repaired, the office was cleared, and order was
restored. "What is your name, sir?" asked the delighted manager.
"Edison," was the reply. He was engaged as superintendent at a salary
of $200 per month, and from that hour his fortunes were assured.
Edison at once busied himself with inventing. He improved and invented
various machines used in the stock markets, and in 1872 perfected his
system of duplex telegraphy. Two years later he brought out the
wonderful quadruplex system, by which four messages may be sent over
the same wire at the same time. This system saved millions of dollars
and dispensed with thousands of miles of poles and wires.
He started a large factory at Newark, New Jersey, employing some three
hundred men. Sometimes he was working on as many as forty-five
improvements and original inventions at once. In 1876 he stopped
manufacturing and turned all his attention to inventing. In that year
he established a laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, twenty-five
miles from New York City. When this laboratory was outgrown, he founded
a new one at Orange, New Jersey, the largest laboratory ever
established by one man for scientific research and invention. It
comprises one building 250 feet long and three stories high, and four
smaller buildings, each one hundred feet long and one story high. The
principal building contains a library of thirty thousand reference
books, a lecture room, and an exhibition room, where a remarkable
collection of instruments of almost every kind is to be seen.
When Edison began working to produce an incandescent electric light for
illuminating residences and small rooms, most of the scientists of
England said that such a light could not be produced. For nine years he
worked on this invention. The chief problem was to find, for the
horseshoe thread or filament used to give off the light, a material
that should glow with sufficient intensity and yet not be consumed by
the great heat necessary to produce the light. In his search for this
material he tried all kinds of rags and textiles steeped in various
chemicals, different kinds of paper, wood, inner and outer bark,
cornstalks, etc. Finally he sent one of his assistants to the East, and
in Japan a kind of bamboo was found answering the requirements.
Perseverance won, and the incandescent electric light became a reality
about 1880.
[Illustration: AN INCANDESCENT LIGHT]
Thomas Edison is one of the most systematic of workers, and nearly all
his inventions have been the result of intelligent and methodical labor
directed toward a definite aim. He reads carefully what other
investigators have found out, so as not to waste time in going over
fruitless ground. He also keeps copious note books of his own
operations, so that there may be no loss of time and energy. His
invention of the phonograph, however, was accidental. While he was
working to improve the telephone, the idea of the phonograph suddenly
came into his mind. A little while afterward the first phonograph,
crude but successful, was finished. At first this instrument was
regarded as a toy, but later the invention was sold for a million
dollars.
Edison is a man of remarkable personality. Once when someone referred
to him as a genius and said that he supposed a genius worked only when
the spirit moved him, the inventor replied, "Genius is two per cent
inspiration and ninety-eight per cent perspiration." He certainly
possesses great native talent for inventing. This was apparent in his
early boyhood. But much of his marvelous success is due to the
intelligent direction of effort, to tireless perseverance, and to long
hours of work. In 1897 he devoted his attention exclusively to the
invention of a new storage battery, upon which he had been working for
five years. For more than a year he worked harder than a day laborer.
He was in his laboratory by half past seven in the morning; his
luncheon was sent to him there; he went home to dinner, but he returned
by eight o'clock. At half past eleven his carriage called for him, but
often the coachman was compelled to wait three or four hours before the
inventor was willing to suspend his work. While the first incandescent
electric lighting plant was being prepared in New York City, Edison
himself worked part of the time in the trenches, to be sure that the
work would be properly done.
There is scarcely an electrical apparatus or an electrical process in
existence to-day that does not bear the mark of some great change for
the better coming from this most ingenious of American inventors. He
has taken out more than four hundred patents on original inventions and
improvements. Mr. Edison is still living in his beautiful home at West
Orange, New Jersey, near his laboratory. He is frequently called the
"Wizard of Menlo Park."
The idea of using electricity as motive power on railroads is nearly as
old as the railroads themselves. In 1837, when the utility of steam for
purposes of transportation was doubted, Robert Davidson propelled a car
with an electric engine on the Edinburgh and Glasgow road. In the
fifties Thomas Davenport, a Vermont blacksmith, constructed an electric
engine containing all the essential elements of the modern electric
motor. Little progress, however, was made in the use of electricity for
motive power, because the cost of producing the electric current was so
great. In 1887 Lieut. Sprague, overcoming most of the difficulties then
existing, installed at Richmond, Virginia, the first successful
electric railway in the world. Managers of street railways in other
cities visited Richmond, and after an inspection of what Sprague had
done there, decided to substitute electricity for animal power. No
other construction has had a more rapid growth since the time of its
invention than the electric railway. In 1890 there were only thirteen
unimportant electric roads. Now there is hardly a city of the civilized
world where the hum of the electric street car is not heard at all
hours of day and night. Modern urban life could scarcely exist without
it. It is rapidly pushing its way into the country and giving the
farmer the privilege of rapid and cheap transit.
The uses of electricity are by no means exhausted in the four major
inventions of the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, and the
electric street car. It has been put to many minor uses. Among the most
interesting and important of these are the Roentgen or X-rays,
discovered by Wilhelm Konrad von Roentgen, a German physicist, in 1895.
They were named X-rays by their discoverer, because the ultimate nature
of their radiation was unknown, the letter X being commonly used in
algebra to represent an unknown quantity. The X-rays are peculiar
electric rays having the power to penetrate wood, flesh, and other
opaque substances. They are of much value to surgery in disclosing the
location of bullets, foreign substances of various kinds, and other
objective points in the interior of the human body.
The United States government has demonstrated through its Department of
Agriculture that electricity applied to the soil will quicken and help
the growth of certain vegetables. It has also shown that certain crops
are forwarded by the application of electric light.
The New York legislature in 1888 passed a law providing that criminals
should be executed in that state thereafter by electrocution, that is,
by sending through the body of the condemned person, a current of
electricity strong enough to produce death. Execution in this way makes
death quicker and apparently less painful than by hanging, the method
used previously, and subsequently several other states have passed laws
for electrical execution, following the example of New York.
Elisha Gray, who contested with Bell the invention of the telephone,
was the inventor of a peculiar machine called the telautograph. _Tele_
and _graph_ have been previously explained. _Auto_ is from a Greek
word meaning "itself." The meaning of _telautograph_, therefore, is
"to write afar by itself." By means of the telautograph, which is
operated with electric currents, if a person writes with an ordinary
lead pencil on paper, say in Washington or any other place, at the
same time the writing will be reproduced with pen and paper at the
other end of the line, in New York or wherever the message may be
sent.
One of the important uses of electricity is in connection with the
electric block signal. This is a device for preventing railroad
collisions. The signals are operated with electricity, and show
engineers whether or not a certain section of the track ahead of them
is clear.
Electricity is used also in the production of certain chemical
substances; in covering base metals with a coating of a precious metal,
as gold or silver, called electroplating; in producing a solid metal
page from rows of type, called an electrotype, which is used in
printing; in the navigation of small boats and the propulsion of
automobiles; in playing organs and pianos; in driving electric fans; in
drawing elevators in high buildings; in call-bells and door-bells; in
police-alarms and fire-alarms; in the treatment of certain diseases;
and in many other useful ways. What electricity may do for the future
cannot even be guessed.