Electric Monarch

“ The 'MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN' that glittered in unearthly characters on the wall at Belshazzar's feast, was written by electricity; and the Chaldean kings and priests understood a great many secrets of another form of electric force which the world to-day scoffs at and almost ignores—I mean human electricity, which we all possess, but which we do not all cultivate within us. When once I realized the existence of the fact of human electric force, I applied the discovery to myself, and spared no pains to foster and educate whatever germ of this power lay within me. ”

“ Hers was no less an agony than that of the men in the curtained cells, since she had learned that when the lights grow dim at dawn at Sing Sing, it means that the electric power has been borrowed for just that little while to send a body straining against the straps of the electric chair, snuffing out the life of a man. ”

“ Think a minute how it would be without the electric light, now illuminating every city and town in the world—at the touch of a button in millions of homes and halls and offices and factories turning darkness into day. It is wonderful that the birth of one boy named Tom should mean so much to the world. Yet who can say that had Edison not been born none would have discovered the incandescent lamp? ”

“ Steam and electricity have worked wonders in bringing all the members of the English family of nations into close connection with each other in spite of the many thousands of miles that separate them. By means of our great ocean-liners we can cross a wide ocean in a few days, and by means of electric cables beneath the sea each part of the empire can converse with any other part in the course of a few hours, or even in a few minutes. ”

“ Soon after Faraday, Morse, Henry, Wheatstone, and others began experiments that have grown, during fifty or sixty years, into a most colossal system of electric telegraphs, telephones, electric lights and electric railroads. In the latter days marvel has succeeded marvel with such rapid strides that the ink is scarcely dry from the description of one before another crowds itself upon our attention. Where it will all end no one knows, but that it has ended no one believes. ”

“ The ebb and flow in the Thames had at last been turned to account, and worked huge turbines which perpetually stored up electric power that was used not only for lighting, but for cooking in hotels and private houses, and for driving machinery. At all the great centres of traffic huge electric suns cast their rays far and wide along the streets, supplementing the light of the lesser lamps with which they were lined on each side. ”

“ Edison, as a master mechanic, furnished all this, or at least so nearly solved the problem as to entitle him to claim credit for having given the electric light to the world—a better illuminant than gas in every way, and destined some day to be infinitely cheaper. ”

“ There is, indeed, no reason why one of the lords of the admiralty should not himself fire the guns of the batteries at Portsmouth, whilst calmly and quietly seated at the board in Whitehall. Nor is there any reason why the electric current may not be made to answer in the more peaceful or even the more elegant accomplishments of life. ”

“ The first dynamo grew and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edison, building upon French and English experiments of the forties and fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts of machines. If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will soon entirely drive out the “heat engine” just as in the olden days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out their less efficient neighbours. ”

“ Then dexterously placing it again between the leaden plates, and compleating a circle between the two surfaces, a violent shock ensued.—Which demonstrated the power to reside in glass as glass, and that the non-electrics in contact served only, like the armature of a loadstone, to unite the force of the several parts, and bring them at once to any point desired: it being a property of a non-electric, that the whole body instantly receives or gives what electrical fire is given to or taken from any one of its parts. ”

“ This intense light has, therefore, that power which we can take advantage of,—of bearing a great deal of obstruction, before it is entirely obscured by fogs or otherwise.
Taking care that we do not lead our authorities into error by the advice given, we hope that we shall soon be able to recommend the Trinity House, from what has passed, to establish either one or more good electric lights in this country. ”

“ High tension currents from 2,000 to 5,000 volts, such as are used for arc lights, are fatal.
Of all modern inventions, not one has advertised itself in such a spectacular way as the electric light. Those who have seen the magnificent [75] electrical displays at the Chicago Fair, the electrical celebrations in New York, and the Omaha Exhibition, need no introduction to its marvelous splendors and beauties. In the annual report for 1898 of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, its statement shows that for that city alone the gross earnings were $2,898,021. ”

“ Thus they will shortly be in complete control of the hydro-electric and superpower field in America and controlling the power they will control every phase of modern civilization. For electricity is the power of the future. For the home, for industry, transportation, mining and for agriculture—electricity from now on is the one absolute essential. He who controls the power controls all.
Hence the commanding need for public ownership in this larger field. ”

“ It is no Wonder, therefore, that all undisorder’d Nature should be equally electrify’d: For how is it possible to have it otherwise? since, if a Person stands on the Ground, and touches but the Capsula before he touches the Body, the electric Fire starts through him into the Ground, as swift as Lightning, and thence into the universal lambent Flame, from whence it was taken. ”

“ Before I dismiss this interesting topic, I would ask whether the transmission of the power called electric, to a particular spot, does not always afford evidence, that at that spot there exists, beneath the surface of the earth, either a vein of metallic ore, a spring, or some other competent conductor, which the power called electric is seeking to reach, when the antagonist non-conductors exhibit their destructive phenomena? ”

“ I hate butchery of any kind, and hanging is barbarously crude. You know last year the New York legislature voted to adopt electric execution for condemned men—but all the apparatus they have in mind is as primitive as Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ or Davenport’s first electric engine. ”

“ Every available article on wheels was pressed into service to bring business men into the city from the outlying districts, and many worthy citizens were seen trying to look dignified and unconcerned as they jogged along in conveyances which might have come out of the Ark. On such an occasion as this, if we imagine the electric light supply stopped also, we can form some little idea of our indebtedness to those who have harnessed electricity and made it the greatest power of the twentieth century. ”

“ For a long period the arc was dominant and supreme in the lighting branch of the electrical industries, in all respects, whether as to investment, employees, income, and profits, or in respect to the manufacturing side. When the great National Electric Light Association was formed in 1885, its organizers were the captains of arc lighting, and not a single Edison company or licensee could be found in its ranks, or dared to solicit membership. ”

“ Edison proposes to compress air with the harmonic engine, and use it as a motor for propelling sewing-machines and other light machinery. It appears to be considerably in advance of other electric engines, and through its agency electricity may yet become a valuable motive-power. ”

“ He really knows little more than yourself about the laws that control electricity. His inventions are trifling things in comparison with the really wonderful results to be obtained by one who would actually know how to direct the electric powers instead of groping blindly after insignificant effects. Why, I've stood for months by Edison's elbow, hoping and longing for him to touch the Master Key ”

“ They had even no chariots to run by electricity. The records prove this.”
235
“Then,” spoke Paul, “you are entitled to precedence in this matter, as well. Such things the world is well acquainted with to-day, and we have many uses for electricity which you, perhaps, have never yet dreamed of; but they have all been discovered within the last fifty years.”
This admission seemed to please the Tcha. Ama, who took a deep interest in the discussion, said:
“Tell me, then; what electric devices are in use by your people that we know not of?” ”

“ His researches on the dynamo caused him to devise what he calls an 'harmonic engine.' It consists of a tuning-fork, kept in vibration by two small electro-magnets, excited with three or four battery cells. It is capable of working a small pump, but is little more than a scientific curiosity. With the object of transforming heat direct from the furnace into electricity, he also devised a 'pyro-electric generator,' but it never passed beyond the experimental stage.
The same may be said for his pyro-electric motor. ”

“ Now if every living animal, and every cell within it, be really an electrical machine—a generator of electro-magnetic energy—it is evident that in order to secure and use the power thus produced the apparatus must be insulated from its surroundings, otherwise the electricity would instantly escape back into the earth whence it came. All our electric machines and batteries are thus insulated.
Are animal bodies provided with this electric insulation? They are. The insulatory resistance of the bare human skin varies from 1,000 to 6,000 ohms. ”

“ Personally, I think that four hundred years hence the power question in England may be solved somewhat as follows: The country will be covered with rows of metallic windmills working electric motors which in their turn supply current at a very high voltage to great electric mains. ”

“ Concluding, as we do, that the franchise has not expired, but is still subsisting, we come to the question whether it is limited to the distribution of electric current for lighting purposes, or includes its distribution for power and heat. ”

“ The advantages of the electric light and of the distribution of power by electricity have lately been recognized by the British Government, who have just passed a bill through Parliament to facilitate the establishment of electrical conductors in towns, subject to certain regulating clauses to protect the interests of the public and of local authorities. ”

“ Springer manifested a comprehensive grasp of the various enterprises located there with a view toward centralization, and consequently increased the general efficiency, furnishing light, heat, steam, and power, night and day, summer and winter In the early seventies and eighties power was furnished by means of rope transmission, which method was followed in the nineties by an electric plant, generating electricity for motor power and lighting purposes. ”

“ Other conjurors have become so attached to electric experiments, that they have proposed to regulate all the clocks of a large district by electricity, or have amused themselves by turning electric or galvanic currents to the door-handles of their houses, so that unsuspecting strangers, on touching them, were startled with electric shocks. ”

“ The great principle of the dynamo, or electric generator, was discovered by Faraday and Henry but the process of its development into an agency of practical power consumed many years; and without the dynamo for the generation of power the electric motor had to stand still and there could be no practicable application of electricity to transportation, or manufacturing, or lighting. ”

“ And he can get his force anywhere, out of the running stream, out of the wind, out of the tidal wave.
'I'll give you an instance,' continued Mr Square, chuckling and rubbing his hands, 'to show you the great possibilities in electricity, used in a crude fashion. In a certain great city away far west in the States, a go-ahead place, too, more so than New York, they had electric trains all up and down and along the roads to everywhere. The union men working for the company demanded that the non-unionists should be turned off. ”

“ Electric lighting has become a matter of course, both indoors and out; and, while it has been proposed to annihilate night in the city of Washington by setting up four huge electric ‘suns’ on the hill of the Capitol, so rendering any other illumination in the streets and houses as unnecessary as in the day-time; a modified lamp of a few ‘candle-power’ has recently been devised for small rooms, supplied by a little battery which might stand on the mantel-piece. Tennis is played and photographs are taken by the electric light; electric bells are as common as door-knockers ”

“ The exhibits of President Dwight are:
“An artificial spider animated by the electric fire so as to act like a live one; a shower of sand which rises again as fast as it falls; a leaf of the most mighty of metals suspended in the air, as is said of Mahomet’s tomb; electrified money which scarce anybody will take when offered to them; a curious machine, acting by means of the electric fire, and playing a variety of tunes on eight musical bells.”
This broadside of 1751 appears to antedate any other similar notice of electrical experiments. ”