THE ELECTRIC LIGHT IN SCOTLAND.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3141, 22 July 1881, Page 4

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT IN SCOTLAND.

Mr John Watson, of Glasgow and Earnoch, near Hamilton, has just adopted the electric light as a means of illuminating his collieries at the latter place. After investigating the merits of the various systems of electric lighting. Mr Watson decided upon giving that invented by Mr Swan a trial. At the Farnoch Colliery the Swan lamps will be fitted up at the pit bottom, along the principal roadways, at the station occupied by the underground hauling engines, and most probabjy at the miners' working places proper. They will likewise be fitted up in the pithead framing, the engine houses, offices, and the numerous workshops situated in the vicinity of the pithead. This excellently equipped colliery is provided with no fewer than five steam-engines at the pithead, two of which are used by turns for driving a 40-feet Gulbal fan, which is employed for the ventilation of the pit. It is intended that the power required for driving the dynamoelectric machines, in which the electric current is generated, shall be obtained from the ventilating engine which is in action for the time being. Besides introducing the electric light into Earnoch collieries on a very complete scale, Mr Watson has resolved at the same time to adopt the same illuminating medium at his country residence, Earnoch House, which is about half a mile from the collieries. There will be a line of conducting cable from the dynamo-electric machines at the pithead to the lamps at Earnoch House. Mr Watson will be the first person in Scotland to use the Swan incandescent electric lamp in domestic lighting as well as in the colliery.