A CHEAPER LIGHT THAN ELECTRICITY.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 282, 4 June 1896, Page 2

A CHEAPER LIGHT THAN ELECTRICITY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, — At the meeting re Electric Light I mentioned that there was coming forward a new process of lighting known as " Acetylene " cheaper and handier than any hitherto in use, and, on the ground that Chicago, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, were adopting it, I suggested that before committing the place to electric light a little more information should be obtained regarding it. 1 have now before me very full information on the subject, but as it is too voluminous in its scientific and statistical details. I will give as shortly as possible the gist, and I think it will surprise a good many. It is made by mixing powdered ! liaie and coal dust and submitting j that to a powerful electric current, which turns it first into a syrup-like mass, and afterwards when cold this , " calcium carbide " is a bard, porous, grayish black material, odourless and unchangeable, whilst dry being even incapable of explosion when submitted to the fiercest furnace. When water is added it gives off the gas. The cost is one fifth of coal gas. The illuminating power is thirty times as great. Its light is like sunlight as affecting colors and complexions. It can be supplied to portable lamps, such as carriage and bicycle lamps, aud does not require costly mains and pipes for distribution. There is nothing to prevent its being made elsei where and supplied in small or large cylinders to consumers. Every hundred pounds of the mixture yields sixty eight pounds of carbide of calcium, and each pound of that gives over five cubic feet of gas. Now, as regards the danger that Mr G. W. Fowles alluded to. The celebrated French chemist, Grehaut, states emphatically in the " Comptes Rend us " for October 21st, 1595, as the result of careful analysis, and tests on himself and the lower animals, that acetylene gas is far less dangerous to Jife or health than ordinary coal gas. The best results for comparison are obtained by an ordinary flat burner, consuming one foot per hour, and giving the equivalent of six ordinary eighteenCiindle gas burners. Beside such a burner the ordinary incandescent electric lamp looks like a red hot hair pin, and casts a shadow. I have condensed the matter as much as possible out of consideration for your readers, and remain, Yours, etc , F. A. Monckton.