CLOCK TOWER OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 74, 26 August 1874, Page 3

CLOCK TOWER OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

["Daily News."]

Some curious and useful information about the lights displayed from the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament was given in a report recently made to the House of Commons. It occurred to Mr Ayrton, while he was First Commissioner of Works, to ask the authorities of Trinity House, as having many maritime lights under their charge, to let Mr Douglass, their chief engineer, look at the apparatus in use, and this return gives the result of the observations he made in company with several official and non-official scientific men. It appears that the two semilanterns which a spectator at Westminster sees 250 feet above him in the Clock Tower are in the hands of two rivals—one of whom employs gas, and the other electricity, as the source of illuminating power. The lights, as is generally known, are maintained in order to give notice to! members of Parliament and others whom it may concern when the Houses are sitting, and for this purpose they are required to be sufficient to throw their rays over a somi-circle having a radius of three miles. The Wigham light has three burners, each composed of 108 jets, placed one above another on the same axis. The electric light is produced by an electromagnetic machine, worked by steam-power, the currents being conducted from the machine to the lantern along 1700 feet of copper wires. The first observations of Mr Douglas were taken at Primrose-hill, a distance of three miles from the Houses of Parliament. His report is decidedly favourable to the electro-magnetic process. Thus he states that the electric light has a superior intensity of 65 per cent when one 108-jet burner is used, and of 27 per cent when three are employed. So, again, as to cost, the electric method produces a saving of 162 per cent, measured in cost per candle per hour, when one 108-jet gas burner, and of 133 per cent when three jet burners are used. It appears, further, that the maximum powers of the electric light may be increased, and indeed doubled, in intensity to meet the case of foggy nights. A question has been raised whether the stability of the electric light is to be depended on ; but Mr Douglas mentions the case of the Souter Point Lighthouse, where it has now been exhibited two-and-a-half years, and has never been known to fail for one minnte.