THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1728, 3 September 1879, Page 3

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

The “Standard,” in an article on the progress made by the electric light, says it is not, even now, very far removed from gas In respect to cost. Allowance must also be made for the circumstance that gas [is being employed on a large scale, and the electric light on a small one. If the conditions were reversed the results might be reversed ; and, when the conditions are equal, it is possible that the results in regard to cost may become equal also. But whatever may be thought of the above data, there is nothing to warrant a feeling of alarm with regard to the gas interest. The gas companies could very well afford to part with the street lighting, and even that result is not to he expected immediately. The facts do no more than show that there is no such collapse of tho electric light as some persons have imagined. Quiet and substantial progress is now being made, and it is in this way that the light may be expected to make good its footing. The apprehended difficulties seem to disappear when they are brought to the test of actual experiment. A first instalment towards lighting the stations of the Metropolitan Railway with the electric light was made in a tentative way by the British Electric Lighting Company. The point chosen for the experiment was the Edgware road, and the brilliant appearance of that station, illuminated by two of these lights, one at either end of the building, was in marked contrast with tho usual dingy aspect of an underground railway station. The platforms are about 330 feet long, and the cost of lighting them by gas is estimated at about 6d per hour, so that it will be seen that there is little hope of economising by the innovation, even allowing for the cost of repairs to the ordinary lamps. The object, however, has not been so much to effect a saving as to afford the public a better light, and this is what has been successfully accomplished. By a new and effective arrangement, which consists in placing a sheet of opaque glass at an upward inclination in front of the lights, the eyesight is protected from the glare, while little if any of the illuminating power Is lost, part of it being diverted to the roof, whence it is equally diffused all over the station.