GAS V. ELECTRICITY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVI, Issue 6501, 28 December 1881, Page 5

GAS V. ELECTRICITY.

’Will electricity supersede gas is a question engrossing much Attention in nearly every civilised part of tbe world just at present, and about which opinions are much divided. From a late number of tbe 11 Journal of Gaslighting,” an electrician gives bis view as to the immediate prospect which electricity has of dethroning gas. 3he cost of producing electricity is a strong point against it; but a recent issue of the Daily cs contained a description of the works at a township in England, where the motive power for the production of electricity for lighting the township was supplied by tbe river current, She electrician’s view, however, to which wo refer is as followsM. Jules Boardin, late student of the Polytechnic School of Paris, and member of the Syndicol Chamber of Electricity, says of the above-named exhibition, in the coarse of an article in the cuirent number of the Journal de* Usines d Oaz, that * there is no look of persons who think that electricity is destined to dethrone gas, just as the latter has dethroned oil and candles. This manner of grasping the progress mode in the industry of lighting does not appear to be quite according to facts, and it is necessary to at first disabuse the reader of a hypothesis which it is easy to perceive has no foundation. Gas has been substituted for oil and candles in every instance where its use has been found to better answer the requirements of public or private lighting j but there have never been more ou and candles consumed than since the introduction of gas. So will electricity, without doubt, replace gas iu cases where it offers advantage# oe regards quantity, or quality, or in reducing the cost of the light. Far from expecting a diminution, one aught to be fully convinced that the extended use of electricity will of itself have, as a sequence, as immediate increase in the consumption cl gat, which in most cases combines at a cheap rale —taking into consideration its valuable property of being, at one sad the same time, a source of light, heat, and motive power. Gas companies can, therefore, look the results ol the International Exhibition of Electricity calmly in the face. They will, no dealt, find there numerous subjects of study; but os far as the actual state the " science of electricity” is in, I think that oil fears which the variety of apparatus brought together at the Palais do ITnduitrie is likely to produce ore premature.’ if. Boordin justifies this conclusion by passing in review first of all the various electric currents producing the luminous phenomena; then he explains the most interesting machines producing these electric currents ; and lastly, he compares, as regards actual cost, the unit of light produced by gas and by electricity. After describing* the various appliances, he concludes thus: 'My opinion, for the time being, is that the quantity of coal which is required to supply the power for the electric apparatus at the exhibition would more than suffice for the production of an equal quantity of light obtained by the direct consumption of gas; and this is bolides confirmed by the new theories in phjsifs, of which 1 wiu give a at the end of my detailed examination of the things shown, without taking up any side,* ”