ELECTRIC LIGHTING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5566, 30 January 1879, Page 3

ELECTRIC LIGHTING.

(From the San Francisco Bulletin.) The electric light is already used in several factories in this country, and its use seems to be extending. Tho circumstances are favorable to its employment iu large workshops. There is always in these concerns a superabundance of motive power, and the work of driving the electric machines which supply the moans for lighting can therefore be performed substantially without cost. As most large factories manufacture their own gas, the loss which will follow the introduction of electricity, by rendering useless the costly plant for tho production of gas, will fall upon the shoulders of the very people who are to be benefited by the reduction of expense. As a rule, too, more light is needed iu these shops than is actually employed at present owing to the high cost of gas; and the electric lamp seems to supply this need at the same time that it is reducing the cost. So much seems to have been already demonstrated. In addition, the light in some of the lamps before the public is steady, pleasing to the eye, and well diffused, easting no deep shadows. It is not yet fully demonstrated that the electric light is cheaper than gas in buildings where the employment of a special steam engine is necessary. It may be so, but the fact is yet to be shown in actual practice. Iu the one case to which so much attention has been called throughout the scientific world, of the use of the light in a warehouse" in St. Petersburg, the saving of cost is effected solely by the fact that gas used to spoil the merchant’s goods, whereas the electric light does not. With reference to the lighting of dwellings, the whole subject is yet in doubt. Mr. Edison claims to have found a way to light dwellings, aud that illumination by his plan is cheaper than gas. Briefly, the case is as follows: The subdivision of the electric current and its distribution to a large number of lamps cause au enormous loss of light; and while extremely beautiful and perfectly steady small lights can be produced, aud the lights can be turned up and down, just like gas, it is not known that any inventor, Mr. Edison or any one else, has ever yet burned over seventeen lights on any one circuit. The public know what extravagant claims have been made. These claims may yet be justified, but up to the present time they are not. If the electric light cannot be subdivided more than twenty times, it cannot at present become a serious competitor with gas in dwellings and offices.