LIGHTS OF LONDON.

Shannon News, 19 July 1929, Page 1

LIGHTS OF LONDON.

COST OF ELECTRIC SIGNS. HALF A MILLION BULBS Half a million electric light bulbs, flushing from thousand's of electric signs every night, form the latest chapter in the story of tihc Lights o' London. . f

More than £85,000 is spent every year in lighting London's "open-air cinema," and in Pieadilly alone ten miles of wire, and 2,000 electric bulbs arc used to provide the entertainment on a single "screen." V. Here is the story in figures of London's electric signs:—£BS,OOO spent in electric current every year. Half a million electric bulbs, each of whieh can bum for a thousand hours, lit every night; 10,000 miles of wire to conduct the current/

Moving electric signs, said an official of hhe Electric Sign Company, ware invented by Mr Guy Cavey Fricker, the founder of the firm. He erected the first 35 years ago in Ludg-ate Circus, and it is. still working. The next one appeared in Trafalgar Square, but while the public regarded it as a nine-days' wonder, the London County Council and the Westminster Borough Council protested, following a report that two omnibus horses had shied at it! A long "'war" was started, and is sit-ill being waged, but in guerrilla fashion. London County Council property is leased on condition that nothing is attached to the front of the building, but the electric sign chiefs countered by supending the signs from the roof, so that they did not actually touch the front of the building. One such sign in Piccadilly Circus weighs two and a-h-alf tons! ,

It was seven years after the invention —■twenty-eight years ago—before the first "show" was started in Piccadilly Circus, and almost two decades .passed before it became the "brightest . spot in Britain" at night. The first fin recent years was narrowed down to Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, but tihe Square was left hopelessly behind when 2000 lamps emblazoned the London Pavilion one dark night. "Although"'they are called "cinemas" in a jocular sense, films are actually. used for the moving letter signs. The film is punctured at intervals on a special machine. This is passed over a "brush" of thousands of small needles Each time a needle passes through one i of the perforations on the film a eontact is made and the required letter is lit on the screen. .

One electric bulb in Piccadilly Circus is the hardest worked in great Britain. It is light and extinguishes 120,000 times every night!