Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1905.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXII, Issue 42795, 24 October 1905, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1905.

This above all r-to thine own self be true , And it must follow as the night the day Thou cansi not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

The speed with which transformer j houses have been erected, and poles pi anted along our streets, must give rise to great hopes of a speedy completion of our town electric lighting scheme. Critics have been very busy commenting on the merits and deni -rits of electricity as compared with gas. Owing to the distance which coal has to be brought, the price of coal gas at Te Aroha would, we are informed, be somewhere between 10s jan-l 15s per thousand feet. There are also other objections connected with small gas plants, regarding quality of the product. It can readily be shown that even on the minimum 1 asis of ten shillings per thousand for gae, an equal illumination can be produced by electricity at > ne-half the cost at the prices recently fixed by our Council. A rumour has been circulated that no current will be available after midnight, but on good authority we are able to state-that arrangements have been made so that, by means of a “ needle nozzle ” in the Pelton wheel driving the generators, they can. be run at one-third speed from midnight to daybreak, so that current will be available during all hours of darkness. Another ques ion is that of street lighting, and is as yet undecided. One suggestion is to place a gi oup of four thirty-two-candle power incandescent lamps at each sti eet coiner, five of these being jin Whitaker-street. Another suggestion is to light the streets with arc lamps. There is little doubt that the latter method will give the most satisfactory results, for incandescent lamps have long been found to be wanting in penetrative power for outdoor lighring. Of course given incandescent lamps totalling candle-power equal to that of the arc lamps, then a more equal distribution of light can be obtained by groups being placed at more frequent intervals, but if it is a matter of choice between one hundred and twenty-eight candle power being supplied at each street corner by either incandescent lamps or an arc lamp, then by all means let us hope that the latter will be chosen. This matter will be finally decided at the meeting of the Boroigh Council on Wednesday evening. With regard to the question of the Tui Reservoir being uaable to hold water, a practical tes will be made as soon as the sluice gate is fitted to the outfall pipe, and if concreting is found to be necessary it will then be proceeded with.