DANGERS OF ELECTRIC LIGHT.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 113, 26 February 1901, Page 1

DANGERS OF ELECTRIC LIGHT.

The notion was at one time current that an electric insta'lati a secured the householder from many of the risks attendant upon a gas installation or the use of oil and candles, but it is very doubtful if this is so, at any rate under the present methods of laying cables and of “ wiring” our houses. Recent events call very seriously for a fresh inquiry as to the methods adopted for supplying electricity to houses. It is common knowledge now that an otherwise innocent current, that is, one of low voltage, may through certain defects become an exceedingly dangerous current of enormous voltage. “ Earthing” is, of course, the main source of trouble and the generally offered excuse, but if electric lightning is to be our mode of obtaining artificial light “ earthing” must be overcome, and it seems to us that “ earthing” has not been overcome, it is happening on all sides, and in several instances with most alarming results. Leakage has led to outbreaks of what ’ have proved to be serious fires. Recently, for example, a serious outbreak of fire took place at some photographic studious in Regent street, and the fire brigade attributed the cause to the fusing of the cables at the switchboard. These accidents are most and the Board of Trade should be approached with a view to enforcing, by very definite regulations, a safer method of installation of domestic electric lightning than appears to be in vogue now.— Home paper. THREE MILES~A MINUTE. The present obsolete means ol locomotion has been tolerated too long. . But its days are numbered, its doom is approaching, and never was dreadful doom more utterly deserved. The Rhadamanthus who has cast this direful lot ie Mr Frederick H. Pollard, of 14a Hunt street, Latimer road, W., and his instrument is Pollard’s pneumatic and automatic railway system. Mr Pollard is a shaggy man of rubicund aspect. He must be nearing fifty, but as he laid bare his scheme to the astonished gaze of a London Daily Mail representative the untamed fire of the born inventor burned bright in his penetrating eye. And this is the system : He will throw out over Loudon and the whole country, not to mention the world, a network of tubes. But there will be nothing of a “ twopenny” character about Mr Pollard’s tubes; no costly distmbow filing of the earth (the word is his) for him. His tubes will be erected in tbe full light of day, “on light and ornamental trestles in side-walks, and stairs at intervals, and. street crossings for pedestrians.” In the tubes will be the carriages, and behind the carriages the wind. To assist this be will place a vacuum at the end of each tube, which will leave them no excuse; towards that vacuum every wind that blows cannot choose but rush. As for the speed, it will be terriffio, three miles a minute the inside, say, Brighton in twenty minutes. And as each minute will, of course, put three miles of sheer wind between each train, a one-minuta service can safely be established. Mr Pollard calculates that in this way 700 passengers will be transported every five minutes, say, 168,000 per day on a single trip up and,down line. “Evidently,” ha says, “ there would be no congest tion of traffic,” except, perhaps, alf the other end. The expense will ha almost nothing, merely the cost of the iron and labor. -Mr Bollard was bred a tube-maker, so that from his cradle upwards he may be said to have been marked out by nature and training both for the •achievements'of the high emprise which destiny seems now to have placed within his grasp. In tbe meantime, pending the full fruition of his genius, he makes boots. With the modesty of true genius he admitted to the representative that at first sight his scheme might appear somewhat Quixotic and visionary. But bis level judgement did not fail to add that so did the present railway system in the old coaching days. It only remains to "state that Mr Pollard is willing to, consider., offers from . financial syndicates, and consider that there should be fortunes waiting for soisaral of ns in Pollard’s pneumatic and automatic railway f