The Electric Lighting Industry.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 7, 1 May 1906, Page 161

The Electric Lighting Industry.

The Electrical Engineer considers that " the electric lighting industry is passing through a very real crisis, and if its supporters are not more aggressively combative, it is likely to experience a very

hard time." These remarks are doubtless prompted by the enquiries that are being made by lighting authorities as to the relative cost, light for light, of gas and electricity. So far as can be judged at present, gas, on the grounds of sheer economy, has had rather the better of the comparison ; but the Electrical Engineer appears to consider that these estimates have been arrived at on a wrong foundation. "It seems to us," it says, " that the first factor a lighting authority should consider is quantity, or more scientifically, the intensity of light per unit area in the main streets, that will enable trade and traffic to be carried on in the best and most economical way under the existing modern conditions. When they have determined that intensity, then, and not till then, should the cost to provide that intensity by various kinds of llluminants be considered. We have no hesitation in saying that nothing at present known is as cheap as electric energy to give the lighting which ought to be provided in our main thoroughfares. We do not forget — and the electrical engineer ought never to forget — the immense strides made by gas engineers since the introduction of electricity as a lummant. The electrical engineer, partly because of his cocksureness, has not made so great a comparative advance. It seems to us that sometimes he forgets that good lighting depends not only on candlepower, but quite as much, if not more so, upon the equable diffusion of light. . . . While the law that intensity varies with the square of the distance holds good, the limit of distance between the point of generation of light is practically determined, and intense centres of light at long distances apart should be avoided. The people, who from time to time have suggested huge candle-powers on high masts at long distances apart, have failed to prove the practicability of the idea, as might have been expected, for the system is wrong in principle."