Transcript

The Graphicof Popular

The ~tory ofArtificialLight

• nu. I. tb. first of lhr.. articl ••on lb. hi.tory of arilllciCllUgb!. th.d••.• lopm.nt of .l.clrical ray.. andlb. .tory oi aD Am.rican pion•• r

In .l.ctricity.

By GREER WILLIAMS

MAN PRODUCED artificiallight for the first timewhen he learned to burn

wood. His discovery ot flre andits uses, in tact, is one ot theturning points in the history otmankind, seeming to mark themoment when the evolution otintell1gence unquestionably dis-tinguished man trom ape.As far back as scientists have

been able to trace the descent otman-which is 500,000 to 1,000,·. 000 years-they have tound indi·cations that he used fire to warmhimself, cook tood, ward off wildbeasts, and light his night activoities. Charcoal was tound amongthe bones ot the Peking man,one of the two earliest primi·tives known.It is not known whether the

Peking man of north China reolied on natural sources of fire,such as volcanoes or lightning,or had learned the art ot firemaking. By the time the ere-Magnon man arrived on thescene around 20,000 years ago,however, fire making was prob-ably generally known. The cro-Magnon drew pictures on hiscave walls by firelight.Some one of these early men,

perhaps the Neanderthal of40,000 years ago, noticed that thegrease from roasting meat gaveoff a bright llght, and beganusIng a df1ed and spigoted birdor fish as a torch. Splinters ofwood were also soaked in greasetor this purpose.

• • •It was then a short step to the

011lamp, which has been tracedto 4,000 or 5,000 years beforeChrist. The earliest wert> stm-ply shallow dishes of grease Inwhich wicks were dipped. Thegrease melted and crept up thewick to feed the flame. Slavesbuilt the inner chambers of thepyramids by this light.But these early oU lamps were

smoky and malodorous and notvery handy. The invention of thecandle, as a result, was a greatforward step. Its braided clothwick, encased in wax or fat bydipping or moldlng, prOVided amuch steadier, more convenientlight-with less odor. The firstcandle was made by the Phami·ctans from beeswax. The tallow

LaboratoryScience

(A•• oelatod Pro•• photo.)Thoma. A. Edi.on and Francis J.bl (l.tt) r.·.nact tb.1r.xp.rim.nt that r.sult.d in peri.ction of the incan·

d•• c.nt lamp.

AII.fl: R.produc·tion of Edison'.Iirat incand •• c.nt

lamp.

ttnued to hold favor well intothe pioneer days ot the two mod-ern systems ot lighting-gas andelectricity.Combustible gas was flrst

tound coming trom the ground.In 1691 the Rev. Dr. John Clay-ton ot Eng 1and captured a" spirit" in a bladder by heatingcoal in a retort. He produced ajet ot ftame trom a hole prickedin the inftated skin.A Scotsman, William Mur·

dock, was the commercial plo-neer of gas lighting. He pro-dUced gas In large quantitiestrom coal and in 1792 lighted ahouse with it. The public reomained skeptical ot the claimsmade for gas until 1812, whenU\,eWestminster Chartered GasLignt and Coke company wasfounded in London. In the nexttew years gas was piped throughthe city. Baltimore was the firstAmerican city to use gas as apublic utUlty, creating a com-pany in 1817.Water gas-made by breaking

down water into hydrogen andoxygen and adding carbon tromcoal and petroleum-and aeety-lene gas - made by combiningcalcium carbide with water-

Clay lampe of the tim. of Chriat. The lop thre. are Gr•• k. bottom areRomcm. Property of Ori.Dtal inatltut •• UDi•• raity oi Cblcago.

candle was Introduced about 200B. C. Paramn candles awaitedthe discovery of. petroleum Inthe 18508Aime Argand, Swiss chemist,

wanted a hotter, brighter fIamethan that of the candle. In 1784he invented a Whale oil lampusing the draft principle of mod-ern furnaces. He changed theshape ot the wick from fiat totubular and set it in a circularburner over the fuel tank. Thenhe placed a Ihort metal chimneyaround the burner. As a resultair containing the oxygen neees-sary to combustion did not hitthe fiame from all sldea, but onlyfrom below, creating an Updraftthrough the chimney.Only one more improvement

was needed to provide a practl-cal reading lamp. QuJnquet, aFrench druggist, set a glasschimney on top of Argand'slamp. Virtually the same lampis used in rural areas today, withthe addition ot kerosene, firstdeveloped as a fuel In 1820.Nevertheless the candle eon-

were not developed until someyears later.The expression "in the Ilme-

Ught ••was given to the languagewhen Henry Drummond, an Eng·lishman, in 1826 tound that limeplaced in a gal fiame glowedbr1lliantly. The light was tooglaring tor home use, but waswidely used in theaters.Drummond's discovery refiect·

ed an intensified search tor maoterials producing incandescence-that is, a white light at a hightemperature. The Welsbachmantle, I n v e n ted i n 1885,achieVed thil. Dr. Carl Auer,count ot Welsbach in Austria,found that certain" rare earths"-oxides ot such lesser knownelements as thorium and cerium-incandelce<1 without be i n greadily consumed. He saturateda cone of cotton cloth with thor-ium and cerium and then burnedit, a white shell remaining. Thi.mantle increased the UIumina·tion ot a gas jet tremendously.It enabled American gas light·Ing companies to compete sue-

cesstully tor many years withthe latest development, electriclight.The first electric light pro-

duced by man was merely aspark. The" earliest electricalexperiments on record are thoseof the Greek philosopher Thales,who lived 600 B. C. Thales foundthat rubbing amber would pro-duce sparks and that certainiron ore was magnetic. Magne·tlsm was universally exploitedin the mariner's compass, butfriction electricity remained onlya curiosity tor 2,400 years.Then In 1819 the son ot a Dan-

ish barber, Hans Christian Oer-sted, demonstrated that magne-tism and electricity were thesame thing. He placed a corn-pass needle beside a chargedwire and Instead of pointingnorth It now swung toward thewire.The case for electromagnetism

was clinched in 1831 when Mi·chael Faraday of London andJoseph Henry of Albany, N. Y.,working independently, toundthat electricity could be generat-ed from a magnet.The golden era ot electrical

discoveries properly dates fromJune, 1752, when Ben jam i nFranklin in his famous kite 11y·ing experiment at Philadelphiaproved lightning and electricalspark. were the same thing.The use ot electricity to pro-

duce a continuous light awaitedtwo discoveries-the battery andthe electric arc. In 1786 LUigiGalvanl, Italian biologist, foundthat the leg ot a freshly kUIedtrog would jerk it touched withtwo different metals, such asiron and copper. Three years

Mod.m lamps fIll.d with m.rcury.apor.

later, after disputing with Gal.vanl about the cause ot the phe-nomenon, another Italian sclen-tlst, Alessandra Volta, showedthat an electric current was cre-ated by brin}ring contrastingmetals together.Volta, Who gave his name to

the unit ot electromotive ttlrce,stacked copper, zinc, and clothdisks soaked in sulphuric acidand water, and for the first timeproduced a continuous currentot electricity. This was calleda voltaic pile.In 1801 Sir Humphry Davy.

EngUsh pioneer of eleetromag-nettsm and teacher ot Faraday,

hooked 2,000 voltaic pUes togeth·er and created an electric arc.He used two pieces of charcoal(carbon) as the positive and neg-ative poles tor the current gen-erated. Placed close together,the two points produced a brtl-Ilant yellow spark.It was later proved that this

was no ordinary spark, but anarc caused by the incandescenceof carbon particles torn off asthe carbon electrodes becamewhite-hot. The resistance of thecarbon, a poor conductor, to thecurrent caused the great heat.The arc was the first practical

electric light. As Davy's orlgi·nal was Improved upon the arcevolved into a source ot lightequal to hundreds of thousandsof candles. Its brilliance, indeed,made it better suited to streetthan to home lighting. It wasof little ut11ltarian importance,however, until the introductionof the first practical dynamo, orelectric generator, by Z. T.Gramme of Belgium in 1870.The dynamo operated on the

principle discovered by Faraday-that electricity can be gener-ated from' a disk whirl1ng be-tween the poles ot a magnet.Its development brought man'sknowledge to the point whereThomas A. Edison could use hisgenius to create central povverstations and a system of carry-ing the electricity from the dyna·mos into homes and factories.His biggest single achieve-

ment, however, was the Inven-tion ot the incandescent filamentlamp.The arc lamps developed by

Charles Brush of Cleveland, 0.,were coming into use in citystreet lighting when in 1879 Edi·son, working in his Menlo Park,N. J., laboratory, created an In-candescent lamp which burnedtor torty hours.

• • e

Credit tor the preliminarywork in this lamp's developmentshOUldgo to Sir Joseph Swan ofEngland, who in 1860 determinedthat the success of an Incandes-cent lamp depended on prevent-ing oxygen trom reaching thecarbon filament. In the pres-ence ot air it burned up rapidly;in a vacuum, however, the car-bon glowed brightly without oxl-dizing.It wasn't until Edison, how-

ever, that the principle was eftficiently applied. His first Incan-descent lamp was a charredcotton thread (carbon filament!in a glass globe trom which theair had been exhausted. Butforty hours ot light was notenough. and Edison set aboutfinding materials with highermelting points, so that filamentscould withstand the terrific heattor longer periods. He testedno fewer than 6,000 vegetablegrowths, and used bamboo torsome time. Both he and Swandeveloped a stUI better filament,cotton dissolved and squirtedthrough a die into a fine thread.The eventual answer, howev-

er, was the metal tungsten. Dr.WUliam D. Coolidge of Schenee-tady, N. Y., in 1912 produced aductile tung.ten which servesthe most exacting requirementsot modern lighting.Dr. Irving Langmuir, also of

Schenectady, gave the modernincandescent lamp its final touchwhen a tew years later he sawthat the vacuum principle couldbe carried too tar. Certainly avacuum made the filament burnlonger, but the higher the vae-uum the hotter the ftlament be-came. Eventually it boil e daway, causing the glass bulb toturn dark. He decided that thelack of pressure was responsibletor this and concluded that anInert gas - one that would notcause oxidation CYf the filament--would be the answer to greaterlamp life. Nitrogen was tntro-duced.As a result the ordinary elee-

tric light today Is a tungsten-filamented, nitrogen- filled tncan-descent lamp which is gOod for1,000hcurs, against the 300 final·ly achieVed by Edison, and usesonly about one-sixteenth as muchenergy per candle power. Thislamp produces the light ot 1,000candles tor the price once paidtor five tallow tapers.

NEXT SUNDAY- Tb. aatounding.tory of .lectrical rays.

Mostly ,About Dogs'----------B,. BOBBE£KE.--------....J

(Trlbuno photo.)Tbia pichar. oi the Scot·tiah t. r r 1• r championFlom.U 80UDcl Ludell.abowa the .hort. wirycoat and the compact.w.U coupled body of a

good specim.n.

Scotty-Ancient Breed-Maintains HighPosition in Popular Esteem

VARtOUS breeds ot dogsget the publ1c's favor, riseto the dizzy heights ot pop-

ularity, and then they otten passout of the spotl1ght. But theScottish terrier seems to be oneot those breeds that year afteryear continue to be favorites. Inrecent years this well liked breedhasn't felt the' impetus ot a pop-ularity wave or any concerteddrive to make it the number onedog in the country, It just keepsright on in its pos1t1on as abreed that people like in thehome, a show dog which manybreeders preter, and a terrierthat is among the leaders inAmerican Kennel club registra·nons.The Scotty is of a size that

many people want for a com-panion dog In a medlum-slzedhome. Moreover, the Scotty hasthe di.positlon and the coat thatappeal to many dog fanciers.He's a stanch, rugged little dogwith an individuality that is un-mistakable. The standard ofthe breed calls for a ••keen,sharp, and active expresston,"which i. qulte fitting for theScotty, tor he comes of a veryold and fighting line of terriers.The early dog which Stonehengecall. the ••hard-haired Scottilhterrier" was a splendid verminkUler. It knew how to take careot itself. Those early dogs were

other would be useless, and heis far more easy to control,though naturally of a pugnaciousdispos1t1on. His inte1l1gence andlove ot home, his pluck, doctllty,and affection for his master,should make him a favorite withall who want a varmint dog;and nobody who once gets agood one, ot the right style andstamp, w11l care to let him go."No one can make a positive

statement regarding the exactorigin of the Scotty. As is thecase with so many breeds, theScotty's early story is lost backin the evolution ot the terriersbred in the Scottish hIghlands.Most lovers of the Scotty firmly

Fatb.r and .on. Tb. matur. dog 11 a Che.ap.ak. Bay r.tri ••• r aam.clJudg. H.nry. At tb. I.tt is b!a IOn. Th. Chi.f JllItiC.,

compact, muscular, and excel-lent fighters and were used forsporting purposes like the earlyfox terriers.Dog tanciers were laUding thl!

c 0 u rag e of Scottish terriersmany decades ago. When welook over old books which werewritten in early England we ftnddescriptions ot the Scotty likethis:••AI a dead game animal the

Scotch terrier Is not to be sur-passed by any breed except bullsand bull terriers, but the courageot the better dogs is so exeep-tional that it is no disrespect toany other dog to place them torplUck in a class by themselves,and pound for pound there I. nodog but a bull terrier which canbeat a hard·hatred Scotchmanby far. Still he has a naturaladvantage over the bull terrier,tor his hard coat and thicklypadded teet enable him to gothrough whins [low vegetation]and rocky places where the

DOGThere are more than 200 eom-

panies engaged in the manufac-ture of dog tOods in the UnitedStates. Approximately 200 otherconcerns manUfacture dog reme-dies and supplies.

Few persons realize how manyexpenses are Involved in raisinga litter or puppies trom pure-bred stock. An Investment inthe breeding stock of severalhundred dollars, the cost of astud fee, clean quarters for themother and her pups, specialfOods for the puppies when they

bel1eve that their tavorlte breedis the most ancient ot all thehighland terriers. They wUlrefer you to many authoritieswho wrote about dogs in 1570and later to prove their point.All of these men described an••earth dog used In hunting thefox and the brocke" (badger),and their descriptions ot thisdog fit closely to what mightwell have been the forerunnerof our modern Scotty.The coat ot the Scotty, rather

short (about two inches), andwith a dense undercoat, Is hardand wiry. This type of coatcould be an asset in nearly everyrespect so tar as the average dog

(Tribuno photo.'A promising ntn.·moDth-old Dob.r.man piuch.r is Alpbab.t oi Dawnn.. own.d by HamlltoD S. N.waom.w.ll known Dob.rmcm cnathority

and .bow Judge.

owner Is concerned. But untor-tunately -many owners fall totrim their Scottles, with the reosult that tar too many ot thesedogs are seen with unkempt,woolly coats which spoll theirappearance. The Scotty, Uke thewire, Airedale, Sealyham, andother terriers, should have hiscoat taken down with a strippingknife whenever the hair gets toolong. This Is a barbering opera.tion that removes all the deadhair and encourages the growthof a new hard coat.

NOTESare weaned and immediatelyafter weaning, veterinarian fees,cost of immunization againltdistemper, and medicines arejust a few ot the expenses whichmust be charged against a Utter.So it's not lurprising that abreeder must ask a "reasonableprice for a puppy from healthypedigreed stock.

The ftrlt advertlsment for a10lt dog to appear in an Ameri.can newlpaper was printed Feb.22, 1782,ln the Providence (R. I.)Gazette ..

• For attractive 0 f fer I otdogs, turn to the Dog., Cats,B'udl, and Pets colwnna inthe want ad section of to-day'. Tribune.

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