The magneto-electric machine of the Alliance Company soon succeeded to that of Holmes, being in various ways a very marked improvement on the latter. Its currents were stronger and its light was brighter than those of its predecessor. In it, moreover, the commutator, the flashing and destruction of which were sources of irregularity and deterioration in the machine of Holmes, was, at the suggestion of M. Masson, entirely abandoned; alternating currents instead of the direct current being employed. [Footnote: Du Moncel, 'l'Electricité,' August, 1878, p. 150.] M. Serrin modified his excellent lamp with the express view of enabling it to cope with alternating currents. During the International Exhibition of 1862, where the machine was shown, M. Berlioz offered to dispose of the invention to the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House. They referred the matter to Faraday, and he replied as follows :— 'I am not aware that the Trinity House authorities have advanced so far as to be able to decide whether they will require more magneto-electric machines, or whether, if they should require them, they see reason to suppose the means of their supply in this country, from the source already open to them, would not be sufficient. Therefore I do not see that at present they want to purchase a machine.' Faraday was obviously swayed by the desire to protect the interests of Holmes, who had borne the burden and heat which fall upon the pioneer. The Alliance machines were introduced with success at Cape la Hève, near Havre; and the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, determined to have the best available apparatus, decided, in 1868, on the introduction of machines on the Alliance principle into the lighthouses at Souter Point and the South Foreland. These, machines were constructed by Professor Holmes, and they still continue in operation. With regard, then, to the application of electricity to lighthouse purposes, the course of events was this: The Dungeness light was introduced on January 31, 1862; the light at La Hève on December 26, 1863, or nearly two years later. But Faraday's experimental trial at the South Foreland preceded the lighting of Dungeness by more than two years. The electric light was afterwards established at Cape Grisnez. The light was started at Souter Point on January 11, 1871; and at the South Foreland on January 1, 1872. At the Lizard, which enjoys the newest and most powerful development of the electric light, it began to shine on January 1, 1878.
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I have now to revert to a point of apparently small moment, but which really constitutes an important step in the development of this subject. I refer to the form given in 1857 to the rotating armature by Dr. Werner Siemens, of Berlin. Instead of employing coils wound transversely round cores of iron, as in the machine of Saxton, Siemens, after giving a bar of iron the proper shape, wound his wire longitudinally round it, and obtained thereby greatly augmented effects between suitably placed magnetic poles. Such an armature is employed in the small magneto-electric machine which I now introduce to your notice, and for which the institution is indebted to Mr. Henry Wilde, of Manchester. There are here sixteen permanent horse-shoe magnets placed parallel to each other, and between their poles a Siemens armature. The two ends of the wire which surrounds the armature are now disconnected. In turning the handle and causing the armature to rotate, I simply overcome ordinary mechanical friction. But the two ends of the armature coil can be united in a moment, and when this is done I immediately experience a greatly increased resistance to rotation. Something over and above the ordinary friction of the machine is now to be overcome, and by the expenditure of an additional amount of muscular force I am able to overcome it. The excess of labour thus thrown upon my arm has its exact equivalent in the electric currents generated, and the heat produced by their subsidence in the coil of the armature. A portion of this heat may be rendered visible by connecting the two ends of the coil with a thin platinum wire. When the handle of the machine is rapidly turned the wire glows, first with a red heat, then with a white heat, and finally with the heat of fusion. The moment the wire melts, the circuit round the armature is broken, an instant relief from the labour thrown upon the arm being the consequence. Clearly realise the equivalent of the heat here developed. During the period of turning the machine a certain amount of combustible substance was oxidised or burnt in the muscles of my arm. Had it done no external work, the matter consumed would have produced a definite amount of heat. Now, the muscular heat actually developed during the rotation of the machine fell short of this definite amount, the missing heat being reproduced to the last fraction in the glowing platinum wire and the other parts of the machine. Here, then, the electric current intervenes between my muscles and the generated heat, exactly as it did a moment ago between the voltaic battery and its generated heat. The electric current is to all intents and purposes a vehicle which transports the heat both of muscle and battery to any distance from the hearth where the fuel is consumed. Not only is the current a messenger, but it is also an intensifier of magical power. The temperature of my arm is, in round numbers, 100° Fahr., and it is by the intensification of this heat that one of the most refractory of metals, which requires a heat of 3,600° Fahr. to fuse it, has been reduced to the molten condition.
Zinc, as I have said, is a fuel far too expensive to permit of the electric light produced by its combustion being used for the common purposes of life, and you will readily perceive that the human muscles, or even the muscles of a horse, would be more expensive still. Here, however, we can employ the force of burning coal to turn our machine, and it is this employment of our cheapest fuel, rendered possible by Faraday's discovery, which opens out to us the prospect of being able to apply the electric light to public use.
In 1866 a great step in the intensification of induced currents, and the consequent augmentation of the magneto-electric light, was taken by Mr. Henry Wilde. It fell to my lot to report upon them to the Royal Society, but before doing so I took the trouble of going to Manchester to witness Mr. Wilde's experiments. He operated in this way: starting from a small machine like that worked in your presence a moment ago, he employed its current to excite an electro-magnet of a peculiar shape, between whose poles rotated a Siemens armature; [Footnote: Page and Moigno had previously shown that the magneto-electric current could produce powerful electro-magnets.] from this armature currents were obtained vastly stronger than those generated by the small magneto-electric machine. These currents might have been immediately employed to produce the electric light; but instead of this they were conducted round a second electro-magnet of vast size, between whose poles rotated a Siemens armature of corresponding dimensions. Three armatures therefore were involved in this series of operations: first, the armature of the small magneto-electric machine; secondly, the armature of the first electro-magnet, which was of considerable size; and, thirdly, the armature of the second electro-magnet, which was of vast dimensions. With the currents drawn from this third armature, Mr. Wilde obtained effects, both as regards heat and light, enormously transcending those previously known. [Footnote: Mr. Wilde's paper is published in the 'Philosophical Transactions 'for 1867, p. 89. My opinion regarding Wilde's machine was briefly expressed in a report to the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House on May 17, 1866: 'It gives me pleasure to state that the machine is exceedingly effective, and that it far transcends in power all other apparatus of the kind.']
But the discovery which, above all others, brought the practical question to the front is now to be considered. On the 4th of February, 1867, a paper was received by the Royal Society from Dr. William Siemens bearing the title, 'On the Conversion of Dynamic into Electrical Force without the use of Permanent Magnetism.' [Footnote: A paper on the same subject, by Dr. Werner Siemens, was read on January 17, 1867, before the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. In a letter to 'Engineering,' No. 622, p. 45, Mr. Robert Sabine states that Professor Wheatstone's machines were constructed by Mr. Stroh in the months of July and August, 1866. I do not doubt Mr. Sabine's statement; still it would be dangerous in the highest degree to depart from the canon, in asserting which Faraday was specially strenuous, that the date of a discovery is the date of its publication. Towards the end of December, 1866, Mr. Alfred Varley' also lodged a provisional specification (which, I believe, is a sealed document) embodying the principles of the dynamo-electric machine, but some years elapsed before he made anything public. His brother, Mr. Cromwell varlet', when writing on this subject in 1867, does not mention him (Proc. Roy. Soc., March 14, 1867). It probably marks a national trait, that sealed communications, though allowed in France, have never been recognised by the scientific societies of England.] On the 14th of February a paper from Sir Charles Wheatstone was received, bearing the title, 'On the Augmentation of the Power of a Magnet by the reaction thereon of Currents induced by the Magnet itself.' Both papers, which dealt with the same discovery, and which were illustrated by experiments, were read upon the same night, viz. the 14th of February. It would be difficult to find in the whole field of science a more beautiful example of the interaction of natural forces than that set forth in these two papers. You can hardly find a bit of iron — you can hardly pick up an old horse-shoe, for example — that does not possess a trace of permanent magnetism; and from such a small beginning Siemens and Wheatstone have taught us to rise by a series of interactions between magnet and armature to a magnetic intensity previously unapproached. Conceive the Siemens armature placed between the poles of a suitable electro-magnet. Suppose this latter to possess at starting the faintest, trace of magnetism; when the armature rotates, currents of infinitesimal strength are generated in its coil. Let the ends of that coil be connected with the wire surrounding the electro-magnet. The infinitesimal current generated in the armature will then circulate round the magnet, augmenting its intensity by an infinitesimal amount. The strengthened magnet instantly reacts upon the coil which feeds it, producing a current of greater strength. This current again passes round the magnet, which immediately brings its enhanced power to bear upon the coil. By this play of mutual give and take between magnet and armature, the strength of the former is raised in a very brief interval from almost nothing to complete magnetic saturation. Such a magnet and armature are able to produce currents of extraordinary power, and if an electric lamp be introduced into the common circuit of magnet and armature, we can readily obtain a most powerful light. [Footnote: In 1867 Mr. Ladd introduced the modification of dividing the armature into two separate coils, one of which fed the electro-magnets, while the other yielded the induced currents.] By this discovery, then, we are enabled to avoid the trouble and expense involved in the employment of permanent magnets; we are also enabled to drop the exciting magneto-electric machine, and the duplication of the electro-magnets. By it, in short, the electric generator is so far simplified, and reduced in cost, as to enable electricity to enter the lists as the rival of our present means of illumination.
Soon after the announcement of their discovery by Siemens and Wheatstone, Mr. Holmes, at the instance of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, endeavoured to turn this discovery to account for lighthouse purposes. Already, in the spring of 1869, he had constructed a machine which, though hampered with defects, exhibited extraordinary power. The light was developed in the focus of a dioptric apparatus placed on the Trinity Wharf at Blackwall, and witnessed by the Elder Brethren, Mr. Douglass, and myself, from an observatory at Charlton, on the opposite side of the Thames. Falling upon the suspended haze, the light illuminated the atmosphere for miles all round. Anything so sunlike in splendour had not, I imagine, been previously witnessed. The apparatus of Holmes, however, was rapidly distanced by the safer and more powerful machines of Siemens and Gramme.
As regards lighthouse illumination, the next step forward was taken by the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House in 1876-77. Having previously decided on the establishment of the electric light at the Lizard in Cornwall, they instituted, at the time referred to, an elaborate series of comparative experiments wherein the machines of Holmes, of the Alliance Company, of Siemens, and of Gramme, were pitted against each other. The Siemens and the Gramme machines delivered direct currents, while those of Holmes and the Alliance Company delivered alternating currents. The light of the latter was of the same intensity in all azimuths; that of the former was different in different azimuths, the discharge being so regulated as to yield a gush of light of special intensity in one direction. The following table gives in standard candles the performance of the respective machines :— [Footnote: Observations from the sea on the night of November 21, 1876, made the Gramme and small Siemens practically equal to the Alliance. But the photometric observations, in which the external resistance was abolished, and previous to which the light-keepers had become more skilled in the management of the direct current, showed the differences recorded in the table. A close inspection of these powerful lights at the South Foreland caused my face to peel, as if it had been irritated by an Alpine sun.]
| Name of Machines. | Maximum. | Minimum. |
| Holmes | 1,523 | 1,523 |
| Alliance | 1,953 | 1,953 |
| Gramme (No. 1). | 6,663 | 4,016 |
| Gramme (No. 2). | 6,663 | 4,016 |
| Siemens (Large) | 14,818 | 8,932 |
| Siemens (Small, No. 1) | 5,539 | 3,339 |
| Siemens (Small, No. 2) | 6,864 | 4,138 |
| Two Holmes's coupled | 2,811 | 2,811 |
| Two Gramme's (Nos. 1 and 2) | 11,396 | 6,869 |
| Two Siemens' (Nos. 1 and 2) | 14,134 | 8,520 |
These determinations were made with extreme care and accuracy by Mr. Douglass, the engineer-in-chief, and Mr. Ayres, the assistant engineer of the Trinity House. It is practically impossible to compare photo-metrically and directly the flame of the candle with these sun-like lights. A light of intermediate intensity — that of the six-wick Trinity oil lamp — was therefore in the first instance compared with the electric light. The candle power of the oil lamp being afterwards determined, the intensity of the electric light became known. The numbers given in the table prove the superiority of the Alliance machine over that of Holmes. They prove the great superiority both of the Gramme machine and of the small Siemens machine over the Alliance. The large Siemens machine is shown to yield a light far exceeding all the others, while the coupling of two Grammes, or of two Siemens together, here effected for the first time, was followed by a very great augmentation of the light, rising in the one case from 6663 candles to 11,396, and in the other case from 6864 candles to 14,134. Where the arc is single and the external resistance small, great advantages attach to the Siemens light. After this contest, which was conducted throughout in the most amicable manner, Siemens machines of type No. 2 were chosen for the Lizard. [Footnote: As the result of a recent trial by Mr. Schwendler, they have been also chosen for India.]