Since January 1, last, a new and reduced telephone tariff has been in force in Switzerland, and from reports to hand it appears to have worked satisfactorily all round. The former charge per annum for a telephone, with an annual limit of 800 conversations, was 80 francs (£3 4s.) The new tariff now in force is 40 francs (£1 12s.) per annum, plus an additional charge of 5 centimes for each local connection. The charges for interurban connections, with a time limit of three minutes, are as follows: Up to a distance of thirty-one miles, 3 d.; up to sixty-two miles, 5 d.; and above sixty-two miles, 7½ d. The telephone system throughout Switzerland is owned by the government, and the service, says the Electrician, is first class in every respect.
"There are three ways by which high temperature may be measured," says the Electrical Engineer, London. "The first uses an air thermometer of refractory material; the second depends on the change in the resistance of a platinum wire with change in temperature; and the third is based on the employment of a thermo couple of relatively infusible metals. According to Messrs. Holborn and W. Wein, in a paper published in Wiedemann's Annalen, the air thermometer method was valueless until recently, as suitable vessels could not be made. But now these are produced from refractory clays, and permit of measurements up to 1,500° C. (2,732° F.) The results are, however, vitiated by the effects of capillarity in the interior of the vessel. The resistance method has also its disadvantages. At high temperatures the resistance generally increases, but the temperature coefficient is irregular. The presence of free hydrogen also affects the resistance. The third or thermopile method is favored by the authors, who prefer a circuit of platinum and an alloy of platinum with ten per cent. of rhodium. Temperatures up to 1,600° C. (2,912° F.) can be measured by it, and it is remarkably constant under various conditions."
The London Electrician states that at a special meeting of the South African Philosophical Society held on August 2, a lecture on the above subject was delivered by Mr. A.P. Trotter, Government Electrician and Inspector. Toward the end of the lecture the lecturer rang up the Capetown Telephone Exchange, and asked if any of the longer post office telegraph lines were clear. The Port Elizabeth line was then connected up, and by means of a Wheatstone bridge on the lecture table, the resistance of the line was measured. The lecturer then observed that, with the extremely sensitive instrument used in the Government Electrical Laboratory, it was not necessary to use ordinary electric batteries for signaling to such a distance as to Port Elizabeth. He disconnected the battery, and, plunging a steel knife and silver fork into an orange, sent signals by means of the feeble current thus generated. He then asked the front row of the audience to join hands, and, putting them in the circuit, sent signals through their bodies to Port Elizabeth and back by means of the orange cell. As a concluding experiment an omelette was made "under some disadvantages," and the cost of the electrical energy was stated to be only two cents.
"The question of injury to the eyes from the electric light is being prominently discussed by scientists, oculists, and laymen throughout the country," says the American Journal of Photography. "While opinion widely differs as to the ultimate injury likely to result from the rapidly increasing use of electricity, the consensus of opinion is that light from uncovered or uncolored globes is working damage to eyesight of humanity. In a discussion of the subject a London electric light journal in defending its trade feels called upon to make some important admissions. It says: 'It is not customary to look at the sun, and not even the most enthusiastic electrician would suggest that naked arcs and incandescent filaments were objects to be gazed at without limit. But naked arc lights are not usually placed so as to come within the line of sight, and when they do so accidentally, whatever may result, the injury to the eye is quite perceptible. The filament of a glow lamp, on the other hand, is most likely to meet the eye, but a frosted bulb is an extremely simple and common way of entirely getting over that difficulty. The whole trouble can be easily remedied by the use of properly frosted or colored glass globes. In any case, however, the actual permanent injury to the eye by the glowing filament is no greater than that due to an ordinary gas flame.'"
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.
Rubber trees are reported found growing in Manatee County, Fla.
Japan proposes to build up her commercial navy by giving subsidies to ship builders on every ton above 1,000, and to ship owners for ships of 1,000 tons that can make ten knots an hour, the subsidy being increased for every 500 tons additional burden or every knot additional speed.
Rosa Bonheur began to work seriously at painting when she was about fifteen, and donned male attire so that she could go about without attracting attention. She wore it so naturally that no one ever suspected her of being a girl, and found it so comfortable that she has worn it ever since to work in. She and Mme. Dieulafoy, the wife of the explorer, are the only two women in France who are legally authorized to appear in public in men's clothes.
A device for permitting the unsophisticated guest to blow out the gas in his bedroom at the city hotel without inconvenience to himself or anybody else has been devised. The gas burner is made of a metal having great expansive and contractive properties. The gas is turned on in the regular way and a small screw is turned which admits a small flow of gas through the burner. The gas is lighted, and the heat expands the metal and automatically opens a valve permitting a full flow of gas. The gas can be turned off in the ordinary way, but if the gas is blown out the metal contracts, closing the valve, and all the gas that escapes is the very small quantity admitted by the screw valve.