The feeding mechanism is similar in principle to that used for ordinary carbon arcs. For street lighting, lamps of the magazine type are used. In these lamps a number of pairs of carbons is placed in the magazine, and as each carbon is used up, a new one automatically takes its place.
Mercury Vapour Lamps.—In these lamps the light is obtained from incandescent mercury vapour in a tube from which the air has been exhausted. The positive terminal is connected to a small iron electrode at one end of the tube. At the other end there is a small bulb, which contains a little pool of mercury, which is connected to the negative terminal. To start the lamp, the tube has to be tilted, so that a stream of mercury flows along it and makes contact with the iron electrode. The current which then flows vaporizes some of the mercury, and when the tube is tilted back to its original position, the discharge is maintained through the mercury vapour. A small series resistance is required in order to make the operation of the lamp stable. For small lamps a glass tube is used, but owing to the higher temperature reached in lamps consuming considerable power, it is necessary to use a quartz tube for large
lamps. Quartz is transparent to ultra-violet light, and to avoid harmful effects the tube is usually enclosed in a larger one of flint glass, which stops the ultra-violet rays.
Incandescent Lamps.—This is the name commonly given to the type of lamp in which the light is produced by an incandescent filament. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb, which is either exhausted to a high vacuum, or else contains an inert gas under pressure. The filament is heated to incandescence by the current passing through it.
1, Bulb as received from furnace. 2, Stem attached for exhausting. 3, Filament sealed in. 4, Lamp exhausted of air. 5, Finished lamp.
The first lamp of this type to come into general use was the carbon filament lamp. This has now been ousted by the much more efficient tungsten filament lamp. The earlier tungsten lamps were very fragile, owing to the brittleness of the filament. Later, a process was discovered whereby tungsten could be made malleable. The manufacture of drawn-wire filaments thus became possible, and the tungsten filament lamps which are now produced will stand a considerable amount of rough handling. This type of lamp is now in universal use for house lighting.
The limit of temperature at which the filament can be worked is set by the disintegration of the filament, which blackens the bulb and weakens the filament till it breaks. Recent research has revealed that this is due to a double chemical action between traces of water vapour and the incandescent metal. No method of entirely removing water vapour from the bulb has been found, but further research has brought to light the important fact that if the bulb is filled with an inert gas under pressure, the action is reduced to a minimum. This allows the filament to be worked at a much higher temperature, and since the light emitted increases with temperature much more rapidly than the power consumption does, the efficiency of the lamp can be greatly increased. These discoveries have led to the development of the modern gas-filled lamp. Owing to the high intrinsic brilliancy of the filament, high candle-power lamps of this type can be made which are not unduly bulky. For this reason, and because of their high efficiency and the absence of the need for any adjustment or attention, gas-filled lamps are coming into extensive use for street lighting and for factory and workshop lighting. Smaller lamps of this type are also being widely adopted for the illumination of shop windows.
Electric Motors, the name given to that division of dynamo-electric machinery in which electrical power is converted into mechanical power.
Electric motors are classified as direct-current motors or alternating-current motors, according as the electric power taken by the motor is in the form of a direct current or an alternating current. Further subdivisions of each class are made on the basis of differences in the operating characteristics of the various types.