CHAPTER VI.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING.
The electric light differs widely from all modes of artificial light previously invented. It is the latest method that man has discovered for the production of light. In its practical form this invention is quite recent. In England the arc light was produced in lecture-room experiments as early as 1802. Prof. Michael Faraday, a learned Englishman and celebrated chemist, experimented many years in electricity and magnetism in the Royal Institution at London. He continued his studies and experiments in developing the science of electricity through his whole life, but he died, an old man, before a single electric arc was seen in the streets of London.
In ancient times an invention was frequently the result of one man's efforts, but at the present time it is often quite otherwise. Many men are now engaged in the development of electric lighting. Charles Francis Brush was a farmer's boy in Ohio. He pushed himself through the Cleveland High School and graduated at the University of Michigan. He established a laboratory in Cleveland and turned his attention to the invention of apparatus for electric lighting. He was one of three or four great American inventors who successfully put into operation the dynamo and furnished electricity for the electrical lamp. This dynamo is a machine which produces electric currents by mechanical power. Brush's dynamo at the outset was so perfect and complete that for many years it has continued in regular use with but very little change.
Elihu Thomson graduated at the Central High School in Philadelphia and taught chemistry in that school. He studied with great care the subject of electricity, giving special attention to lighting. He organized the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, and has patented nearly two hundred inventions relating to electric lighting and other applications of electricity. He was also the inventor of the system of electric welding.
Among the great American inventors in electrical science is Thomas Alva Edison. He was an Ohio boy whose Scotch mother taught him to read. When he was twelve years old he was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. Here he acquired the habit of reading. He studied chemistry and conducted chemical experiments on the train. He learned to set type, and edited and printed a newspaper in the baggage car. He was constantly noticing the telegraph stations along the road, and he soon began to study electricity.
EDISON'S HEROIC ACT.