The Electrical Exposition - Extraordinary Success That Has Attended It

An Attendance of Quarter of a Million Persons — Some of the Lessons of the Show.

The Electrical Exposition, when it closes to-night, will have been visited by no fewer than a quarter of a million of people, and the managers are simply bewildered at their success. When the exposition was first broached there was great difficulty in arousing interest, and those who were in favor of the scheme were told almost every theatrical manager in the city was on his uppers, and that no show, especially of a technical character, could be run to make money. An Evening Post reporter is informed that when the members of the National Electric Light Association organized their little company to take care of the show, they stipulated that the association should receive $2,000 for the use of its name, and a certain percentage of any profits that might accrue, so that the art as a whole might benefit directly. Even so late, however, as the beginning of the show, when the association held its convention, it was resolved by the officers of the association that in view of the obvious good that would result to the business of electric light and power, and the great likelihood of a failure, the exposition company should not be pressed for the full amount of $2,000. This inside fact is an indication of the fear and apprehension with which the enterprise was approached; but the first three days swept away every apprehension, and it is pleasant to record the fact that the exposition has been a financial success, not making a large amount of money, but enough to recoup the enterprising and public-spirited men who set it on foot, and to return a substantial sum to the treasurer of the association, who will use it at once for work in the collection of data and the diffusion of information needed by its members.

From first to last, the exhibition has received the support of all the electrical bodies, technical and industrial, and the attendance of electricians and engineers has been remarkably large. It is, however, stated that the American Street Railway Association, although it endorsed the enterprise before any other body had done so, has not lent any active cooperation, and the reason assigned for this is the fear that the expense of taking part in the show might deter many people from exhibiting at the annual convention of the Street Railway Association at St. Louis next fall. This short-sighted policy is now regarded by everybody as having carried its own condemnation with it, for while there has been the most active inquiry on the part of many visitors for street-railway apparatus and supplies, there has been practically nobody to gratify the demand except one or two exhibitors of trucks, street-car registers, and power-house generators. This is the more unfortunate as New York is pronounced by all electric railway engineers to be in a benighted condition. It is known as “the worst electric-railway city in the Union,” and as the only city of first-class importance that is without an overhead or underground electric system of proper magnitude. One of the officers of the exposition stated last week that there were in this country to-day several under-running trolley systems worthy of trial in New York city, and as not one of the companies interested had taken the trouble to exhibit, they and the public alike were seriously the losers. It is also singular that while such concerns as the General Electric and Westinghouse Companies have been equipping standard railroads with heavy locomotives, they made not the slightest effort by model or technical picture to show to the public what they had done or what they were aiming at. The exposition company has, however, taken this deficiency in a complacent way, as not due to any lack of striving on its part. And it may be added that if the show did not include the latest developments, it was remarkably rich in models and examples of the work done in this field by pioneers for fifty years past.

There have, indeed, been some curious gaps in the exhibition; but these are not without their lesson as to the condition of the art, and the possibilities that still exist in uncultivated domains of the science. For instance, it is regarded by electricians themselves as nothing less than phenomenal that after half a century of effort not a single thermopile was shown, although the fact that current can be obtained from applying heat to two dissimilar metals has been known since the historical experiments of Seebeck, nearly sixty years ago. Mr. Edison has worked in this field, and has pyromagnetic motors and generators. Mr. Tesla has not disdained it, and there have been numerous attempts to introduce thermopiles within the last few years from which current in commercial quantities is actually obtainable. But at the present time one can only obtain such apparatus in old hardware shops, or find it in the laboratories of the schools, and so the electricians go on obtaining their current after it has already been converted three times, by boiler, engine, and dynamo, with wasteful losses at each stage. Another singular hiatus at the show was the absence of searchlights. There is not a ship in the United States Navy, and hardly a steamship in the rivers and coast waters, without a searchlight, but owing to the conformation of the exhibition halls, it was decided that to put one on view there would have blinded the public and have destroyed the effect of the harmonious illumination due to ordinary arcs and incandescents. It is, however, thought a pity, by many of the electrical engineers, that one or two searchlights were not placed on the roof of the building, and that the original plan was not carried out of flying an electric balloon above the Palace, upon whose sign, far up in the clouds, the searchlight beam could have been directed. It is also said that it would have been possible to have attached a searchlight to the balloon, manipulated from the roof, and to have turned the revealing finger of light in every direction around the city. In view, however, of the fact that so much was otherwise attempted and successfully accomplished, omissions of this kind may be dealt with gently.