Electrical Progress in Mine

The graduating class at Cornell this your included 43 electrical engineers.

The summer ballet at the Crystal Palace Sydenham, is to be provided with portable electric light by the Lanthanide and General Electric Co., London.

L. C. Gilbert and other capitalists of Exeter, Neb., have organized a company to run a line of boats from the depots to the race track. A trolley wire will be put up and the boats will be propelled by electricity.

A Dentist of Portland, Me., who has been making some experiments with a sparrow, advocates the use of aromatic spirts of ammonia in case of electric shock. There are few cases in which "grounding" will not give relief.

An improvement in cable telegraphy has been brought about by the invention of a carbon relay for submarine cables. It embodies a construction which for the first time permits of cables one thousand miles in length being operated by relay without necessitating local hand repetition.

The inspection of the Boston Board of Fire Underwriters has promulgated a new code of rules applying to electric risks. Hereafter the board will approve of only non-combustible supports for electric light wires, and there must be no opportunity of connection with any but properly insulated wires.

Mr. Nikola Tesla has discovered the little known mineral carborundum to be superior to any other except the diamond notwithstanding the strain of electric currents of high frequency, while its cost is comparatively trifling. He has used it for coating filaments of glow lamps with success, the endurance of the filament being thereby greatly increased.

The experiment of using electricity in place of steam on a standard gauge railroad is to be made at Ellwood, Pa., on the Beaver & Ellwood Railroad from Ellwood to Ellwood Junction, a distance of three miles from Pittsburg, where connection is made with the Pennsylvania road. The electric cars will be run over the same track used by the present steam cars.

Electric headlights are coming extensively into use on steam locomotives. It is reported that one Indianapolis house alone has already placed seventy of these lights on nine different roads, and has an order for an equipment of the engines of the "Royal blue" trains between New York and Washington, on the Philadelphia and Reading road, with electric headlights.

According to the statement of Prof. George Forbes of London, at the N. Y. meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, electric lighting is conducted in England in a more substantial and satisfactory manner than in America; but he was equally positive that in electric traction his country was lamentably behindhand, — owing to opposition to the overhead trolley system.

A Dentist recently complained to an electrician that certain of his instruments gave painful shocks to his patients at a mere touch to a sound tooth. On experiment, they found that this resulted only with instruments which were entirely metallic, or were without insulated handles; and further experiment showed that the shocks occurred when the dentist had walked on his carpeted floor immediately previous to applying the instruments. He had thus charged his body with electricity.

For three years past there has been in operation a telephone and electric light line combination. The circuit is sometimes used for both purposes simultaneously; the interference being so slight as to be barely noticeable. The circuit is supplied by dynamo and accumulators, producing a ten or twelve ampere current; and the vocal sounds are produced by the slight variation of this current caused by the transmitter.

The device of a Scotch manufacturer of electric-light poles, for means of ascending them, consists of a simple mechanism inside the shaft of the pillar by which at the turn of a key or handle, or the movement of a lever outside of the base, steps are shot out from the sides of the shaft sufficiently far to form a safe and strong ladder. These steps, when closed, are arranged to form part of the ornament of the shaft, or they can be made to form part of the plain or fluted surface.

A Frenchman named D'Arsonval has been experimenting with a torpedo fish, and concludes that the electricity with which this animal gives its shock is produced by the expansion and contraction of the muscles of the fish. He found that the fish was capable of giving a discharge of about two amperes at 100 volts’ pressure, the creature producing the current only when it rolled itself into a circle with the object of attack between its head and tail.

One danger from electricity is often overlooked, remarks a contemporary. When a fracture takes place in a wire and moisture becomes condensed upon the broken part of the wire, the electrical current produces the electrolysis of the water — that is to say, the water becomes decomposed into its constituent parts of oxygen and hydrogen, and that in the exact proportions necessary to produce a most violent explosion, very much more violent than that hat produced by coal gas and oxygen. The process continuing, and a spark ultimately being produced, the electric wire thus becomes its own gas producer and its own exploder as well.