Light of Coming Days

A Scientist Thinks Phosphorescent Glow Will Supersede Electricity.

It seems hard to believe that in a very few years the incandescent lamp, which we now regard as in many respects an almost perfect light, will be regarded as a crude makeshift, which mankind availed itself of while science stood on the threshold of the discovery of the perfect luminant. Mr. Tesla has shown in his experiments an ideal form of electric lighting which would transcend in luxury and convenience our present system of electric lighting by incandescent lamps so far as the latter transcends the oil lamps and tallow dips used by our near ancestors. Every drawing room would become an electric field in a continual state of rapidly alternating stress, in which the occupants would live, experiencing no unpleasant effect whatever, while vacuous tubes or phosphorescent globes and tubes, without care or attention, would shed a soft, diffuse light of color and intensity arranged to suit the most luxurious fancy. Mr. Tesla’s watchword is that the phosphorescent glow is the light of the future; he hints at artificial aurora spreading from the summit of towers of hitherto undreamt height, and he has, at all events, got as far as producing in the air at atmospheric pressure a glowing plane bounded by two rings about a foot and thirty inches in diameter respectively. Whether all his visions will be realized remains to be proved; there is no doubt that they are guiding him aright.