Although gas-lighting has affected the activities of mankind considerably by intensifying commerce and industry and by advancing social progress, the illuminants which eventually took the lead have extended the possibilities and influences of artificial light.  In the brief span of a century civilized man is almost totally independent of natural light in those fields over which he has control.  What another century will bring can be predicted only from the accomplishments of the past.  These indicate possibilities beyond the powers of imagination.

IX

THE ELECTRIC ARCS

Early in 1800 Volta wrote a letter to the President of the Royal Society of London announcing the epochal discovery of a device now known as the voltaic pile.  This letter was published in the Transactions and it created great excitement among scientific men, who immediately began active investigations of certain electrical phenomena.  Volta showed that all metals could be arranged in a series so that each one would indicate a positive electric potential when in contact with any metal following it in the series.  He constructed a pile of metal disks consisting of zinc and copper alternated and separated by wet cloths.  At first he believed that mere contact was sufficient, but when, later, it was shown that chemical action took place, rapid progress was made in the construction of voltaic cells.  The next step after his pile was constructed was to place pairs of strips of copper and zinc in cups containing water or dilute acid.  Volta received many honors for his discovery, which contributed so much to the development of electrical science and art—­among them a call to Paris by Bonaparte to exhibit his electrical experiments, and to receive a medal struck in his honor.

While Volta was being showered with honors, various scientific men with great enthusiasm were entering new fields of research, among which was the heating value of electric current and particularly of electric sparks made by breaking a circuit.  Late in 1800 Sir Humphrey Davy was the first to use charcoal for the sparking points.  In a lecture before the Royal Society in the following year he described and demonstrated that the “spark” passing between two pieces of charcoal was larger and more brilliant than between brass spheres.  Apparently, he was producing a feeble arc, rather than a pure spark.  In the years which immediately followed many scientific men in England, France, and Germany were publishing the results of their studies of electrical phenomena bordering upon the arc.

By subscription among the members of the Royal Society, a voltaic battery of two thousand cells was obtained and in 1808 Davy exhibited the electric arc on a large scale.  It is difficult to judge from the reports of these early investigations who was the first to recognize the difference between the spark and the arc.  Certainly the descriptions indicate that the simple spark was not being experimented with, but the source of electric current available at that time was of such high resistance that only feeble arcs could have been produced.  In 1809 Davy demonstrated publicly an arc obtained by a current from a Volta pile of one thousand plates.  This he described as “a most brilliant flame, of from half an inch to one and a quarter inches in length.”