Part 7

Gas Filled Tungsten Lamp, 1923 90

Standard Tungsten Lamps, 1923 92

Section devoted to the historical development of the electric light and dynamo.]

FOREWORD

In the year 1884 a Section of Transportation was organized in the United States National Museum for the purpose of preparing and assembling educational exhibits of a few objects of railroad machinery which had been obtained both from the Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876 and still earlier as incidentals to ethnological collections, and to secure other collections relating to the railway industry.

From this beginning the section was expanded to include the whole field of engineering and is designated at present as the Divisions of Mineral and Mechanical Technology. The growth and enlargement of the collections has been particularly marked in the fields of mining and mineral industries; mechanical engineering, especially pertaining to the steam engine, internal combustion engine and locomotive; naval architecture, and electrical engineering, particularly the development of the telegraph, telephone and the electric light.

In the acquisition of objects visualizing the history of electric light the Museum has been rather fortunate, particularly as regards the developments in the United States. Thus mention may be made of the original Patent Office models of the more important dynamos, arc lights and incandescent lights, together with original commercial apparatus after these models; a unit of the equipment used in the first commercially successful installation on land of an incandescent lighting system, presented by Joseph E. Hinds in whose engraving establishment in New York City the installation was made in 1881; and a large series of incandescent lights, mainly originals, visualizing chronologically the developments of the Edison light from its inception, presented at intervals since the year 1898 by the General Electric Company.

The object of all collections in the Divisions is to visualize broadly the steps by which advances have been made in each field of engineering; to show the layman the fundamental and general principles which are the basis for the developments; and to familiarize the engineer with branches of engineering other than his own. Normally when a subject is completely covered by a collection of objects, a paper is prepared and published describing the collection and the story it portrays. In the present instance, however, on account of the uncertainty of the time of completing the collection, if it is possible ever to bring this about, it was thought advisable to publish Mr. Schroeder’s paper which draws upon the Museum collection as completely as possible.

CARL W. MITMAN, ~Curator, Divisions of Mineral and Mechanical Technology, U. S. National Museum~.

CHRONOLOGY OF ELECTRIC LIGHT

1800--Allesandro Volta demonstrated his discovery that electricity can be generated by chemical means. The VOLT, the unit of electric pressure, is named in his honor for this discovery of the electric battery.

1802--Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated that electric current can heat carbon and strips of metal to incandescence and give light.

1809--Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated that current will give a brilliant flame between the ends of two carbon pencils which are first allowed to touch each other and then pulled apart. This light he called the “arc” on account of its arch shape.

1820--André Marie Ampère discovered that current flowing through a coiled wire gives it the properties of a magnet. The AMPERE, the unit of flow of electric current, is named in his honor for this discovery.

1825--Georg Simon Ohm discovered the relation between the voltage, ampereage and resistance in an electric circuit, which is called Ohm’s Law. The OHM, the unit of electric resistance, is named in his honor for this discovery.

1831--Michael Faraday discovered that electricity can be generated by moving a wire in the neighborhood of a magnet, the principle of the dynamo.

1840--Sir William Robert Grove demonstrated his experimental incandescent lamp in which platinum is made incandescent by current flowing through it.

1841--Frederick De Moleyns obtained the first patent on an incandescent lamp. The burner was powdered charcoal operating in an exhausted glass globe.

1845--Thomas Wright obtained the first patent on an arc light.

1845--J. W. Starr invented an incandescent lamp consisting of a carbon pencil operating in the vacuum above a column of mercury.

1856--Joseph Lacassagne and Henry Thiers invented the “differential” method of control of the arc which was universally used twenty years later when the arc lamp was commercially established.

1862--The first commercial installation of an electric light. An arc light was put in a lighthouse in England.

1866--Sir Charles Wheatstone invented the “self-excited” dynamo, now universally used.

1872--Lodyguine invented an incandescent lamp having a graphite burner operating in nitrogen gas.

1876--Paul Jablochkoff invented the “electric candle,” an arc light commercially used for lighting the boulevards in Paris.

1877–8--Arc light systems commercially established in the United States by William Wallace and Prof. Moses Farmer, Edward Weston, Charles F. Brush and Prof. Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston.

1879--Thomas Alva Edison invented an incandescent lamp consisting of a high resistance carbon filament operating in a high vacuum maintained by an all glass globe. These principles are used in all incandescent lamps made today. He also invented a completely new system of distributing electricity at constant pressure, now universally used.

1882--Lucien Goulard and John D. Gibbs invented a series alternating current system of distributing electric current. This has not been commercially used.