and are fully equal in power to the large steam locomotives used on steam roads. There was opened, in London, in 1900, the Central Underground, equipped with twenty-six electric locomotives for drawing its trains. The electric and power equipment was manufactured in America to suit the needs of the road. obtained from residues in sufficient amount to pay well for the process. At Niagara also are works for the production of the metal aluminum from its ores. This metal, which competes in price with brass, bulk for bulk, was only obtainable before its electric reduction at $25 to $30 per pound. The metal The alternating current transformer not sodium is also extracted from soda. A only greatly extended the radius of supply large plant at Niagara also uses the elecfrom a single station, but also enabled tric current for the manufacture of the station to be conveniently located chlorine for bleach, and caustic soda, both where water and coal could be had without from common salt. Chlorine of potasdifficulty. It also permitted the distant sium is also made at Niagara by elecwater-powers to become sources of electric trolysis. The field of electro-chemisty energy for lighting, power, or for other is, indeed, full of great future posservice. For example, a water-power sibilities. Large furnaces heated by eleclocated at a distance of 50 to 100 miles tricity, a single one of which will conor more from a city, or from a large man- sume more than 1,000 horse-power, exist ufacturing centre where cost of fuel is at Niagara. In these furnaces is manufacthigh, may be utilized. ured from coke and sand, by the Acheson process, an abrasive material called carborundum, which is almost as hard as diamond, but quite low in cost. It is made into slabs and into wheels for grinding hard substances. The electric furnace furnishes also the means for producing artificial plumbago, or graphite, almost perfectly pure, the raw material being coke powder. is brought into contact with the carbide. A gigantic power-station has lately been established at Niagara. Ten water-wheels, located in an immense wheel-pit about 200 feet deep, each wheel of a capacity of 5,000 horse-power, drive large vertical shafts, at the upper end of which are located the large two-phase dynamos, each of 5,000 horse-power. The electric energy from these machines is in part raised in pressure by huge transformers for transA large amount of power from Niagara mission to distant points, such as the city is also consumed for the production in of Buffalo, and a large portion is delivered special electric arc furnaces of carbide to the numerous manufacturing plants of calcium from coke and lime. This is located at moderate distances from the the source of acetylene gas, the new ilpower-station. Besides the supply of luminant, which is generated when water energy for lighting, and for motors, including railways, other recent uses of electricity to which we have not yet alluded are splendidly exemplified at Niagara. The arts of electro-plating of metals, such as electro-gilding, silverplating, nickel-plating, and copper deposition as in electrotyping, are now practised on a very large scale. Moreover, since the introduction of dynamo current, electrolysis has come to be employed in huge plants, not only for separating metals from each other, as in refining them, but in addition for separating them from their ores, for the manufacture of chemical compounds before unknown, and for the cheap production of numerous substances of use in the various arts on a large scale. Vast quantities of copper are refined, and silver and gold often While it is not likely that electricity will soon be used for general heating, special instances, such as the warming of electric cars in winter by electric heaters, the operation of cooking appliances by electric current, the heating of sad-irons and the like, give evidence of the possibilities should there ever be found means for the generation of electric energy from fuel with such high efficiency as 80 per cent. or more. Present methods give, under most favorable conditions, barely 10 per cent., 90 per cent. of the energy value of the fuel being unavoidably wasted. The electric current is used for welding together the joints of steel car-rails, for welding teeth in saws, for making many parts of bicycles, and in tool making. An instance of its peculiar adaptability to ELECTRICITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY-ELECTROCUTION unusual conditions is the welding of the iron bands embedded within the body of a rubber vehicle tire for holding the tire in place. For this purpose the electric weld has been found almost essential. Another branch of electric development concerns the storage of electricity. The storage battery is based upon principles discovered by Gaston Planté, and applied, since 1881, by Brush, by Faure, and others. Some of the larger lighting stations employ as reservoirs of electric energy large batteries charged by surplus dynamo current. This is afterwards drawn upon when the consumer's load is heavy, as during the evening. The storage battery is, however, a heavy, cumbrous apparatus, of limited life, easily destroyed unless guarded with skill. If a form not possessing these faults be ever found, the field of possible application is almost limitless. The wonderful X-rays, and the rich scientific harvest which has followed the discovery by Röntgen of invisible radiation from a vacuum tube, was preceded by much investigation of the effects of electric discharges in vacuum tubes, and Hittorf, followed by Crookes, has given special study to these effects in very high or nearly perfect vacua. It was as late as 1896 that Röntgen announced his discovery. Since that time several other sources of invisible radiation have been discovered, more or less similar in effect to the radiations from a vacuum tube, but emitted, singular as the fact is, from rare substances extracted from certain minerals. Leaving out of consideration the great value of the X-ray to physicians and surgeons, its effect in stimulating scientific inquiry has almost been incalculable. It is as unlikely that the mystery of the material universe will ever be completely solved as it is that we can gain an adequate conception of infinite space or time. But we can at least extend the range of our mental vision of the processes of nature as we do our real vision into space depths by the telescope and spectro scope. The nineteenth century closed with many important problems in electrical science unsolved. What great or farreaching discoveries are yet in store, who can tell? What valuable practical de velopments are to come, who can predict? The electrical progress has been great— very great-but after all only a part of that grander advance in so many other fields. Man still spends his best effort, and has always done so, in the construction and equipment of his engines of destruction, and now exhausts the mines of the world of valuable metals, for ships of war, whose ultimate goal is the bottom of the sea. Perhaps all this is necessary now, and, if so, well. But if a fraction of the vast expenditure entailed were turned to the encouragement of advance in the arts and employments of peace, can it be doubted that, at the close of the twentieth century, the nineteenth century might come to be regarded, in spite of its achievements, as a rather wasteful, semibarbarous transition period? Electrocution. The popular name of a method of inflicting capital punishment by electricity as ordered by the legislature of New York in 1888 and amended in 1892. New York is the only State in the country where this method of capital punishment has been sanctioned. The first person executed by the new method was William Kemmler, a convicted murderer, on whom the death sentence was thus carried out in Auburn Prison, Aug. 6, 1890. The apparatus used in the execution, as officially described, consisted of a stationary engine, alternating-current dynamo and exciter, a voltmeter with extra resistance coil, calibrated from a range of from 30 to 2,000 volts, an ammeter for alternating currents from 0.10 to 3 amperes, a Wheatstone-bridge rheostat, bell signals, and a number of switches. The death-chair had an adjustable headrest, binding-straps, and two adjustable electrodes, one of which was placed on the top of the head and the other at the lower part of the spine. The execution room contained only the death-chair, the electrodes, and the wires attached to them, the remainder of the equipment being in the adjoining room. At the end of seventeen seconds after the contact was made the victim was pronounced dead. current strength was believed to have been at least 1,500 volts, although there was no official record kept of many details, but in later executions the electromotive pressure varied from 458 to 716 volts, while The the ammeter has shown a variation in the first message, furnished him by a current of from 2 to 7 amperes. After young lady-"What hath God wrought!" the first execution there was rather a widespread protest against this method of carrying out capital punishment, and the constitutionality of the legislative act was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, and was there affirmed. Electro-magnetic Telegraph. This invention, conceived more than a century ago, was first brought to perfection as an intelligent medium of communication be wwww MORSE APPARATUS, CIRCUIT AND BATTERY. tween points distant from each other by PROF. SAMUEL F. B. MORSE (q. v.), of New York, and was first presented to public notice in 1838. In the autumn of 1837 he filed a caveat at the Patent Office; and he gave a private exhibition of its marvellous power in the New York University in January, 1838, when intelligence was instantly transmitted by an alphabet composed of dots and lines, invented by Morse, through a circuit of 10 miles of wire, and plainly recorded. Morse applied to Congress for pecuniary aid to enable him to construct an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. For four years he waited, for the action of the government was tardy, in consequence of doubt and positive opposition. At the beginning of March, 1842, Congress MORSE KEY. appropriated $30,000 for his use; and in May, 1844, he transmitted from Washingtor to Baltimore, a distance of 40 miles, The first public message was the announcement of the nomination by the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore (May, 1844) of James K. Polk for President of the United States. Professor Morse also originated submarine telegraphy. He publicly suggested its feasibility in a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury in 1843.. As early as 1842 he laid a submarine cable, or insulated wire, in the harbor of New York, for which achievement the American Institute awarded him a small gold medal. In 1858 he participated in the labors and honors of laying a cable under the sea between Europe and America. (See ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH). Monarchs gave him medals and orders. Yale College conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., and in 1858, at the instance of the Emperor of the French, several European governments combined in the act of giving Professor Morse the sum of $80,000 in gold as a token of their appreciation. Vast improvements have been made since in the transmission of messages. For more than a quarter of a century the messages were each sent over a single wire, only one way at a time. Early in 1871, through the inventions of Edison and others, messages were sent both ways over the same wire at the same instant of time. Very soon four messages were sent the same way. Now multiplex transmission is a matter of everyday business. Eliot, ANDREW, clergyman; born in Boston, Mass., Dec. 28, 1718; graduated at Harvard College in 1737; ordained associate pastor of the New North Church in Boston, where he was sole pastor after 1750. When the British occupied Eliot, CHARLES WILLIAM, educator; born in Boston, Mass., March 20, 1834; graduated at Harvard University in 1853; was a tutor in mathematics at Harvard and a student in chemistry with Prof. Josiah P. Cooke, 1854-58; served as Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Chemistry, Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, in 1858-63; when he went abroad, studied chemistry and investigated European educational methods. In 186569 he was Professor of Analytical Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1869 became president of Harvard University. He is a Fellow of Boston he did much to ameliorate Eliot, JARED, educator and clergyman; the condition of the people. He also born in Guilford, Conn., Nov. 7, 1685; saved valuable manuscripts, among them son of Joseph and grandson of John the second volume of the History of Eliot; graduated at Yale College in 1706, Massachusetts Bay, when the house of and from 1709 until his death he was Governor Hutchinson was invested by a mmister of the first church at Killingmob. He died in Boston, Mass., Sept. worth, Conn. He was a most practical 13, 1778. and useful man, and did much for the advancement of agriculture and manufactures in New England. He strongly urged in essays the introduction into the colonies of a better breed of sheep. In 1747 he wrote: "A better breed of sheep is what we want. The English breed of Cotswold sheep cannot be obtained, or at least not without great difficulty; for wool and live sheep are contraband goods, which all strangers are prohibited from carrying out on pain of having the right hand cut off." In 1761 the London Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce honored him with its medal, for producing malleable iron from American black sand, and he was made a member of the Royal Society of London. He was the first to introduce the white mulberry into Connecticut, and with it silk-worms, and published a treatise on silk-culture. Mr. Eliot was also an able physician, and was particularly successful in the treatment of insanity and chronic complaints. He died in Killingworth, Conn., April 22, 1763. CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT. Eliot, JOHN, the Apostle to the Indians; born either in Nasing, Essex, or Widford, Hertfordshire, England, presumably in 1604, as he was baptized in Widford, Aug. 5, 1604. Educated at Cambridge, he removed to Boston in 1631, and the next year was appointed minister at Roxbury. Seized with a passionate longing for the conversion of the Indians and for improving their condition, he commenced his labors among the twenty tribes within the English domain in Massachusetts in the American Academy of Arts and October, 1646. He acquired their lanSciences, the American Philosophical So- guage through an Indian servant in his ciety, etc. He has given many note- family, made a grammar of it, and transworthy addresses on educational and lated the Bible into the Indian tongue. scientific subjects. He is the author of It is claimed that Eliot was the first Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis Protestant minister who preached to the (with Prof. Francis H. Storer); Manual of Inorganic Chemistry (with the same); Five American Contributions to Civilization, and other Essays; Educational Reform, etc. An IndIndians in their native tongue. ian town called Natick was erected on the Charles River for the "praying Indians" in 1657, and the first Indian church was established there in 1660. During King JOHN ELIOT. adopt the customs of civilized life, and lived to see twenty-four of them become preachers of the Gospel to their own tribes. His influence among the Indians was unbounded, and his generosity in helping the sick and afflicted among them was unsparing. Cotton Mather affirmed, "We had a tradition that the country could never perish as long as Eliot was alive." He published many small works on religious subjects, several of which were in the Indian language. His greatest work was the translation of the Bible into the Indian language (1661-66), and was the first Bible ever printed in America. It is much sought after by collectors. The language in which it was written has perished. He died in Roxbury, Mass., May 20, 1690. the The Brief Narrative.-This was last of Eliot's publications relating to the progress of Christianity among the American Indians. Its full title was: "A Brief Narrative of the Progress of Philip's War Eliot's efforts in behalf of the praying Indians saved them from de- the Gospel amongst the Indians in New Engstruction by the white people. He trav- land, in the Year 1670, given in by the Reverelled extensively, visited many tribes, end MR. JOHN ELLIOT, Minister of the Gospel there, in a LETTER by him directed to the several planted Right Worshipfull the CoMMISSIONERS under preached before King Philip, who treated his Majesties Great-Seal for Propagation of him with disdain. He persuaded many to the Gospel amongst the poor blind Natives in churches, and once |