I6th February.
As recently as last August, Mr. E. E. Porter, writing to us re the Ellison accumulator for automobiles, s"id: " Now the cheapest place that I am aware of where electricity is supplied in the United Kingdom is Glasgow, where the rate is 34d. per Board of Trade unit of 1,000 watts,"
We refer to this statement only to show how fast the world is travelling nowadays in the direction of cheap power. The cheapest that was known toa professional electrician so recently as we have stated was 34d. per unit. It is now proposed to start a company in the N, W. of England which, "it is quite expected," will provide current at the rate of 1}d. per unit. The company ik to be known as the Cheshire and North Staffordshire Elec-trio and Power Gis Syndicate. Its directors are gentlemen of power and influence in the manufacturing and commercial communities in Derbyshire, the Wirral Peninsula, Macclesfield, S: affurdshire, and Cheshire. A. minimum capital of £1,500,000 is to be employed, with power to issue debentures for £500,000, The cooperative principle is proposed as the basis of the company's working, 80 that consumers in each of the districts supplied may be interested financially in the company's success, Prices such as we have quoted presuppose some cheaper method of providing current than has hitherto come generally into use, This is to be found in the use of some kind of "Producer" gas, probably that of D:. Mond, which for years has been em-poyed in the great chemical works, runner, Mond's, 60 widely known in the north of England and elsewhere. Of this source of power, " Huzell' Annual" says that "a mixture of air and steam is forced through the burning slack used for the manufacture of gas with the result that the whole of the combustible matter in the slack, including the coke, is turned into' gas... It is estimated that the gas can be sup-lied at 2d per 1,000 cubic feet, and if go it will no doubt displace steam to a considerable extent." The gas is non-illuminating, The new company intends to provide this or a similar gas to its consumers as well as electricity, but the price is to be "something like 8d. per 1,000 feet." Even at this rate it is thought that a great impetus will be given to manufactures of all kinds within the area covered by the proposed undertaking. The syndicate, in fact, expect as much from the gas as from the electric side of the business, Some of the towns and cities of the district have already made arrangements for launching out into private and municipal _underial as soon as the promised power is ready.
Nothing is plainer from the foregoing than the deduction that to get material of whatever sort cheaper and better than our forefathers did we have to produce on a larger scale, There will be three generating stations for the production of the electricity used by the new syndi. cate and at each of these it is said there will be in work engines of two thousand-horse power, The area to be covered is some 1,700 square miles with a population of about a million and a-half souls These occupy four county boroughs,44 urban districts, and 28 rural districts, the populations varying between 1,500 and 100,000.
This is by no means the first scheme of the kind. Already at least three others have passed through Ps linment for the northern and northwestern districts of England alone. Recent exhortations to the old country to wake up have not been uttered in vain, In this as in a variety of other ways there is a tendency, becoming more and more marked, tol. throw overboard the methods of ancient days, to forget those things that are behind and press onward to those that are before, a tendency which as we hope soon to see has more than promise in it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.