"fo the Editor of the "Nonta-Cuusa Datty News."
Sik—Being interested in the controversy regarding the origin of the incandescent lamp and the claim made recently by your cor respondents, that Swan had priority to Edison, with all due respect to the tremendous influence and Inventive genious of Swan, the scientific and "commercial history of the period go to prove of Edison's precedence, 'A short summary may justify this. statement. In" 1810" Sic Humphrey Davey introduced the first are of any" considerable magnitude, and as far back as 1841 Prederick de Moleyns an Englis! man had dreams and experimented with a metal rod in a bulb exhaueted of air—without results, -however; moreover Stare a promising young American, produced ment, which might have had far hing results if death had not Visited him at the early age of 2 Little more was tried until the vent of the Gramme dynamo in, 1870. "In previous practice "are lamps and other attempts at_clee-trio lighting depended on primary cells and batteries for their power, but with the simplifeation of th new current source a new phar for experiment was. opened Even under these conditions the in: candescent Iamp was only' a. piece of laboratory apparatus until 1878 when Edison in America and Swan in England almost simultaneously, Srodiced 'a lamp using a plat et] light. The attempt in both cases' was a failure owing chiefly to the' oxidation of the lament, for up to this time no means for obtaining 2 thoroughly good vacuum wi known. Strange as it may seem carbon principle, strips of paper, lionizing and mounting in a glass bulb' afterwards evacuated. Sue-cess was within reach and It to. Buison's credit, that after 1,600 teats made from almost. everything containing a carbon residue bagging, cardboard, -cocoa-nut, it, coke, cotton, fish-lines, paper trated with tar, thread, tissue per and the red hairs from the ard of his intimate friend Mackenzie—he finally succeeded over a 40 hours life test with a filament made from bamboo. The Jump had a positive commercial value, and one need only look up the journal and newspaper records at that time to sce the decided panic among the shareholders of the various gas companies. Swan again, still persistently alive on the carbon filament problem, produced in the same year, and if anything earlier than Edison's bamboo sw ess, 0 cellulose filament before the Neweastle Chemical Society with a fe test, The exhibit This was Swan's ast attempt until after the success of the American patent.
Te might be interesting to relate carbon idea and litigation followed.
izing the independent qualities of the other, both parties finally came together and formed nce famous Ediswan group.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.