โ Scribed by Charles F. Brush
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
THE present period of human civilization is often called the "Age of Electricity." Almost everything nowadays is done by, or with the aid of, electricity. The applications of electricity have profoundly modified and enriched human life. And all of this change (except the telegraph) is embraced in a period of fifty years; a period well within the memory of the older generation now living. To better realize the extent of the revolution that has occurred in everyday life, try to imagine ourselves today without any electric light; without the telephone or radio; without the trolley car, or electric elevator for our high buildings; without the many domestic electrical conveniences ; without industria,1 electro-metallurgy; without the vast distribution of cheap power we now enjoy, and without hydro-electric development of our waterfalls. A rather gloomy picture of life only fifty years ago.
I am often asked what first drew my attention to the electric arc-light--a mere laboratory curiosity not so very long ago--what inspired my belief in its industrial possibilities, and led me to work out the many necessary inventions which finally led to commercial success.
These questions are not readily answered. Keen but passive interest in the brilliant experiments of Sir Humphry Davy, and others of later date, followed by much thought, study, and experiment, led gradually to the fixed idea. It was an evolution covering a period of years.
From early boyhood I was an omnivorous reader of scientific literature. Such parts of astronomy, chemistry, and physics as I could understand were a never-ending source of delight. I also constructed much crude apparatus --telescopes, microscopes, and photographic appliances.
In my early high-school days I made, among other things, many pieces of electrical apparatus--static machines, Leyden
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## III of so many of Sweden's sons, the land which itself among the peoples of the world represents the youthful striving toward the adventure of the future, has laurel-crowned this bold traveller in the future-land of science. May this beautiful token of honor, The Franklin Medal, be another sea