All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

224 All About Inventions an excellent sheet - anchor for the gas-producing interests. If electric lighting were to be rendered a menace to the supremacy of its rival in this field, a revolutionary development was essential. The light would need to be free from all complexity, of less candle-power, require no attention, dispense with the daily renewal of the carbons, and impose no more tax upon the intelligence of the user than the gas. Moreover, in order to be able to compete more effectively with the coal rival, electricity would have to be furnished upon a similar basis and at a com- parative price, because in such matters the pocket governs the decision of the prospective customer. This demand precipitated what became known as the effort to “ subdivide the light,” and it was a pro- blem which attracted many industrious scientists and investigators. One and all attacked the question contemporaneously and, for the most part, unknown to each other. First and foremost in this widely distributed band was Mr.—afterwards Sir—Joseph Wilson Swan, F.R.S., a native of Sunderland, and whose name has been identified with many and various notable inventions, particularly in connection with photography. During the year 1845 Swan, then a boy of seven- teen, saw the experiment carried out by Staite, in which a thin platino-iridium wire was raised to a condition of incandescence by the electric current. That experiment set the youngster thinking. If wire could be made white hot in that manner and emit a bright light from its incandescence, why should it not be possible to harness the piece of wire in a glass bulb, and thus adapt the discovery to a commercial