Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1891 — ELECTRICAL PROGRESS. [ARTICLE]

ELECTRICAL PROGRESS.

Thebe has recently been exhibited to Philadelphia an electrioal cooking stove, which baked and boiled almost as well as an ordinary coal stove. The English telephone monopoly will soon come to an end, as the English patents expire Dec. 9. The Bell patents to this country have still three years to run. The telephone wires in St Paul, Minn., are to be placed under ground. Work has already been begun, and is expected to be completed by the Ist of December. The two Japan cities of Tokio.and Yokohama are now connected by telephone, and there are several hundred subscribers in each city. In Tokio there are four electric lighting companies to the field. An electrio railroad is to be built between Baden and San Francisco. Daring the day the road is to be used to carry passengers, and through the night it wifi be used for the transportation of freight, fruit, meat and vegetables. Paper manufacturers have for a long time been much exercised with the problem of procuring at a reduced coet the caustic soda and chloride of lime, or bleaching.powder, which constitute items of considerable expense in paper' mills. Now these two chemicals have been obtained directly and economically from common salt bv the aid of electricity. A company of capitalists, headed by a San Francisco gentleman, has been organized for the purpose of laying a new cable across the Atlantic. The cable will be connected with the European coast at Valentla, on the west of Ireland, and will have its American terminus as near New York as possible. Its oapttal stock is placed at £BOO,OOO, which is to be taken in £IOO,OOO shares by sight gentlemen. An old lady living near Pittsburg, Pa., hit upon a novel and original Idea to protect herself and property from burglars, of whom she lived in mortal terror. Inside a large bronze deg to her front yard, she had placed a phonograph Into which a neighbor’s dog had barked. The phonograph was run by an sleetrte motor connected with the house, so that by the pressing of an electric push hubton In her room the old lady could set it in operation. She never had eeeasioa to make use of her invention, for the purpose of protection, but it afforded much amusement to her friends, and after death wa' bought by one of thorn for preservat >n as a curiosity.