Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1895 — LIGHTS THE WORLD. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LIGHTS THE WORLD.

Brush's Patents of Electric Light" ing. The streets of the biggest cities of every continent blaze at midnight through the genius of Charles F. Brush. Still the world knows but little about him. With all his genius he is modest in the extreme. He early adopted the policy of keeping out of print. He has contributed little to scientific journals, and the world knows him only through his work. It has no idea of the man, and there are few who appreciate his wonderful character and the wide extent of his achievements. His big mansion on Euclid avenue, Cleveland, is one of the finest houses in the United States and qne of the most comfortable homes. It is located in the best part of the avenue, which is one of the finest streets in the world, and it is surrounded by seven acres of magnificent lawn, where the land is so valuable you have to carpet it with greenbacks to buy it.

There are tons of storage batteries in the house, and the power which charges these batteries with electricity is an enormous windmill which he has erected in the rear. Every breeze that blows produces light for the house, and the batteries are so large that if there should be a dead calm for a whole week they would still contain enough electricity to run all the lights. “I was always experimenting with something, and while I was in the High School in Cleveland I made microscopes and telescopes, grinding the lenses and turning out some very fair instruments.” “When did you first appreciate that your electric light might have a commercial value?” “I think it was about 1876,” replied Mr. Brush. “It was at this time that I completed my first dyna-mo-electric machine. I showed this at Philadelphia the next year at the Franklin Institute. The first arc lighting machines had to have one dynamo to each light. My invention was the first that proposed a series of arc lights working from one dynamo, and it was upon this that all the street lighting and all the arc lighting systems of the present day are based.”

‘ ‘Will we ever get electricity directly from coal?” “I think so,” replied Mr. Brush. “In fact I have already gotten it, but not in such a way as to make the invention commercially profitable. It is now twenty years since I succeeded in getting electricity directly from coal. It was in 1874. The fields of invention are vast. We stand just on the threshold, and there will be new inventions as long as man has mind to create and the will to investigate the great forces of nature and the possibilities of their combination. “The electric force is still to a large extent a secret from us all. Of late years there have been few new fundamental inventions In electric lightning. There have been many improvements and modifications of the old ones. The light is steadily being made better, but it is the same light just, as for instance, we have had locomotives drawing trains ever since we were born, but the locomotive of to-day is a far different machine from that of fortv years ago. Still it embodies the same fundamental principles.” “Where is the chief work being done in electricity to-day ?” “It is in the field of thermo-elec-tricity, or heat electricity. It is now thought, you know, that all light and heat are produced by electrical force, and it is in these branches that the best work is now being done.”

CHARLES F. BRUSH.

BRUSH’S RESIDENCE.