Indianapolis Times, Volume 43, Number 148, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 October 1931 — Page 16

PAGE 16

“-Life of Edison—No. 7 EDISON LIGHT WAS DEVELOPED WITH BAMBOO Searched Earth for Perfect Substance and Victory Crowned Efforts. Thf* is the seventh of twelve exclusive •tori** on Thomas A. Edison by Major William Joseph Hammer, his scientific Associate and lifelong friend. BY WILLIS J. BALLINGER As Told by Major William Joseph Hammer, Lifelon* Associate of Edison. 'Copyright. 1931. NEA Service. Inc.) Thomas A. Edison’s first progress In perfecting the commercial electric lamp was to try to remedy the shortcomings of platinum. First he mixed it with iridium. This made the comparatively soft metal hard as steel. He could scratch glass with it. Also it would take a far higher dose of current without melting. Then he heated the filament slowly and repeatedly and found that he thus drove out occluded gases in the pores of the metal and greatly increased its denseness and powers of resistencc to heat. In this way he increased the candlepower of his incandescent lamp up to 30-candle power. Preceding lamps had been able to generate only a fractional part of this candlepower. Shiften to Carbon Then Edison, although he had far surpassed the efforts of others with platinum, decided to get rid of platinum for his filaments. He switched to carbon. He made his first carbon filaments of sewing thread; these he used in his first carbon lamp on Oct. 21, 1879. This lamp lasted forty hours. He next experimented with paper. Paper was cut out in the shape of a horseshoe for the current to pass through. These paper horseshoes were placed in nickel molds and heated at high temperature, thus forming the carbon filaments. The ends of the carbonized horseshoe filaments were mounted in platinum clamps, which held the filaments inside the vacuum casing. Lasted Only Short Time But the carbonized paper horseshoe was fragile and lasted but a short time. It had a low efficiency, though higher than Edison’s first carbonized thread lamp of Oct. 21, 1879—the lamp which, at the time, was hailed by the world as the solution to incandescent lighting. Menlo Park was illuminated with the famous paper horseshoe lamps on Dec. 31, 1879. Two final steps remained. Edison was scouring the earth for some substance that would be more resistant to an electric current and would possess greater mechanical strength, and thereby make a lamp last longer, and a material that could absorb a much heavier dose of current. Edison began experimenting with vegetable fibers of many kinds, from all over the world. Used Variety of Bamboo From far-away Japan the missing substiince came. There are 3,000 varieties of bamboo, but only about 400 are used in commerce. The “Madake” variety of bamboo, which grew in the hilly districts of Japan, had a peculiar eight-sided cell. This gave it great structural strength and high resistance. In tests it proved to be very resistant to the current and tough enough to take a tremendous dose without breaking.' And so by means of the carbonized bamboo filament, Edison turned the trick. Major Hammer had charge of the first real test on a carbonized bamboo filament. over two months he watched zealously the undimmed rays coming from the test lamp. At night he made his rounds carefully checking up on the record run of this lamp. It became noised about the laboratory that the lamp had already run 500 hours. Suddenly one night the lamp began to pale. Hammer seized it and holding it aloft rushed upstairs to Edison with a lamp that had completed 1,589 hours of running time. Orders Factory Started “Now, Hammer, we have a commercial lamp,” exclaimed Edison. “We will stop all tests and experiments and go into the manufacture at once.” Then came the big parade about the laboratory and grounds. And after an hour and a half of cheering and shouting, the men returned to work. Edison issued orders for the beginning of the first commercial incandescent lamp factory in the world and sent Francis R. Upton and Hammer to turn the Edison electric pen works into a lamp factory. In their first year they turned out the first 50,000 commercially used incandescent lamps in the world. The first lamp in the big wind tunnel at the United States factory was pitched less than a mile from the

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BELIEVE IT or NOT

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laboratory in an old building which at one time had housed the Edison idea of the automatic pen. Used Cable From Laboratory The idea of illuminating a world caught Hammer’s imagination and he rushed about like a madman putting the place in order. By means of an overhead cable the lamp factory was supplied with all of its electrical juice directly from the laboratory three-quarters of a mile away. This incidentally was an achievement of the greatest magnitude. The lamp factory really gave to the world the first demonstration of how current could be distributed successfully. v Not until mankind learned this secret would superpower ever be anything more than a dream. And the direct forerunner of all the agitation that is going on today for superpower was that first experiment of Thomas A. Edison in supplying his lamp factory with electrical power and light from a distance of three-quarters of a mile. Ranked with Greatest Work At the time the feat went unnoticed. But in time it was to be ranked with one of Edison’s greatest contributions to the electrical art. The final chapter to the Edison incandescent lamp was written in the laboratories of the General Electric Corporation. There scientists put into use tungsten, discovered after Edison’s carbonized bamboo filaments. Tungsten brought perfection. It is one of the most refractory substances in the world and can be drawn out like a cobweb. It does not melt under the highest voltage and it is sufficiently re-

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sistant to the flow of current that it gives off a blaze of light. Lamps of 150,000 candlepower have been made recently and lamps down to the size of a pea as well. Edison’s greatest inventions. . . . His telegraph His carbon transmitter. . . . Failures as well as successes. . . . Living a life of service and caring little for money. PULLS SWIM ‘MERKLE’ Gets Three-fourths of Way, Then Turns and Comes Back. By United Press MARBLEHEAD, Mass., Oct. 30. Edward A. Gleason well might be called the Merkle of swimming. He swam three-fourths of the distance across Marblehead harbor, felt he couldn’t complete the final quarter—so turned back.

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THE INDIA

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All items in Ripley’s “Believe It or Not,” which appeared in Thursday’s Times, were self-ex-planatory. Saturday—“ Halloween is not Halloween.” EYES SENATORIAL SEAT Rumor Washington Governor May Enter Race as Wet. By United Press OLYMPIA, Wash., Oct. 30Rumor here has it that Governor Roland H. Hartley will not seek a third term, but will attempt to defeat Senator Wesley L. Jones for another term in Washington. Governor Hartley probably will seek election on a wet plank. The coming campaign promises to treat wet candidates with more consideration than in the past. Hartley is a Republican.

POLIS TIMES

ARKANSAS CITY CHEERS RETURN OF GOODTIMES Flat Broke One Year Ago, England Holds 2-Day Farm Festival. By United Press ENGLAND, Ark., Oct. 30.—This Arkansas city, center of a large farming area, celebrated in homely country style today the return of good times. A year ago England was in despair. The drought had ravaged all crops. Barefooted farmers trudged the streets. Scantily clad children shivered in line waiting for the Red

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Cross• kitchen to give them their daily Dread. In sharp contrast was England today. From far and near farmers, their wives and children gathered for a great jubilee over the transition. The celebration was to townspeople more exciting than a county fair. There was plenty of backslapping and cheering. All were talking about the good yields and full food bins. Many farmers visited the exhibition of farm products, where prize grains,- corn and cotton were on display. In the center of the display room could be found the men who last year did yeoman service—Mayor Walter Williams, a short little man who predicted that England would “come back,” and George Norris, a young plantation owner and attorney. A knot of farmers was clustered about Morris, the man who stood firm last fall when farmers and

townspeople threatened to break into stores to get food. He proudly showed exhibits of canned foodstuffs that had been cooked in community outfits and distributed in the county last winter. He pointed to the exhibits of poultry and live stock as a sigr this community had begun a program of diversified farming. Morris said a survey of the com-

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OCT. 30, 1931

munity revealed virtually all of the farmers receiving government loans have repaid them. Many plantations will produce better than a bale of cotton to an acre and from forty to fifty bushels of com. Labor is at a premium, hd said. Merchants report large sales of clothing, harness, buggies and tools.