Abstract
THE Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the value of the electric light has completed its labours and has issued its report. There is no doubt that the evidence given before it, when published, will be very useful, and that the report itself is a careful digest of the facts elicited, but it is questionable whether the results of the inquiry, or the conclusions of the Committee, will satisfy any one. Our readers will find in it nothing new. Gas engineers will find in it their extermination calmly contemplated. The gas manufacturer is told that he has nothing whatever to do with electricity. Gas, and nothing but gas, is his ware. Though he was incorporated to illuminate a city with the then best known illuminant, he is not to touch a newer illuminant because he will check the development of the fresh source of light, and his present mode of production is quite different to that required for the new commodity. It is as though a wine merchant who had a large sale of sherry were not allowed to sell beer, or a dairyman were not allowed to sell asses' milk because he only kept cows. The enunciation of such a proposition in a Parliamentary Report is sad. Worse than all, municipal authorities are advised that they can ruin all the gas interests without the distribution of any compensation whatever. Surely the enormous capital sunk by the public in gas enterprise deserves some consideration from its representatives in Parliament assembled. Are our vestries and corporations so immaculate that they are to have entire control of our supplies of water and of light? Why not give them the supply of food and of heat? The line must be drawn somewhere, and it is well that Parliament should hesitate in the complacency with which it now thrusts on irresponsible communities the distribution of vital necessaries.
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The Electric Light . Nature 20, 190–191 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/020190a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/020190a0