thing should be done to encourage good men to remain on the trainingships. The commanding officer should further have the assurance that at the end of the training cruise any recommendation that he should make to the Bureau to that end should be immediately complied with, as it would be better to err on the side of perhaps removing a man whọ was only at fault in his example, by accident, than to have a new draft subjected to the possibility of being the witnesses of another accident. The force of example among boys of that age is very great, and the essayist thoroughly appreciates it.

I can only state in conclusion that the essayist has done a good thing for the service in opening the door for the discussion of this, to my mind, important feature of the naval establishment. I have not agreed with him in many particulars, nor do I expect that others will agree with me, but from all the discussions (and I trust they will be very general) there may arise a more catholic spirit towards the training system and its results than exists now. I have never been thrown with a more conscientious set of officers as regards the duty that was put upon them than in the training service, and I must say that I feel that most of the criticism which the training system has been subjected to has resulted from the failure on the part of the officers with whom apprentices were thrown after leaving the training-ship, from not knowing the regulations covering them, or else, knowing them, failing to properly administer them.

U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE, ANNAPOLIS, MD.

ELECTRICITY IN NAVAL LIFE.

By LIEUTENANT B. A. FISKE, U. S. N.

$750,000,000 is the amount stated by The Electrical Engineer, after a careful investigation, to be the capital invested in the United States in the various electrical arts, such as the electric light, telegraph, telephone, electric railway, etc., etc. In examining the causes for the investing of so large a sum, we must conclude that either the people in the United States are a very unwise and visionary class, or else that electric appliances do really possess some qualities which contribute to their comfort and happiness in a practical way.

In examining the results of the use of electricity in naval life, we must admit that, up to the present time, electricity has fulfilled all the promises it has given us. It has made our ships brighter, cleaner and healthier; it has lightened the task of enforcing discipline; it has increased the accuracy of gunnery; it has made instruction interesting; it has assisted the surgeon in diagnosing wounds and relieving pain; it has given the captain better control of his ship, and the admiral better control of his fleet; it has added an element of intelligent interest and expectation to each new addition to our Navy, and it has brought into active sympathy with the sea-going class a large and influential body of progressive men on shore.

The enormous development of the use of electrical appliances in all countries of the civilized world, and the beneficent effects resulting, are bearing practical fruit in naval life. The experience gained by electric railway companies, electric light companies, telephone companies, telegraph companies, and all the

is used, has proved that electrical apparatus may be relied upon provided two conditions are fulfilled. The first condition is that the electrical apparatus shall be designed to meet the particular circumstances of each case; the second is that it shall be cared for by men who understand it. The increasing confidence shown in it by naval authorities has been particularly evident in France, where numbers of ships have been constructed in which electric power is used to do almost all the work heretofore done by auxiliary steam engines.

The principal difficulty that electricity has had to meet in our Navy has been the fact that there has been very little incentive for officers and men to study it; so that most of those who have become proficient (enlisted men as well as officers) have gone into civil life, and we find them distributed among the various colleges and electrical enterprises of the land. There they are doing good work for the country and are making honorable reputations for themselves, but, so far as helping the Navy goes, their services are lost. So it is not surprising that electrical apparatus has come into use in the Navy so much more slowly than it has come into use in civil life; but it is surprising that it has come into use so rapidly as it has, and exhibits a more progressive spirit than seamen are usually credited with possessing.

It is frequently stated that the reason for the slow progress of electricity in naval matters is the difficulty of meeting the conditions of ship life; but this position is hardly tenable, because the conditions for the use of the electric light, electric motors and telephones in war-ships are in reality not nearly so severe as they are in hundreds of positions along the coasts of the country and through the long stretches of the mountainous and comparatively unpeopled sections of our western lands. In reality there can hardly be found, outside of the college laboratory, conditions which are in many respects so favorable as those to be met on board a modern war-ship. In the first place, the distances through which the electric current are to be transmitted are extremely short; in the second place, the item of expense does not control to so great a degree as it does in the operations of commercial life; in the third place, in case of any accident or derangement, the place where this accident or derangement occurs is always within a few feet of somebody,

with apparatus on shore, through miles of country; in the fourth place, the solidity of the structure of a ship and the excellence of all of the mechanical appliances are in great contrast with the flimsiness of the structure and the cheap character of the installation which have, for financial reasons, in many cases to be made on shore.

About ten years ago the writer had occasion to deliver a lecture before the Franklin Institute, on Electricity in Warfare, and about four years later, another on the same subject. In the first lecture the operations of electricity in warfare were almost wholly hypothetical and promissory. In other words, the effort of the lecturer was to point out what electricity might be made to do, perhaps. In the second lecture he was able to state with some positiveness that some things could be done and, in fact, that some things had been done. In the present paper he takes pleasure in stating that certain things have actually passed official tests in sea service, and he will confine himself to facts without indulging in any flights of the imagination. To emphasize the difference between the state of affairs obtaining now and the state of affairs obtaining at the time of the first lecture, it may be said that at this first lecture there were present a commodore and a captain of the United States Navy, both officers of high ability and character, and, in a conversation after the lecture, they pointed out the impossibility of using the electric light on board ship by reason of the impracticability of getting sufficient space for the dynamo. In spite, however, of the successful efforts of the Genius of Electricity in ameliorating the conditions of shipboard life, there are still many objectors, and it is a fact that a contest is going on between electro-mechanical and other mechanical apparatus in very many of the important operations in ships and forts, which promises to be as lasting and as bitter as the contest between steam and sails; and yet it is easy to one who watches the drift of modern engineering practice to see with which the ultimate victory will reside. Just now the fight is going merrily on, and the public benefits by the competition. No sooner does an electrical device score a success than some ingenious person does the same thing with mechanics; and no sooner does an important mechanical invention accomplish some new thing than an electrician throws

be stated as a general law-but with the distinct understanding that it is only general-that mechanical appliances have the advantage of greater simplicity of principle, and that electrical appliances have the advantage of greater simplicity of operation. To paraphrase this statement, mechanical appliances are more easy to understand, but electrical appliances are more easy to use. Mechanical appliances require less instruction for their use; electrical appliances render available a higher grade of intelligence and also require a higher grade of intelligence. Electrical appliances strive for an idea; mechanical appliances do what is required at the moment. The advantages of maturity and experience are on the side of mechanical apparatus; but youth and the promise of the future reside with electricity. Mechanical appliances are less apt to deteriorate from disuse; electrical appliances are less apt to deteriorate from use; mechanical connections are liable to give out under the sudden strain of emergency; electrical appliances, from their nature, suffer little strain in use and are not apt to fail in emergency if found to be in good condition before the emergency occurs. A mechanical connection, if broken or injured, gives plain sign of the whereabouts of the trouble, but the trouble is with difficulty repaired. A trouble in an electrical connection is sometimes hard to find, especially if the apparatus is not thoroughly understood, but when found, is remedied with ease. The difficulty of repairing a break or disarrangement of a mechanical appliance, caused by a stress, is usually in proportion to the greatness of the stress; but with electrical appliances, the cause of trouble is usually minute, and can be repaired as soon as found.

A very important enemy of electrical appliances on shipboard has been the "fatal facility" with which bad electrical apparatus can be installed. It has always been so easy to run a wire or to put in a battery, or a bell, or a dynamo, which would work for a week, that in very many cases it has not worked any longer. Good work on electrical apparatus often seems so unnecessary that slipshod work is substituted, and it does as well as any other for a while; but suddenly the apparatus fails, and then one hears on all sides complaints of the untrustworthiness of electricity. Nevertheless it is a fact that the naval and military uses of electricity are increasing. The same reasons that have filled