This week in...1882

In February 1879 Mr Mattieu Williams, a journalist who had helped promote the Starr-King incandescent electric lamp 30 years earlier, wrote in the Journal of Science: ’I have abstained from further meddling with the electric light, because all that I had seen then, and have heard of since, has convinced me that although as a scientific achievement the electric light is a splendid success its practical application to all purposes where cost is a matter of serious consideration is a complete and hopeless failure.’

Three years later, The Engineer was adamant that Williams should give the incandescent light another chance. In an 1882 article, it argued that an exhibition of electric light at Crystal Palace proved that the technology would be a huge success.

’The raison d’être of the exhibition is to show that the electric light is not a failure, and that it daily promises to be as economical as the gas at present supplied,’ it said. ’We refer to a chandelier especially designed and made by Messrs Verity and Sons, of King Street, Covent Garden, for Mr EH Johnson, of the Edison Light Company.’