practically feasible.

Just six years ago, when delivering his presidential address to the Iron
and Steel Institute, the lecturer had ventured to suggest that "time
will probably reveal to us effectual means of carrying power to great
distances, but I cannot refrain from alluding to one which is, in my
opinion, worthy of consideration, namely, the electrical conductor.
Suppose water power to be employed to give motion to a dynamo-electrical
machine, a very powerful electrical current will be the result, which
may be carried to a great distance, through a large metallic conductor,
and then be made to impart motion to electromagnetic engines, to ignite
the carbon points of electric lamps, or to effect the separation of
metals from their combinations. A copper rod 3 in. in diameter would
be capable of transmitting 1,000 horse power a distance of say thirty
miles, an amount sufficient to supply one-quarter of a million candle
power, which would suffice to illuminate a moderately-sized town." This
suggestion had been much criticised at the time, when it was still
thought that electricity was incapable of being massed so as to deal
with many horse power of effect, and the size of conductor he had
proposed was also considered wholly inadequate. It would be interesting
to test this early calculation by recent experience. Mr. Marcel Deprez
had, it was well known, lately succeeded in transmitting as much as
three horse power to a distance of 40 kilometers (25 miles) through
a pair of ordinary telegraph wires of 4 millimeters in diameter. The
results so obtained had been carefully noted by Mr. Tresca, and had been
communicated a fortnight ago to the French Academy of Sciences. Taking
the relative conductivity of iron wire employed by Deprez, and the 3
in. rod proposed by the lecturer, the amount of power that could be
transmitted through the latter would be about 4,000 horse power. But
Deprez had employed a motor-dynamo of 2,000 volts, and was contented