the embryo of the best
lamps now in commercial use, and but for which the subdivision of the
electric light by incandescence would still be nothing but the ignis
fatuus which it was proclaimed to be in 1879 by some of the reamed
experts who are now witnesses to belittle his achievement and show that
it did not rise to the dignity of an invention.... It is impossible to
resist the conclusion that the invention of the slender thread of carbon
as a substitute for the burners previously employed opened the path to
the practical subdivision of the electric light."

An appeal was taken in the above suit to the United States Circuit Court
of Appeals, and on October 4, 1892, the decree of the lower court was
affirmed. The judges (Lacombe and Shipman), in a long opinion reviewed
the facts and the art, and said, inter alia: "Edison's invention was
practically made when he ascertained the theretofore unknown fact that
carbon would stand high temperature, even when very attenuated, if
operated in a high vacuum, without the phenomenon of disintegration.
This fact he utilized by the means which he has described, a lamp having
a filamentary carbon burner in a nearly perfect vacuum."

In a suit against the Boston Incandescent Lamp Company et al., in the
United States Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts, decided
in favor of Edison on June 11, 1894, Judge Colt, in his opinion, said,
among other things: "Edison made an important invention; he produced the
first practical incandescent electric lamp; the patent is a pioneer in
the sense of the patent law; it may be said that his invention created
the art of incandescent electric lighting."

Opinions of other courts, similar in tenor to the foregoing, might be
cited, but it would be merely in the nature of reiteration. The above
are sufficient to illustrate the direct clearness of judicial decision
on Edison's position as the founder of the art of electric lighting by
incandescence.

X. EDISON'S DYNAMO WORK

AT the present writing, when, after the phenomenally rapid electrical
development of thirty years, we find on the market a great variety of
modern forms of efficient current generators advertised under the names
of different inventors (none, however, bearing the name of Edison), a
young electrical engineer of the present generation might well inquire
whether the great inventor had ever contributed anything to the art
beyond a mere TYPE of machine formerly made and