e,
and can be made as ornamental as desired. No exaggeration is indulged in
if we pronounce it simple and ingenious. It may be used in a great
variety of eases. The diameter of the wire is 55/100 (22 mm.), its length
eighteen meters (60 feet), its resistance one ohm; 3/4 ampere is needed to
work it, and less than a watt is absorbed by it.--_Electricite_.

* * * * *

DEFINITIONS AND DESIGNATIONS IN ELECTROTECHNICS.

We may discourse for some time to come upon the uniformity of electric
language, for universal agreement is far from being established. An
important step toward the unity of this language was taken in 1881 by the
congress of Paris, which rendered the use of the C.G.S. system definitive
and universal. This labor was completed in 1884 by the meeting of a new
congress at Paris, at which a definition of the C.G.S. and practical
units was distinctly decided upon. That the unit of light defined by the
congress has not rapidly come into favor is due to the fact that its
practical realization is not within everybody's reach.

The work of unification should not come to a standstill on so good a
road. How many times in scientific works or in practical applications do
we find the same physical magnitude designated by different names, or
even the use of the same expression to designate entirely different
things!

The result is an increase of difficulties and confusions, not only for
persons not thoroughly initiated into these notions, but also for adepts,
even, in this new branch of the engineer's art. The effects of such
confusion make themselves still further felt in the reading of foreign
publications. Thus, for example, in Germany that part of a dynamo
electric machine that is called in France the _induit_ (armature) is
sometimes styled _anker_, and more rarely _armatur_. The _north pole_ of
a freely suspended magnetized needle is the one that points toward the
geographical north of the earth. In France, and by some English authors,
this pole is called the _south_ one. Among electricians of the same
country, what by one is called _electro-motive force_ is by another
styled _difference of potential_, by a third _tension_, and even
_difference of tension_.

Our confrere Ruhlmann, of the _Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift_, gives a
still more remarkable example yet of such confusion. The word
_polarization_, borrowed from optics, where it has an unequivocal sense,
serves likewis