The fashion for devising Utopias is not so popular as it used to be, but in every ideal world which is more than a spiritual vision, and in every intelligent forecast of an advanced civilisation, universal electric transport is taken for granted. Electrical engineers are ready to prove that this standard element in Utopia is available at the present day on the basis which is the ultimate justification of all engineering projects in this workaday world--the basis of profit. Their confidence will be intensified when we approach the 'all-electric' age prophesied by Mr Ferranti in his Presidential Address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1910. Mr Ferranti looks forward to a national scheme for the supply and distribution of electric power. Under this scheme, the production of electricity would be concentrated in one hundred huge power stations, using engines of enormous capacity and acting as wholesale suppliers of electrical energy to towns, railways, tramways, and factories. The price of electricity would then be a fraction of what it is now; and all the economies of electricity in action would be multiplied accordingly. Technically, the scheme is quite feasible; and it could be realised in the near future if capitalists and the Government could be brought to appreciate the tremendous stimulus it would offer to industrial activity and the effect it would have in conserving the power which is latent in our coal measures. INDEX Acceleration, 23 _et seq._ on electric railways, 107, 110 Accumulators, 70 on air ships, 90 on ships, 90 Aeroplanes, 90 Alternating current, 30, 115 Automixte (petrol-electric), 85 Automobiles (electric), 70 _et seq._ advantages of, 80 hiring of, 75 in United States, 79 Batteries (electric), 13 Behr, F. B., 131 Blackpool, 37 Bournemouth, 38 Braking, 67 Brennan, L., 132, 134 Brighton line electrification, 117 Broadbent, F., vii, 116 Brunel, 8, 11, 17 Cab (electric), 78 City and South London Railway, 97 Conduit system, 28, 37, 126 Continuous current, 116 District Railway, 103, 119 Durtnall, W. P., 88 Dynamo, 13 reversibility of, 15, 67 Elberfeld-Barmen Railway, 125, 135 Electric traction advantages of, 19 _et seq._ automobiles, 70 _et seq._ backwardness of, 46 _et seq._ on main line railways, 116, 122 Faraday, 13 Ferranti, 140 Fischer (petrol-electric), 85 Giant's Causeway, 93 Griffiths-Bedell (G-B.) system, 44 Gyroscopic railways, 132 Hanging railway, 125, 135 Heilmann locomotive, 128 Kearney, E. W. C., 133 Launches (electric), 73 Light Railways Act, 58 Liverpool Overhead Railway, 97, 111 Locomotive (electric), 12, 97, 108 Heilmann, 128 turbo-electric, 129