Four historical events, very important in the annals of the electrical science in the United States, had happened in rapid succession between 1890 and 1894. The first was the successful electrical transmission of power between Lauffen and Frankfurt, in Germany, in 1891; it employed the alternating current system. The second was the decision of the Niagara Falls Power and Construction Company to employ the alternating current system for the transmission of its electrical power; Professor Henry Augustus Rowland, of Johns Hopkins University, as consulting expert of the company, favored this system; another consulting scientific expert, the famous Lord Kelvin, favored the direct current system. The third historical event was the consolidation of the Edison General Electric Company with the Thomson-Houston Company of Lynn, Massachusetts. This consolidation meant the end of the opposition to the alternating current system on the part of people who were most influential in the electrical industries. No such opposition could exist in an electrical corporation where Elihu Thomson’s expert opinion had any weight. The fourth historical event was the Electrical Congress at the World Exposition in Chicago, in 1893. Helmholtz came over as an official delegate of the German Empire, and was elected honorary president of the congress. The subjects discussed at that congress, and the men who discussed them, showed that the electrical science was not in its infancy, and that electrical things were not done by the rule of thumb. Once I asked Professor Rowland whether anybody had ever suggested to him resigning from Johns Hopkins University on the ground that in favoring the alternating current system for the Niagara Falls Power Transmission plant he had made himself liable to a charge of heresy. “Heresy?” said he; “I thought that my heresy was worth a big fee, and when the company attempted to cut it down the courts sustained my claim.” An interesting bit of history is attached to this. When the Niagara Power and Construction Company objected to the size of the fee which Rowland charged for his services as scientific adviser, and asked for a reduction, the matter was referred to the court. During Rowland’s cross-examination the defendant’s lawyer, the late Joseph Choate, asked him the question: “Who, in your opinion, is the greatest physicist in the United States?” Rowland answered without a moment’s hesitation: “I am.” The judge smiled, but agreed with the witness, and his agreement was in harmony with the opinion of all scientific men. Rowland justified his apparently egotistical answer by the fact that as a witness on the stand he was under oath to speak the truth; he certainly spoke the truth when he testified that he was the leading physicist in the United States.