McGregor Railroad, at Saratoga, N. Y." During the next five or six years numerous electric railroads, more or less experimental, were built." October 31, 1888, the Council Bluffs & Omaha Railway and Bridge Company was first operated by electricity, they using the Thomson-Houston system. The same year the Thomson-Houston Co. equipped the Highland Division of the Lynn & Boston Horse Railway at Lynn, Massachusetts. Horse railways now began to be equipped with electricity all over the world, and especially in the United States. In February, 1889, the Thomson-Houston Electric Co. had equipped the line from Bowdoin Square, Boston, to Harvard Square, Cambridge, of the West End Railway with electricity and operated twenty cars, since which time it has increased its electrical apparatus, until now it is the largest electric railway line in the world." _E. Trevert, Electric Railway Engineering, appendix A._ ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1841-1880. The Incandescent Electric Light. "While the arc lamp is well adapted for lighting large areas requiring a powerful, diffused light, similar to sunlight, and hence is suitable for outdoor illumination, and for workshops, stores, public buildings, and factories, especially those where colored fabrics are produced, its use in ordinary dwellings, or for a desk light in offices, is impractical, a softer, steadier, and more economical light being required. Various attempts to modify the arc-light by combining it with the incandescent were made in the earlier stages of electric lighting. ... The first strictly incandescent lamp was invented in 1841 by Frederick de Molyens of Cheltenham, England, and was constructed on the simple principle of the incandescence produced by the high resistance of a platinum wire to the passage of the electric current. In 1849 Petrie employed iridium for the same purpose, also alloys of iridium and platinum, and iridium and carbon. In 1845 J. W. Starr of Cincinnati first proposed the use of carbon, and, associated with King, his English agent, produced, through the financial aid of the philanthropist Peabody, an incandescent lamp. ... In all these early experiments, the battery was the source of electric supply; and the comparatively small current required for the incandescent light as compared with that required for the arc light, was an argument in favor of the former. ... Still, no substantial progress was made with either system till the invention of the dynamo resulted in the practical development of both systems, that of the incandescent following that of the arc. Among the first to make incandescent lighting a practical success were Sawyer and Man of New York, and Edison. For a long time, Edison experimented with platinum, using fine platinum wire coiled into a spiral, so as to concentrate the heat, and produce incandescence; the