Manmade Lightning

Artificial lightning of 2,000,000 volts, twice the voltage ever before generated experimentally, and ten times greater than the highest voltage used in commercial transmission, was produced at a public demonstration in the Pittsfield (Mass.) laboratories of the General Electric Company, under the guidance of Giuseppe Faccioli, chief electrical engineer of the plant, and Frank W. Peek, Jr., consulting engineer, who invented much of the machinery involved.

The room in which the demonstration took place is 100 feet square by 60 feet high, walled with brick and lined with steel to safeguard the exterior world. Although assured that there was no danger, the handful of invited newspapermen signed liability releases before entering and stood trembling on a high steel platform while the gigantic bolts flashed under their noses. Three huge transforming towers 30 feet high wound with 100 miles of wire and grounded in tanks containing 40,000 gallons of oil, the whole inside a protecting cage of steel wire, were used to " step up " a current of 2,000 volts one thousand times. In pitch darkness prepared cameras recorded the display on photographic plates, showing ultraviolet rays invisible to the human eye, as well as the blinding bolts of white, red and purple which leaped between needle points 15 feet apart.

Faccioli, the genius of the experiments, is an Italian by birth and training, 46 years old, a resident of America for 20 years. Like Steinmetz, he is a cripple; he moves about the plant in a wheeled chair. Faccioli has a touch of the philosopher as well as the technician.