Let there be light! Once in a while, New Electronics likes to look back to times when moving electrons around was in the pioneering stage. One house in the North East of England claims to be where modern luxury living was born. By Tim Fryer. t was an age when technology pioneers were making their mark on all aspects of life. These were not the innovators who stood on the shoulders of giants (to Iparaphrase Newton) – these were giants themselves. The home of one such giant is Cragside, just on the edge of the Northumberland National Park. Here, William Armstrong built a house – unsurprisingly on the edge of a crag – described in 1880 as the ‘palace of the modern magician’. There were many reasons why he and his house earned The Burnfoot hydroelectric this accolade, but one enduring reason was that it was the power plant first house to be lit by hydroelectricity. In 1880, making light from water was a truly remarkable feat, not least because lighting in those days came from gas or oil lamps, candles or electric arc lights, which were rarely used indoors as they were noisy, smelly and dangerous. The incandescent bulb had been demonstrated only a year before by Joseph Swan, who received his UK patent in 1879; several months before Edison’s on the other side of the Atlantic. Legal teams subsequently resolved that both men had invented the incandescent light bulb independently and concurrently and, while most people’s instinct might be that Edison invented the light bulb – and he certainly was the one who made most money out of it – those in the North East remain committed to their man’s claims. Swan, dubbed ‘the quiet man of science’ also 18 9 September 2014 www.newelectronics.co.uk COVER STORY EARLY ELECTRICITY Although fascinated by electricity, Armstrong put it and his legal career aside to set up a factory in Newcastle to manufacture hydraulic cranes and accumulators. These were shipped around the world and made Armstrong his Crst fortune. His second fortune followed with his armament factory that included the Armstrong riDed breech loading guns that played a signiCcant role in the Empire building days of Victorian Britain. Other interests included bridge building, starting with the Tyne swing bridge, and later the hydraulic lifting equipment in Tower Bridge. In the meantime, Armstrong built a relatively modest lodge at Cragside in 1864. Five years later, when the railway network extended to the nearby village of Rothbury, he extended it to a 100 room house that was to be his home and from developed what became modern photographic processes. which he could conveniently travel to Armstrong installed Swan’s light bulbs at Cragside – the his factories in Newcastle. Crst time they had been used in any building other than Although still the creative force Swan’s own house – at more or less at the same time as behind his Newcastle businesses, Edison Cled his US patent. What made the installation at Armstrong’s interests were leaning Cragside more remarkable was that the electricity supply again towards the possibilities of came from the world’s Crst hydroelectric power station, hydroelectricity, inDuenced which Armstrong had built to supply arc lights in his house. presumably by friends from such bodies as the Institute of Mechanical Birth of hydroelectricity Engineers and the Royal Society. Armstrong’s passion was water. Despite being shoehorned These friends included William Siemens, William Thompson into a career as a solicitor – a respectable profession in (later Lord Kelvin), Michael Faraday and Joseph Swan, and those days – his real calling was the less respectable there was much debate among them about alternative profession of engineering. During a Yorkshire holiday in sources of energy like solar, hydro, wind and tidal power. 1835, Armstrong was reported to be trout Cshing in a By 1878, Armstrong had used a 6hp turbine and a quarry, watching a water wheel that he estimated was only Siemens dynamo at a waterfall in the Debdon Burn to achieving 5% of its potential power. He returned to his job create hydroelectric power. This was transmitted along a but spent his evenings in a Newcastle factory developing 1320m Birmingham No1 gauge copper wire to Cragside, an efCcient, enclosed water wheel, which he patented in where it was used to power a series of arc lights in the 1838 as the rotary hydraulic engine. picture gallery. Andrew Sawyer, curator at Cragside (now in Shortly afterwards, Armstrong was called to a colliery to the hands of the National Trust), commented: “There are investigate miners getting electric shocks from a steam jet debates about this, but there is no evidence that anyone and later used that phenomenon, which came to be known else, on any scale, generated hydroelectricity before this as the Armstrong Effect, in his hydroelectric machine. As a anywhere in the world.” consequence, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society The dynamo, from Siemens, was a series wound bipolar in 1846. horizontal dynamo with drum armature and a single Above: A Chinese Excerpt from The Graphic, cloisonné vase used April 1881 by Armstrong (in portrait) as an “Mr Swan’s lamp is exceedingly simple. It electric lamp. consists merely of a bulb of glass about three inches in diameter. Containing a thin (Mid right) Illumine carbon conductor supported by two platinum by Imogen Cloët – wires, which, where they pass out of the part of the LUX bulb, are hermetically sealed into its wall by contemporary art fusion of the glass around the wires. The air exhibition at contained in the bulb is thoroughly Cragside in 2014 exhausted. The chief peculiarity of this lamp © Colin Davison is the wonderfully thin and elastic filament of carbon, as thin as a hair, and almost as hard and springy as a steel wire.” www.newelectronics.co.uk 9 September 2014 19 COVER STORY EARLY ELECTRICITY Soon, the system was extended to 92 lamps and demand The spirit of Armstrong for electricity was exceeding the capacity of the Debdon Burn “Every property in the National Trust has its power house. Consequently, the Burnfoot Power House was own spirit and we try and conserve that built and Irst supplied electricity to the house in 1886. spirit,” said Andrew Sawyer. “Our spirit was This was quite an engineering project. A burn out on the invention and innovation, through Lord moors was dammed and a clay pipe bought water from there Armstrong and his friends, and we want to to the Cragside estate. Water was fed from the pipe to a carry on with that story.” wooden Jume, which fed two lakes, made by building two U- He was speaking at the unveiling of the shaped dams out of the side of the hill. Lake water was fed new Cragside hydroelectric system. Based on into a cast iron pipe and taken 103m downhill to the power Archimedean screw hydropower, the house. rotational energy of the 17m long, 1.6m Now equipped with a Gilkes turbine and Crompton diameter screw drives an electrical generator. generator, the power plant could supply 24hp (17.9kW). The Electricity goes straight to the house to dynamo was rated at 90A and 110V. Given that this was power the lights. The house is 6tted entirely direct current and that transmission losses were signiIcant, with around 350 LEDs, each of which Burnfoot had been built much closer to the house. The consumes 5W, so it only takes 2kW to light power house was permanently manned by ‘the caretaker of the house. the electric light’ and there was a separate warm and dry Sawyer added: “We have a phrase here; control room, which housed the switchboards and we like to give visitors an ‘Armstrong moment’ solenoids. – to have the same moment as he had; to The control room was in contact with the Butler’s pantry at stand in the library and see those cloisonné Cragside via telephone. An early adopter, Armstrong had a lamps being lit by water power just as he did. telephone system from 1880 which ran throughout the How we do that is different, how we interpret estate – he could phone from his hunting lodge let the staff that is different, but it is essentially the same know when to bring him his picnic. Sawyer added: “He also story told in a different way. It is an used it extensively in Newcastle – he had the most private interpretation, rather than a restoration.” lines of anybody in Newcastle at the time. He saw it as a great way of communicating with all of his managers, direct magnetic circuit. Electricity generated from it was transmitted to their houses, and to his friends.” via a joiner’s shop so that it could be used to power a sawing The 1890s were dry years and Armstrong’s free and machine during the day when lighting in the house was not limitless power source did require rainfall. So, in 1895, he required. added a gas turbine to the power house, as well as a bank of In 1880, Armstrong introduced Swan’s light bulbs, with 45 batteries to store unused energy and smooth supply. Site of them replacing the arc lamps in the gallery. In a letter to engineer Robin White commented: “Batteries were 2V cells, The Engineer in 1881, describing his hydroelectric system so they probably had 56 in a bank to make 110V. They were and use of incandescent light bulbs, Armstrong said 6hp was lead acid batteries, so it would have been a pretty noxious sufIcient to light 37 lamps (the maximum he needed at any atmosphere.