Electricity applied to ship auxiliaries

Since the first installations of electric plants on the steamship Columbia in 1879, consisting of two Edison bipolar dynamos with capacity of sixty 10-candle power lamps each, and the first installation in the Navy on the U. S. S. Trenton in 1883 consisting of one Edison bipolar generator at a rated capacity of 115 60-candle power lamps and belt driven from an Armington and Sims engine; there has been great progress during these forty years in the use of electricity aboard ship. This is particularly true when we consider naval vessels where practically every moving element now receives its motion from an electric motor, but in the adoption of this motive power on vessels of the merchant marine, progress has been exceedingly slow as measured by land standards.