It should, perhaps, be added that so high a price as 5s. per 1000
cubic feet for coal-gas rarely prevails in Great Britain, except in small
outlying towns, whereas the price of 6d. per Board of Trade unit
for electricity is not uncommonly exceeded in the few similar country
places in which there is a public electricity supply.
CHAPTER II
THE PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY OF THE REACTION BETWEEN CARBIDE AND WATER
THE NATURE OF CALCIUM CARBIDE.--The raw material from which, by
interaction with water, acetylene is obtained, is a solid body called
calcium carbide or carbide of calcium. Inasmuch as this substance can at
present only be made on a commercial scale in the electric furnace--and
so far as may be foreseen will never be made on a large scale except by
means of electricity--inasmuch as an electric furnace can only be worked
remuneratively in large factories supplied with cheap coal or water
power; and inasmuch as there is no possibility of the ordinary consumer
of acetylene ever being able to prepare his own carbide, all descriptions
of this latter substance, all methods of winning it, and all its
properties except those which concern the acetylene-generator builder or
the gas consumer have been omitted from the present book.
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