ix
cursive talk," and when the conversation, dealing at first with things near at hand and next to us, reaches out and rises to the greater questions of life, duty and destiny.
In the year 1890 he severed his connection with the Westinghouse Company, since which time he has devoted himself entirely to the study of alternating currents of high frequencies and very high potentials, with which study he is at present engaged. No comment is necessary on his interesting achievements in this field; the famous London lecture published in this volume is a proof in itself. His first lecture on his researches in this new branch of electricity, which he may be said to have created, was delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on May 20, 1891, and remains one of the most interesting papers read before that society. It will be found reprinted in full in The Electrical World, July 11, 1891. Its publication excited such interest abroad that he received numerous requests from English and French electrical engineers and scientists to repeat it in those countries, the result of whiclı has been the interesting lecture published in this volume.
The present lecture presupposes a knowledge of the former, but it may be read and understood by any one even though he has not read the earlier one. It forms a sort of continuation of the latter, and includes chiefly the results of his researches since that time.
