It is often remarked that the history of electrical development is the
history of modern industrial development. This is true, except that the
terms should be reversed. Electric lighting was not invented to equip
skyscrapers and the huge apartment buildings of today. In point of fact,
the invention of these structures was possible only because electric
light already existed. Electric motive power was not devised to supply
the great manufacturing establishments of the present. On the contrary,
such institutions were erected precisely because such a thing as the
electric motor was available. The history of modern industry is thus
seen emphatically to be the history of electricity.
The First Commercial Central Station.
The first central station for the commercial distribution of electricity
was set going on the 4th of September, 1882, by Thomas Edison himself,
at 257 Pearl Street, New York City. Newspapers of the following day had
much to say. Wonder was expressed over the “blazing horseshoe that
glowed within a pear-shaped globe.” Another told of “the dim flicker of
gas supplanted by a steady glare, bright and mellow.” A third observed,
“As soon as it is dark enough to need artificial light, you turn the
thumb-screw and the light is there; no nauseous smell, no flicker, no
glare.”
Among the five or six buildings supplied with the new lighting were the
_Herald_ offices and the Drexel Building, at the time one of New York
City’s show places. The illumination of the latter was held to be a
truly momentous achievement owing to its great size. The equipment, in
other words, reached the grand total of 106 lamps. In comparison, it is
interesting to mention the lighting equipment of the new Municipal
Building, in New York City, numbering something over 15,000 lamps.
The Old Pearl Street Plant.
This primitive central station in Pearl Street was a converted warehouse
of brick construction, four stories high, and it was separated in two
parts by a fire wall. One of these parts was used for the storing of
underground supplies, while the other was occupied by the generating
machinery, for the support of which a special foundation of steel and
concrete was provided. The necessary steam boilers were accommodated in
the basement, while the second floor was occupied by six generators of
125 horse-power each, nicknamed “Jumbos.”
Simple as sounds this original Edison equipment, it nevertheless
represented years of research and experimenting on the part of Edison
and those associated with him.
Edison and the Electric Light.
In 1878 Thomas A. Edison, at his experimental laboratory at Menlo Park,
New Jersey, where he had already invented the carbon telephone
transmitter and many other things, undertook the task of devising a
general system for the generation, distribution and utilization of
electricity for lighting and power purposes.
The first marked accomplishment in operative detail was a lamp with a
platinum wire burner of high resistance, protected by a high vacuum in
an all-glass globe, and with the leading-in wires sealed into the glass
by fusion. Such a lamp necessarily had a small illuminating power
compared with that of the arc light, which was the only electric light
then in commercial use.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
“THE GREAT WHITE WAY”
Times Square, New York, at night, with Broadway on the left, a curving
ribbon of white light. Here every night in winter thousands upon
thousands of people throng to theaters and cafés.]
The next step in the development of Mr. Edison’s electric-lighting
system was taken on October 21, 1879, when he discovered that if a
carbonized cotton thread were substituted as a burner for the platinum
wire of his earlier lamp, the slender and apparently frail carbon was
mechanically strong, and also durable under the action of the electric
current. The announcement of the invention of the carbon filament lamp
was first made to the public in December, 1879.
[Illustration: STEAM DYNAMO IN EDISON’S OLD STATION]
With the experience gained by an experimental system at Menlo Park, Mr.
Edison began, in the spring of 1881, at the Edison Machine Works, Goerck
Street, New York City, the construction of the first successful
direct-connected steam dynamo. The development of an adequate
underground conduit proved also most serious. The district selected for
lighting was the area--nearly a square mile in extent--included between
Wall, Nassau, Spruce, and Ferry Streets, Peck Slip and the East River in
New York City. In those days such electrical transmission as
existed--this of course related largely to telegraphy--was accomplished
by means of a veritable forest of poles and wires augmented by the
distribution equipments of fire alarm, telephone, burglar alarm and
stock ticker companies. So used had people become to this sort of thing
that even the most competent electrical authorities of the time doubted
extremely whether Edison’s scheme of an underground system could be made
either a scientific or a commercial success, owing to the danger of
great loss through leakage. However, the Edison conduits once in use,
both the public and even the telephone, telegraph and ticker companies
acknowledged their feasibility. Such, in fact, was the success of the
new method that the city compelled at length the removal of all
telegraph poles.
In the Trenches.
The systematic laying out of street mains in the first company district
was begun in the summer of 1881. It must not be thought, of course, that
these old-time conduits resembled strikingly those of the present day.
The method then used was to dig a trench in which were laid the pipes
measuring twenty feet in length. Through these the conductors were
drawn, two half-round copper wires kept in place first by heavy
cardboard and afterward by rope. The conductors having been drawn in, a
preparation of asphaltum and linseed oil was forced into the piping to
serve as insulation. The spending of three and four arduous nights a
week in these trenches by Mr. Edison and his associates suggests the
rigor of the later European warfare. This work, together with that
incident to the operation of the new station, often proved too much even
for Edison’s phenomenal endurance. At such times he slept on a cot close
beside the running engines, while the rest of the crew crawled in on the
lower row of field-magnet coils of the dynamos, a place warm enough,
though a trifle bumpy. One of the inventor’s early assistants tells of
going to sleep standing up, leaning against a door frame--this, after
forty-eight hours of uninterrupted work.
[Illustration: THE DYNAMO ROOM OF THE FIRST EDISON ELECTRIC LIGHTING
STATION IN NEW YORK]
September 4th saw a full 400 lamps turned on from the Pearl Street
station. From that day on the station supplied current continuously
until 1895, with but two brief interruptions. One of these happened in
1883 and lasted three hours. The other resulted from the serious fire of
January 2, 1890, and lasted less than half a day. The record in the
second case would appear astounding, as no less a handicap occurred than
the burning down of the station itself. The situation was saved,
however, by the presence of an auxiliary plant that had already been
opened on Liberty Street.
Edison as a Central Station Pioneer.
The layman, while appreciating the tremendous advance in generating
machinery since the early eighties, is surprised to learn that the great
Edison system of today is conducted upon principles that Edison
developed and put into practice at that time. Edison’s, in truth, was
the master mind, the forming spirit of all the advances made in the
seventies and eighties. Exceedingly much, on the other hand, is due the
energy of his fellow workers, many of whom figure conspicuously in the
country’s electrical affairs at present.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of Indiana Steel Co._