The seventeen great gas engines are operated by gas from the blast
furnaces which was formerly allowed to escape. Each engine drives a
2,500-kilowatt dynamo.]
In this manner Edison and his assistants became established in New York
City. Current at first was supplied free to customers for approximately
five months, which speaks quite as much for Edison’s Scotch “canniness”
as for his inventive genius. Well before the period was over the new
illuminant had justified itself, until today it shows itself an element
indispensable in every phase of the country’s activity.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC DELIVERY WAGONS LOADING EDISON LAMPS]
Early Growth.
Within two years from the opening of the station the demand for service
had so increased that over one hundred applications were filed in excess
of what could be accepted, because the plant was taxed already to its
utmost capacity. Allusion has already been made to the auxiliary plant
at Liberty Street, a station of 2,000 lights’ capacity which was
instituted in 1886. By 1887, not only a second but a third district had
been mapped out, the whole extending from Eighteenth to Forty-fifth
Street. All the underground system in the two new districts was laid
according to Edison’s new three-wire patent; and it was presently
announced that customers would be supplied with power as well as with
light.
Six months after the disastrous fire of 1890, in which the Pearl Street
station was burned, the site was chosen for the Edison Duane Street
building on which operations were so hastened that machines were
installed and current turned on the first of May the following year.
The Waterside Stations.
For some time the need of a central generating plant had been apparent
to all familiar with the company’s facilities and prospects. Already
during the summer of 1898 an engineering commission had visited all the
chief electrical stations of Europe and consulted the best-known experts
of the industry, and in 1902 the first waterside station in New York was
opened upon a site bordering the East River between Thirty-eighth and
Thirty-ninth Streets. The new operating room contained sixteen vertical
engines with a capacity each of over 5,000 horse-power. From these
current was generated by 3,500 kilowatt generators and sent out to the
various distributing centers.
As a very natural consequence of such development, the company by 1902
had 420 miles of underground system supplying installation amounting to
1,928,090 fifty-watt equivalents.
Electricity a Living Factor.
To talk about electrical development in terms of power consumed tells
but one side of the story. More impressive even than figures are the
immense number of uses to which electricity is put. Electric lighting,
introduced in 1882, has become practically the standard for
illumination, not only here, but for the entire civilized world.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC SEWING MACHINES IN THE MANHATTAN TRADE SCHOOL]
In the Printing Trade.
Electric power was introduced, timidly, by way of a few fans in 1884 and
following this, in 1888, motor drive for printing presses was
undertaken. At the present moment in New York City there is hardly a
printing establishment worthy the name that is not electrically operated
throughout. Among the largest customers of the central station in New
York City are the great daily newspapers, among them the _Times_, the
_World_, the _Sun_, the _Evening Post_, and the _American_.
Construction.
Not only are passengers conveyed up and down by electric elevators in
skyscrapers, but the buildings themselves are erected by means of
electricity. Recent examples of such construction are the Woolworth and
Equitable buildings in New York City; in this last instance a thousand
horse-power was used in digging the foundations alone.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._