The Story of the Advance of Electricity[18]
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.