Courtesy of Indiana Steel Co.
Electric Power Station
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.
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.