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 skysc.r.a.pers 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 inst.i.tutions 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 Munic.i.p.al 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 a.s.sociated 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-gla.s.s globe, and with the leading-in wires sealed into the gla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 cafes.]

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 subst.i.tuted 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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, Na.s.sau, 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 a.s.sociates 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 b.u.mpy. One of the inventor's early a.s.sistants tells of going to sleep standing up, leaning against a door frame--this, after forty-eight hours of uninterrupted work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 a.s.sistants 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 inst.i.tuted 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sengers conveyed up and down by electric elevators in skysc.r.a.pers, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo by Brown Bros._

A FAIRYLAND OF LIGHT

The canyon of lower Broadway, south from the Woolworth Building--a glorious miracle of light.]

Not only are New York City's subways operated by electricity; they were also built by electricity, a statement which applies to the new subways as well as the parts of the first system. In digging for the new Broadway subway, an electric company supplied 25,000 horse-power. The mammoth new aqueduct system by which water is carried from the Catskills to the Battery is another example of electricity as a source of power for large construction work. Still more picturesque is the use of electricity in building the under-river tubes. Indeed, it is doubtful whether this particular form of operation could have been carried on without the aid of electricity.