The Wizard of Menlo Park (16 page)

One New York company, the lithograph firm of Hinds, Ketcham, succeeded in buying its own power plant from Edison Electric. The electric light was much superior to gaslight for work that required distinguishing colors, and the firm provided a testimonial that the light was “the best substitute for daylight we have ever known, and almost as cheap.” The Blue Mountain House, a hotel that sat thirty-five hundred feet above sea level in the Adirondacks, got an Edison power plant, too. Located forty miles from the nearest railroad, the machinery had to be packed onto the backs of mules, and once installed the boilers were fed by wood. With a printing firm grateful for the quality of the light, and the resort hotel grateful for electric light of any form, these early installations offered Edison Electric good references from customers less concerned about the economics than others would be.

Well before Edison’s Pearl Street station was ready, Brush was selling its arc lights to businesses for interior use, too, with power supplied from its own central station. In December 1881, the only thing that kept Brush from moving faster was a shortage of machinery needed to expand its generating capacity. Its system in Manhattan supplied 550 lights, outdoors and indoors, and could have supplied light to more offices if it had had more power to distribute in the late afternoon and early evening. In winter, its outdoor lights uptown along Broadway came on while downtown offices were still open, creating peak demand for electricity that exceeded the limited supply of power.

While Brush was hampered by insufficient capacity and the gas companies were unable to persuasively portray electric light as intrinsically more dangerous than their own, Edison Electric could have grabbed all the business it could handle by responding to requests for lights powered by on-site plants. In the three months following the Menlo Park demonstrations, the company received three thousand to four thousand separate applications—so many it had lost accurate count. Thomas Edison’s determination to spurn these opportunities to quickly commercialize the electric light, and instead to remain focused on the more difficult, but ultimately more significant, task of launching his own central power system, proved to be a brilliant stroke. It was not the result of formal study, or broad consultation with his lieutenants. Instead, it was an intuitive hunch that demonstrating the viability of a centralized system would be strategically more important to the business than accepting orders from individual customers.

The laying of the mains had begun in April 1881, but by December, only one-third of the district had been wired. Work was slowed by shortages of wire and the iron pipe through which it was threaded. Suppliers reneged on contracts signed before inflation had sent prices higher, and Edison filed lawsuits to enlist the authority of the courts to enforce the earlier agreements. In addition, the lines could advance only at night because the city prohibited work during daylight hours so that traffic would not be disrupted. Work stopped completely when winter set in and the ground froze. Edison Electric had to issue a disappointing announcement: Downtown would not be lighted until the spring.

Incandescent lighting did not hold the nation’s interest during the hard slog beneath New York’s streets. For the city that sought the latest lighting technology—and what city did not?—a new possibility had appeared the previous year: placing arc lights high enough to project an intense light for many blocks in all directions. In Wabash, Indiana, four enormous three-thousand-candlepower arc lights were suspended in 1880 from a flagstaff atop the courthouse. The light was said to be bright enough to throw shadows of cows standing five miles away. Other cities followed, mounting lights upon iron towers that rose hundreds of feet above the central business district. In San Jose, California, the publisher of the local newspaper raised cash contributions from the general public for the erection of a four-legged, 237-foot monster of a light tower, believed to be the tallest in the country. (Wild fowl crashed into its upper structure and dropped into the street below, providing an income supplement to police, who sold the birds to local restaurants.) In Detroit, the Brush Electric Light Company built 142 masts, each 200 feet high (and when it lost its contract with the city, refused to turn them over to the successor contractor, which added another 100 towers to the blight). A British observer marveled at Americans’ tolerance for such breathtaking ugliness, “the most defiant appearance of utter disregard for every other claim except utility.”

The foreign observer did not understand the competitive metabolism of local city boosters in America, determined to outhustle, outdo, out-build every other city. Wabash, the pioneer, bragged that it had earned headlines like “Wabash Enjoys the Distinction of Being the Only City in the World Entirely Lighted by Electricity.” It was not just small three-thousand-person towns in the Midwest that regarded aerial lights as an easy shortcut to electric lighting for a city. In Los Angeles, editorial writers advocated construction of multiple light towers atop the hills surrounding the city and provided poetic descriptions of the benefits. The lights “shall search the roads, alleys and corners, the streets will be safer and iniquity of all kinds will decrease. The brighter the light the better for truth, purity and honor, and the worse for fraud and all that fearful spawn of evil which flourishes in the darkness. Up then with the graceful and generous towers!”

The towers in Los Angeles were never erected, averting certain disappointment. A source of powerful light mounted so high created a glow that stretched in all directions, sufficient to cast shadows at great distances, but not strong enough for the light to be of useful intensity. When a history of Detroit that was published in 1923 looked back upon the city’s tower lights, which by then had been dismantled, it described them as “more spectacular than efficient.”

The initial sensation they had stirred upon their introduction, however, had drawn attention away from Edison and his light. In a contest, incandescent light could never match the sheer candlepower of arc light. The only way Edison Electric could regain some attention for itself was to come up with an entirely novel use of its low-candlepower light, a feat accomplished by William Hammer, formerly the chief engineer of the Edison Lamp Works and lately dispatched to London. In February 1882, Hammer unveiled at the Crystal Palace Electric Exhibition an electrified sign. It was about ten feet in length, spelling out “Edison” in foot-high letters, using about a dozen sixteen-candlepower bulbs for each letter. By means of a hand-cranked drum that was out of sight, the letters of “Edison” were illuminated, one by one, then all at the same time. With this, Americans introduced to the world the first electrified advertisement.

While work on Pearl Street was in progress, Edison was able to test his newly designed electric light equipment in a full-scale, real-world demonstration—in the heart of London. Along a half-mile route following the Holborn Viaduct, streetlamps and interior lights in adjacent hotels, restaurants, shops, and offices were installed, including in part of the General Post Office. It was a technical success, impressed the newspapers of Fleet Street, which were nearby, and provided valuable experience that would be used in readying the Pearl Street system. But it was merely a demonstration, not a commercial operation, and so could not answer the critical question: Would Edison’s centralized system of supplying electricity for incandescent lighting be able to match the low price of gas lighting?

Edison deployed a large battalion of canvassers to go house to house in the Pearl Street district, noting the number of gas jets, the usual hours of use, and their cost. He also learned which establishments had manufacturing operations in which a motor could be applied. Within the district, the researchers found some eighty horses who provided motive force by stepping on treadles in the top stories of buildings that they were never permitted to leave until death. The locations of prospective electricity customers were easier to determine, however, than the future cost of delivering power to them, generated in an untested centralized system likely to entail high distribution costs.

The passage of time did not serve to bolster the public’s confidence in Edison’s system. In May 1882, when completion seemed too far off to be within view, share prices of gas utilities advanced to great heights. Edison was unable to remain silent. Concerned that he was losing the public’s support, Edison called in the newspaper reporters and predicted that his system would within a few years completely eliminate gas as a source of lighting. He was so confident that customers would prefer his light, “better, cleaner, purer, and more wholesome,” that he could charge $1.50 for electric light equivalent to that produced by one thousand cubic feet of gas, even if the gas companies lowered their price to a penny.

Edison also boasted of his company’s considerable experience in the electric light business, pointing to the “isolated” site-based plants that the company had tried its best to avoid building while the Pearl Street project remained incomplete. The sheer volume of requests had worn down Edison’s resistance, and he had been least opposed to requests that had come in from overseas. By agreeing to build and supply the miniplants in places such as Italy, Austria, Finland, and Chile, Edison Electric was able to quickly establish its name in far-flung locations. By May 1882, two hundred of these small plants were in operation.

As engines of publicity, the miniplants potentially could most help when they became highly sought after by the wealthy for use in their own homes. This required, however, that they supply electric light without mishap. William Vanderbilt was the first to place an order for his own personal power plant and lighting system for installation at his house under construction on upper Fifth Avenue. Having seen the electric light on display at Edison Electric’s offices, Vanderbilt turned the responsibilities of general contractor over to his son-in-law, who was acquainted with technical issues as the head of the telephone department of Western Union. Edison was present on the evening that the system was turned on for the first time. The test went well, and Vanderbilt, his wife, and his daughters joined Edison in the main parlor, admiring the light. Almost immediately, however, signs appeared of a smoldering fire within the wallpaper, which apparently had a fine metallic thread in its weave. Edison ordered the system shut down and was pleased that no flames had appeared. Mrs. Vanderbilt, however, “became hysterical,” according to Edison. She wanted to know where the fire had started. The electrical plant in the cellar was described, but the more that was explained, the more upset she became. She had not been told before then that a boiler for the power plant had been installed in the house. On her orders, the entire installation was removed.

The unhappy ending to this first installation swiftly became public knowledge, and the gas utilities were glad to help spread the news. Edison did his best to minimize the problems that had been revealed. When asked whether it was true that Vanderbilt had ordered Edison’s electric lights to be removed from his new house because they did not work well—and had set fire to the woodwork—Edison declared, “It is false.” True, the lights had been removed, but they were not “our” lights, Edison maintained. “Our” lights will be those powered by the central station on Pearl Street. Mr. Vanderbilt had been so impatient, however, that he had insisted on installation of an individual power plant, which Edison appeared to disown. As for the report of a fire that had been caused by the lights, this, too, Edison tried to spin to his advantage. He told a reporter that one of the electric light wires had come in contact with a burglar-alarm wire, become overheated, and charred a few gold-thread wires in the cloth wallpaper, nothing more.

Undeterred by Vanderbilt’s unhappy experience, J. P. Morgan wanted Edison to build a system of lights and self-contained power plant for his house, too, at 219 Madison Avenue. He directed that the plant be installed at a distance, however, in a cellar excavated for this purpose beneath the stables, which were at the rear of the property. A subterranean conduit, built of brick, ran from the plant to the house and wires were run through the gas conduits. The power plant was staffed with its own full-time engineer, who came on duty at 3:00
P.M
. and fired up the boilers so power would be ready by 4:00. He completed his shift at 11:00
P.M
., a fact the members of the Morgan household sometimes forgot when the house was plunged into darkness in the middle of a late-evening card game.

The generating plant was situated far enough from the main house of the Morgan property that its presence did not annoy members of the household—the Morgan household, that is. Near the Morgan stables was the house of Mr. and Mrs. James Brown, however, and Mrs. Brown complained that the vibrations of the dynamo made her house shake. Pierpoint Morgan had rubber pads installed beneath the machinery and sandbags placed along the walls of the cellar to reduce the noise and vibrations, appeasing Mrs. Brown only somewhat. Fumes and smoke, she said, were penetrating her house and tarnishing her silver. Noise pollution in the neighborhood returned when stray cats in the neighborhood discovered a toasty place to gather and yowl in the winter: on the conduit that ran between the power plant and the Morgan house.

Morgan prized being ahead of everyone else, and the next year was concerned that his plant was already less than state of the art, a suspicion that was confirmed when he persuaded Edison to send Edward Johnson to the house for an evaluation. Johnson was instructed to upgrade the equipment and also to devise a way to provide an electric light that would sit on Morgan’s desk in his library. At a time when the very concept of an electrical outlet and detachable electrical appliances had yet to appear, this posed a significant challenge. Johnson’s solution was to run wires beneath the floor to metal plates that were installed in different places beneath the rugs. One of the legs of the desk was equipped with sharp metal prongs, designed to make contact with one of the plates when moved about the room.