MEN AND VOLTS
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WITHDRAWN
Men and Volts
EDISON CONCEIVES THE ELECTRIC LIGHT
MEN and VOLTS
CxAe G/tory oj
general (Ol
By
John Winthrop Hammond
PHILADELPHIA LONDON
(J. oO. oLtf)f)tncoit (Somfaany
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1941, by
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY
SCHENECTADY, N. Y.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface ix
Prologue xi
[PART ONE]
The Creative Period of the Arc Light and the
Incandescent Light
1. Planters of the Acorn 3
2. A Light in the West 7
3. Miniature Moons 11
4. One of the Four 17
5. At Menlo Park 20
[PART TWO]
The Period of Commercial Introduction of
Electric Lighting
6. The Arc Light Takes the Field 27
7. Transplanted Pioneering 33
8. Manhattan Initiated 37
9. The General Electric Succession 52
10. Lighting Up with Incandescents 57
11. Lighting Up with Arcs 67
vi CONTENTS
[PART THREE]
Electric Transportation, Motors, the Trans
mission of Power
CHAPTER PAGE
12. Broomstick Cars 75
13. From Shoes to Dynamos 87
14. Onward with Volts 99
15. Destiny Comes to Town 111
16. The Motor Marches On 115
17. Tribulation on Wheels 120
[PART FOUR]
The Period of Expansion and Consolidation
18. The Dilemma of Patents 141
19. Beside the Mohawk 149
20. The Edison Consolidation 153
21. "Experts" on the Job 162
22. New Faces, New Companies 169
23. A Famous Fight ISO
[PART FIVE]
The Formation of
the General Electric Company
24. General Electric Emerges 191
25. The World's Fair 213
26. Coffin Faces the Panic 220
[PART six]
The Development of Big Generating Units,
Beginning of Hydroelectric Projects, Expansion
of Systems through Transmission
27. White Coal 229
28. The Skilled Workman Appears 240
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER PAGE
29. The Steam Locomotive Challenged 254
30. Campaigning for Candlepower 259
[PART SEVEN]
The Development of Steam Turbines, Start of
Industrial Research and of Commercial and
Financial Expansion
31. Courage and Grime 275
32. Magic Comes to Manhattan 285
33. A Venture Into Research 298
34. Steinmetz and the Arc Light 303
35. Brains and Brawn 314
[PART EIGHT]
Spectacular Applications and Discoveries, Con
tinued Expansion, Birth of Radio, Major
Achievements Marking the End of
the Pioneer Period
36. The Romance of Work 325
37. The Taming of Tungsten 333
38. The Fire of Prosecution 340
39. The Eternal "Why?" 345
40. Conservatism Routed 364
41. A Period Ends 372
Epilogue The Second Generation 385
Appendix 397
Index 425
Preface
JOHN WINTHROP HAMMOND spent more than three years in
collecting the historical material for this volume. In 1922,
when he started this work, many of the pioneers of the elec
trical industry were still living, and he was able to get the
story from their own lips. Hammond had the temperament
of the true historian; he waded through records, he tracked
traditional stories to their sources. And because he saw the
epic of electricity in terms of men, the story he wrote was
a human one. To him, this history was a labor of love.
John Hammond died in 1934. The three hundred thousand
word manuscript which he had prepared was later edited
and condensed to approximately its present dimensions by
Arthur Pound, well-known writer on industrial subjects.
With a few minor changes, it is here presented.
Because Hammond's manuscript closed with the year 1922,
a brief Epilogue has been added, highlighting the major
achievements of the succeeding years. In addition, there has
been included as an Appendix the statement presented be
fore the Temporary National Economic Committee by Owen
D. Young, Honorary Chairman of the Board.
ix
x PREFACE
This volume is published as a record of the amazing ac
complishments of those pioneers of the electrical industry
who, in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties, har
nessed the gigantic force of electricity and put it to work to
serve mankind. But the drama of the progress of electricity
is a never-ending one; it goes forward today with an ever-
changing cast. May this record of the courageous work of the
pioneers serve as an inspiration to the men and women who
carry on their work today!
Prologue
To PEER INTO THE FUTURE to be allowed for one precious
moment to see the world as it will be sixty years from now
what wouldn't any of us give to see the marvels yet un
dreamed of that will mark the year 2000? And even could
we, by some strange happenstance, see for a fleeting mo
ment the wonders of that day, would we believe what we
saw? Probably not, for the world of sixty years hence will be
as different from today as today is different from the world
of sixty years ago.
The world of sixty years ago 1880 some can still re
member it. No electric lights, except in the hands of a few
ridiculed experimenters; no electric streetcars, except in the
minds of a few "addled visionaries'*; no electricity at all, ex
cept in a few isolated applications that had not yet pene
trated the consciousness of the laity. Yet in the years to
follow, the experimenters, the visionaries, the men of science
were to create a world as unbelievable to the people of that
day as the imaginings of a Jules Verne. And even they could
not foresee the vast changes that their work would bring.
We, who today enjoy the comforts, the conveniences, the
xi
xii PROLOGUE
high living standards that they created for us, see but the
outer shell of a grand and intricately woven matrix, into the
creation of which has been spent the genius of three genera
tions. To most of us, the world of today is the world of all-
time of yesterday, today, tomorrow. We cannot peer ahead
we are intolerant of the struggles of the past. And yet, if
we but realize it, to stand at our present vantage point and
follow step by step the weird discoveries of the pioneers is
as fascinating a journey as the mind of man can hope to take.
And having taken it, the world of today will never again be
to us the world of all-time it becomes rather a position
achieved by the diligence of those who have gone before; a
foundation upon which we too must build to that unknown
destiny that holds the fate of man.
With the past to inspire us, no goal is too difficult, no ob
jective too high, no idea too visionary to command our ef
forts. No matter how large or how small the part we play,
each is essential in the scheme of things. Ours is the torch to
carry forward, that the world of tomorrow may be an even
better world in which to live.
In this volume, the pioneer period of General Electric's
history is related in detail the history of the last two decades
all too briefly. But someday, when time has added the per
spective so essential in preparing a historical narrative, the
story of those two decades must be told, for it was in these
years that many of the efforts of the pioneers were brought to
fruition. And in this period, too, were sown the seeds that will
mature to create the wonders of the world to come.
PHILIP D. REED, Chairman
CHARLES E. WILSON, President
General Electric Company
[ PART ONE ]
The Creative Period of the Arc Light
, and the Incandescent Light
Planters of the Acorn
AMERICAN LIFE AT THE BEGINNING OF 1876 appears to our
twentieth-century eye a simple, unhurried existence. Horse-
cars jangled leisurely through the principal streets of the
larger cities. Multitudes of horses furnished their motive
power, at the expense of immense stables and many grooms.
The life of these horses was rigorous, and on the average
they lived only about three years. In 1886, according to an
estimate published at that time, the 500 horse railways
operating in the United States utilized 120,000 horses for
25,000 cars, or more than four horses to a car.
In these conveyances business men of the seventies rode
to store or office. In the wintertime passengers' feet were
embedded in hay or straw, with which the floors were
carpeted for the sake of warmth.
As evening approached, lamplighters made their rounds
through the city streets. Many were Civil War veterans, and
the "lame lamplighter" became almost a proverbial figure.
The lamps made small, yellow spots of illumination in the
darkness, dotting the gloomy streets in double lines. They
burned with a certain amount of flicker from air currents in
3
4 MEN AND VOLTS
the square glass chambers. A high wind was apt to extin
guish them. In thrifty cities the lamps were turned out on
nights of the full moon.
This was the era of the reciprocating steam engine.
Wherever power in large volume was required, there the
reciprocating engine was to be found. The engines were
bulky and towering a bewildering spectacle of intricate
parts in noisy motion.
Gas companies flourished, though they were targets of
public criticism. The young clerk courted his sweetheart by
gas-light. One of the perennial jokes of the day was built
upon the romantic practice of turning down the gas in the
front room while Sally entertained her beau. In most houses,
however, it was an almost daily chore to fill the kerosene
lamps, trim wicks and keep the glass chimneys washed.
New York in 1876 was a city of ground-scrapers. Few
buildings rose higher than five stories, and in downtown
Manhattan there were quaint brick structures with a Dutch
air about them. Fulton Street, going down to the old Fulton
Ferry, was the suburban outlet, where twice a day crowds
surged in the great American "rush-hour." In the nation's
manufacturing plants lines of shafting turned hour after
hour and a maze of belts whirred ceaselessly; in the back
country, mountain streams tumbled impetuously toward the
sea, unharnessed, unmolested.
Eighteen seventy-six was America's centennial year, and
it's Centennial Exposition was destined to open a new gate
way, on which might well have been carved a proverb after
the manner of Solomon: "It is the glory of God to conceal
a thing; but the honor of man to search it out." Through that
gateway lay the Electrical Era.
The prophets of that age smiled in condescension when
its pioneers dared to assert that the future belonged to the
PLANTERS OF THE ACORN 5
mysterious force with which Ben Franklin, more than a
century before, had played. People might listen; but soon
they shrugged skeptical shoulders and turned to the other
wonders of the Centennial Exposition, marking the end of a
century of existence for the United States of America.
The Exposition, like all such displays, was chiefly a record
of things done. It was concerned with history, not with
prophecy. Nonetheless, there was a real prophet present,
not of flesh and blood, but a thing of iron and copper; not
a man with ringing voice, but a man-made machine, whis
pering a new language. That prophet was the electric
dynamo.
There were two types of dynamos represented at the
Exposition; the Gramme and the Wallace, one Belgian and
one American. Small and unobtrusive, each supplied cur
rent to a single arc lamp. One of them, connected to a second
dynamo, drove a small pump.
"What curiosities!" spectators remarked, held for a mo
ment by the dazzle of bluish light. Then they passed on, to
lavish their admiration upon the huge Corliss steam engine.
This gigantic machine overshadowed everything in Ma
chinery Hall. Thirty feet high, the world's greatest prime
mover, and wonder of the exposition, it was capable of
producing one thousand horsepower of mechanical energy!
The mighty engine was daily applauded, the little electric
dynamos quickly forgotten. Purring quietly in their corners,
they gave no intimation that they would one day compel the
steam giant to bow its head in defeat. Even before the Ex
position closed, the principle of electricity yoked for service
had established itself. Inventive minds kept prodding it into
more tangible reality. These were the successors of Davy,
of Faraday, of Henry. And in the work of four of them is to
be found the acorn that became the oak. Each of these four
6 MEN AND VOLTS
was a pioneer; each struggled courageously to introduce a
startling innovation. They were men of imagination and
faith, whom doubt and criticism did not daunt.
Charles Francis Brush in the year of the Exposition was
fashioning an electric dynamo which created illumination
through the agency of arc lamps. Elihu Thomson and James
John Wood were soon to fashion dynamos of their own, each
of distinct design. The fourth of these pioneers was Thomas
Alva Edison.
None of these four men had an inkling that his activities
would be of value to the others. Practical dreamers though
they were, each with his own theories, his own workshop,
and his own financial supporters, there is no intimation that
any one of them foresaw the tidal currents which in hardly
more than fifteen years were to sweep them into a single
powerful organization.
The gates to a new era began to swing open under the
pressure of new ideas.
A Light in the West
OLD "UNCLE" BALDWIN, so the story goes, had come to Cleve
land in 1877 to see the sights. One of the most amazing
things he observed was a light of peculiar brilliance blazing
at the door of a little shop.
"That's a wonderful light, wonderful!" the old fellow
murmured to a young man who stood in the doorway.
"That, sir," the young man told him, "is the light of the
future electricity. Some day you'll see it light the entire
world."
Charles F. Brush, who at the age of twenty-eight had
successfully brought out his electric dynamo and arc lamp,
was the young man in the little shop.
When Brush graduated from the University of Michigan,
he was thoroughly familiar with the principles of electricity
as then understood and with the several dynamos which
had appeared. The most important of these were the "ring
armature" dynamo, devised by Pacinotti, an Italian, and
later introduced anew by Gramme, a Belgian, whose name
it bore; and the "drum armature" type, invented by Alteneck
of the German Siemens-Halske Company, and generally
designated as the Siemens dynamo.
8 MEN AND VOLTS
Brush believed that he could improve upon them both.
Five years after graduation he had worked out the design of
his dynamo. He could have prepared working drawings at
a moment's notice, but he doubted if there would be a
market in America for such a machine.
Geo. W. Stockly was at this time Vice President and
Manager of the Cleveland Telegraph Supply Company,
manufacturer of telegraph instruments, electric bells, and
fire alarm systems, where Brush worked. Once Brush
chanced to remark to Stockly that he could build a more
efficient dynamo. Stockly caught at the idea, offered Brush
the shop facilities of the Telegraph Supply Company, and
agreed that if the dynamo proved successful, his company
would undertake its manufacture. This was the encourage
ment Brush needed.
He went to his country home near Wickliffe and set to
work. When toward the end of the summer of 1876 he drove
to the door of Stockly 's office in a buggy, there was on the
seat beside him a machine that looked no larger than a
model, hand-built throughout except for iron castings fur
nished by the Telegraph Supply Company.
The machine was taken into the company's shop and con
nected to an arc lamp. The shaft of the armature was belted
to the main shaft of the shop. It was a tense moment when
the engine started. Brush with his dynamo stood at the limit
of electrical knowledge. Was he to pass a boundary? The
lamp, shining steadily, signalled his advance in dispelling
some of the darkness that lay beyond.
Brush had fulfilled his promise to Stockly, but he still
needed an arc lamp to go with his dynamo. In that period
there were not many lamps to be found and none of those
tested gave the results that Brush desired. Finally he under
took to design one of his own.
A LIGHT IN THE WEST 9
In Brush's arc lamp automatic action permitted the proper
regulation of the arc without the touch of human hands. The
mechanism was ingenious but simple. Working entirely by
magnetic control, it kept the carbons always a certain
distance apart, the arc always at a given length.
Two years later Brush completed his memorable invention
of a series arc lamp with regulating shunt coil. This inven
tion, which enabled him to introduce arc lighting from
central stations as a commercial venture, marked the birth of
that industry. Neat and compact in appearance, the new arc
lamp included a short-circuiting device, the function of
which was to carry the current around any disabled lamp
to the others in the series, thus keeping the circuit unbroken.
Ambition growing with success, Brush turned again to his
dynamo, a one-light machine, with an armature only nine
inches in diameter. Having achieved a series lamp, it was
inevitable that Brush should seek to build a larger dynamo,
his goal being a sixteen-light machine, which would give
him the basis of a practical electric lighting system.
Then began a period of designing and experimenting
during which the Telegraph Supply Company furnished
financial backing in such amount that the directors of the
company became apprehensive. A majority of them pro
tested to Manager Stockly that Brush was working in a
field without a future. They insisted that it would be better
for the company to confine itself to its "legitimate business."
Fortunately for future generations, Stockly quieted the
fears of his directors for a year or so.
In the winter of 1876-77, the company entered into a
formal agreement with Brush whereby they received the
sole right to manufacture and sell the Brush system under
any patents the latter might obtain. Patents were issued to
Brush the following April for his arc dynamo, and in the
10 MEN AND VOLTS
fall for his arc lamp. Other patents followed, including one
for a dynamo to operate at constant voltage, used first for
electroplating, later for incandescent lighting. As yet the
world of commerce, industry, and trade knew little of these
inventions. In 1877, however, two of Brush's small-size
dynamos and two of his lamps came suddenly into prom
inence among several contemporary machines that were
tested by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. The com
mittee which studied these machines was composed of two
men, Professors Edwin J. Houston and Elihu Thomson.
Thomas A. Edison
Elihu Thomson
Charles F. Brush James /. Wood
THE FOUR PIONEERS OF ELECTRIC LIGHTING
These photographs were taken about 1880, shortly after Edison invented the
incandescent lamp.
THE FIRST DYNAMO BUILT BY CHARLES F. BRUSH
HPM
PRIMITIVE, BUT EFFICIENT
A dynamo built by Thomson in 1878.
Miniature Moons
AT THE AGE OF 11 Elihu Thomson had fashioned his first
electrical device, an old-fashioned frictiorial machine, its
revolving element consisting of a wine bottle with a hole
knocked in the bottom. With it the lad charged a small
Leyden jar and proceeded to demonstrate by inflicting a
shock upon his incredulous father. Parental amusement
spurred young Elihu to build a larger Leyden battery of five
jars. When the elder Thomson touched this reservoir of
electricity, he received a shock that nearly threw him off
his feet. After that Elihu's experiments were viewed with
respect from a distance.
At the close of a brilliant high school career, Thomson
was familiar with most of the branches of mechanics, and
his incessantly active mind had approached the limits of
contemporary electrical knowledge. Professional advance
ment kept pace with his scientific development. At eighteen
he was made Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the Boys'
Central High School of Philadelphia, a school of excep
tionally high standing, and five years later, in 1876, he
succeeded to the full professorship of chemistry and me
chanics.
ll
12 MEN AND VOLTS
Before he was twenty-four, Thomson was invited by the
Franklin Institute to deliver a course of five public lectures
on electricity. Though young for such an honor, he seized
the opportunity eagerly. Contemporary textbooks described
electricity as being of two forms, static and dynamic.
Through research Thomson had discovered error in the
definition. It was the purpose of his lectures not only to
prove the error but to establish his own theory in place of
the old.
For five meetings he packed the auditorium and held an
audience spellbound. During one lecture he exhibited a
small direct-current dynamo of his own design and construc
tion, which created sufficient current to light an arc lamp on
the platform. An astonished audience viewed the unfamiliar
phenomenon in utter silence. By sheer accident in the course
of another experiment he discovered the principle of electri
cal resistance welding. When the series was concluded,
Elihu Thomson had become a person of standing in the
scientific world, for he had shown that electricity, instead of
being two forces, was inherently the same throughout na
ture.
Shortly after Thomson's lectures the Franklin Institute
undertook the first measurement of the output of an electri
cal dynamo. Desiring to purchase a dynamo, the Institute
conducted scientific tests of several types of machines then
available. Several months were consumed in testing a
Gramme dynamo, two Brush dynamos, and two Wallace
dynamos by Professors Houston and Thomson, colleagues
at the Boys' Central High.
It was no easy task which these men had undertaken, for
electrical measuring facilities in those days were crude. But
Thomson and Houston did their work so well that their
results were studied by scientists for years to come. The
MINIATURE MOONS 13
Gramme dynamo made the best record an efficiency of 38
per cent! The two Brush dynamos had respective efficiencies
of 31 and 27 per cent. But it was found that the Brush
machines yielded the most powerful current and hence
produced the best light. For this reason, the two professors
recommended that the Institute purchase a Brush dynamo.
In this disinterested manner did Thomson first come into
contact with Charles F. Brush and his work.
Then occurred an event which greatly stimulated
Thomson's thinking the first Brush arc lamps were in
stalled in Philadelphia at the store of John Wanamaker.
Five Brush dynamos were put to work, each supplying cur
rent to four arc lamps in the windows of the store. These
lights became one of the wonders of 1878. People gathered
in throngs on the sidewalk to examine them. For weeks they
were talked about and a contemporary writer called them
"miniature moons on carbon points, held captive in glass
globes."
Inspection of these developments convinced Thomson
that the field of electrical activity had an unlimited future.
Within a year he had justified his expectations by the per
formance of one of the most remarkable electrical experi
ments of the period. In the lecture hall of the Franklin Insti
tute, before a small group of spectators, Thomson exhibited
a revolutionary dynamo and two arc lamps which he and
Professor Houston had made. While friends were exclaiming
over this exhibition and the genius of the man who had pre
pared it, Thomson was drawn by a chance encounter into
the field of electrical manufacture.
Enthusiasm for photography frequently brought Thomson
to the studio of a commercial photographer in Philadelphia,
Thomas H. McCollin. One day McCollin invited his cousin,
George S. Garrett, up from Garrettsford, Pennsylvania, to
14 MEN AND VOLTS
witness a demonstration of Thomson's dynamo, induction
coils, and vibrating arc lamp.
During the demonstration Thomson remarked, "I can
build a better machine than this; one that will run any num
ber of lights you want/' Garrett was enthusiastic. "Let's
build a four-lighter," he suggested. "Ill stand the expense."
It was virtually an offer to Thomson to enter the business
of building an arc-lighting system for market. He called
upon his associate, Prof. Houston. Almost overnight they
prepared drawings, engaged a pattern-maker, and arranged
with the Harrison Machine Shop to do the machine work.
Thomson himself put the electrical windings on the new
dynamo. The inventor himself did not realize the possibilities
of this dynamo until he watched it in operation.
In the oven room of the Fuller Bakery in Philadelphia,
Garrett was permitted to install the Thomson-Houston dy
namo and its four arc lamps for all-night illumination of the
bakeshop's operations. It was the beginning of summer, and
the oven room registered a temperature of
140 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat was so ter
rific that Houston could stand it for only a
short time. He worried about his colleague,
who stayed in the oven room until late every
night. But nothing could deter Thomson,
who laughed at Houston's protests, rein
forced himself with a pitcher of ice water
and continued his vigil.
The hot spell passed. Garrett, pleased with
the results of the Fuller Bakery tests, asked
for a machine that would operate more arc
THE ARC LAMP lamps. Thomson set to work immediately.
?5X 7 t> S r ,?o B J^ Changing the circuit connections of the dy-
CHARLEsr. 111 i i i
BRUSH namo enabled it to supply eight arc lamps
MINIATURE MOONS
15
instead of four. The machine was successfully tested just as
it came from the shop; and several Brush arc lamps were
borrowed to fill out the circuit, for Thomson had no supply
of his own.
Now came discovery which was to reward long hours of
experiment. Thomson switched one of the lamps out of
the circuit while the dynamo was running. He knew what
would happen. The moment one lamp was cut out, the bal
ance of the circuit was upset. Thomson stepped to the dy
namo and changed the position of the metal brushes that
were picking current off the whirring commutator until he
had restored the current entering the circuit. He found that
if he adjusted the brushes properly each time, he could turn
off all of the lamps, one after the other, and the current
would stay constant. Instantly he saw
the possibility of automatic control,
and set about designing a regulator.
Its superiority lay in the fact that in
dividual lamps could be switched off
or on at will without upsetting the cir
cuit. Other systems either introduced
a large section of iron wire to set up
a substitute resistance, or more com
monly, maintained a reserve bank of
lamps at the power station, one of
which had to be switched in by an at
tendant every time a lamp in the
working circuit was switched out.
There was a fire one night in John
H. Gardner's brewery, where the sec-
_ __ fit T
ond installation or the Thomson-Hous-
ton system was located. Several lamps THOMS AND
were disabled, yet the circuit was un- HOUSTON
JJtlJCi
INVENTED BY
16 MEN AND VOLTS
impaired. The automatic regulator kept the other lamps
operating normally and lighted the rescue of all the horses
from the burning stable. One of the firemen, after seeing the
arc lamps drenched with water, exclaimed, "What the dick
ens kind of a light is that? You pour water on her and she
won't go out!"
Garrett and Thomson had survived an emergency, and
upon the success of their system they now began to build a
thriving business. For the moment, however, let us leave
them and examine contemporary developments.
One of the Four
THE SHOP FOREMAN of the Brady Manufacturing Company
of Brooklyn was James J. Wood, an intelligent and observant
young man of twenty-one. He was good-natured and oblig
ing, and so thoroughly likable that he was known to every
one as "Jimmy." Some of his subordinates in the shop never
knew his last name. Yet young Jimmy Wood was destined to
take his place with Brush, Thomson, and Edison as one of
the four outstanding pioneers in applying electricity to com
mon use.
Jimmy Wood had determined to build a dynamo that
would reduce heat losses, and that would weigh well below
the average of dynamos then in use, which was around six
hundred pounds. He had no money, but his employer, James
Brady, promised to manufacture the proposed dynamo if
Wood would allow him a half -interest in the patent. To this
the latter agreed. When the dynamo was finished, in May
1879, it was, like Brush's, hardly larger than a model. It
weighed 87 pounds; its armature was only eight inches in
diameter and two and one-half feet in length. A trifle more
than one horsepower would operate it.
17
18 MEN AND VOLTS
Officials of the Fuller Electrical Company were dumb
founded by the achievement, and not until a reputable elec
trical engineer tested it would they credit what this young
man had done.
Then came action. They paid Wood and Brady ten thou
sand dollars for the patent rights. They renamed their organ
ization the Fuller- Wood Company, with Wood's dynamo as
DYNAMO, 1879 MODEL
Built by Jimmy Wood
their chief stock-in-trade. Soon it was being sold, installed,
and operated in a wide-spreading territory.
Level-headed even after this sudden turn of fortune
Jimmy Wood proceeded to improve his already efficient ma
chine. He knew that his original dynamo had weaknesses
which could be avoided. Accordingly his commercial dy
namo, developed immediately, was built for higher voltage
and for series-circuit work. Any tendency of the machine to
EDISON'S MENLO PARK LABORATORY IN THE JO'S
The laboratory is the long building with the porch. In the foreground
is the office building; the building at an angle is the "glass house"
where experimental lamp bulbs were blown; at right angles to the
laboratory in the rear is the machine shop; the experimental railway
can be seen at the right.
BIRTHPLACE OF THE INCANDESCENT LAMP
Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, showing the lamp used in the first
public demonstration on pole in foreground.
OCTOBER 19, 1879
Artist's reconstruction of the scene in the Menlo Park laboratory when
the first successful lamp was turned on.
ONE OF THE FOUR
19
emit flashes, or to "spark" at the point where the brushes
were in contact with the commutator was avoided. Wood's
dynamo showed no sparking; it ran with little noise; it was
utterly simple. When ready for the market it weighed 120
pounds.
Like Thomson, Wood devised an automatic regulator,
which included the use of two brushes under each magnetic
pole. These brushes operated not only to in
sure proper change in voltage, as more or
fewer lamps were placed in the circuit, but
also to prevent destructive sparking.
By this time arc lamps were installed in
doors as well as out, as promoters pushed the
idea of interior arc illumination. Salesmen
went after the business of factories, hotels,
and theaters, but they were careful not to
say too much about voltage. It was a weak
ness of these systems that for interior instal
lation a voltage dangerous to human safety
had to be sent into customers' premises.
About this time a phrase was occasionally
heard: "The subdivision of the electric light/*
What did it mean? Could the arc lamp be JIMMY WOOD'S
, j. .j , ^ u i ARC LAMP
subdivided r Could anyone cut up a lamp
of two thousand candlepower into twenty lamps, each of one
hundred candlepower?
While a score of inventors had such a small unit in their
thoughts, the true apostle of incandescence had sequestered
himself at Menlo Park. He was still to be heard from, still
an unknown. But the hour was at hand when his genius
should quicken a world to gratitude.
5
At Menlo Park
AWAY FROM THE BUSTLE OF CITIES, picturesque in its seclu
sion, the hamlet of Menlo Park was, until 1876, one of the
byways of life. Then suddenly into it came a man who
seemed little less than a magician and who raised it to fame
among the cities of the nation. For a few teeming years it
started into intense activity, recurring excitement, luminous
nights. After that, quiet. The tide of activity, as suddenly as
it flowed, was at ebb, and Menlo Park relapsed again into
tranquillity, retaining only the halo which one man had
given it to wear forever.
The first intimation the village had of the newcomer was
when a gabled dwelling began to rise near the railroad
station. Inhabitants learned that the owner's name was Edi
son; and after a while they began to see him an energetic
young man with searching eyes and a ready smile. Not far
from his home, he erected a laboratory, two stories high and
a hundred feet long, built of white clapboards, with a porch
across the twenty-five-foot front. Other buildings rose about
the same time a machine shop, power house, and a library-
office.
Into this small center workers began to come. The hum of
20
AT MENLO PARK 21
enterprise arose. Expectancy was in the air. Only shortly
after his arrival the infectious enthusiasm of a young man
had caught up, not alone associates, but the town where
they lived. Menlo Park was a conquest of Edison's, and
henceforth it was to acknowledge his residence with grati
tude.
But the scientist, however great his zeal, cannot apply his
ideas without practical support. Grosvenor P. Lowrey, a
New York lawyer of high standing, was Edison's most loyal
admirer among men of influence. Jovial and good-hearted, a
typical old-school barrister with Horace Greeley whiskers
under his chin, he had closely followed Edison's work with
the phonograph and telephone transmitter, acting as legal
adviser and acquiring a tremendous faith in the ability of the
young inventor. When, around 1878, public interest began to
lose itself in wonder over the arc light, Mr. Lowrey was one
of several to think of electric lighting as an opportunity for
Edison. Immediately he set about securing the necessary
capital.
Through the interest of backers came the incorporation
in October, 1878, of the Edison Electric Light Company.
Edison was now committed to experimenting with electric
lighting and he was provided with ample funds upon which
he began to draw. He increased equipment, hired more
men, and put all his characteristic intensity, his great tech
nical imagination, into the effort of producing a small-unit
electric light.
Hundreds of experiments took place for fourteen months,
and more than $40,000 was expended. Gradually a service
able lamp filament of carbonized substances along with an
all-glass, hermetically-sealed bulb were developed. Lastly,
the means of obtaining and keeping a vacuum in that bulb
were worked out.
22 MEN AND VOLTS
Toward the end of October, 1879, Edison carbonized a
cotton thread. He placed it, bent in horseshoe form, inside
one of his sealed glass bulbs. On the evening of October 19,
this crude experimental lamp, standing upright on a table,
was connected to an electric circuit. A knot of Edison work
ers had gathered to see what would happen. The central
figure was the wizard himself. With him were Francis R.
Upton, his mathematician; Charles Batchelor, his model-
maker; John Kruesi, his machine-shop expert; Ludwig
Boehm, his glass-blower; and Francis Jehl and Martin Force,
of the laboratory staff.
Current was switched on. The lamp, responding instantly,
glowed with a soft light. Quickly they measured the re
sistance. It was 275 ohms ample for their purpose and
overwhelmingly greater than the four or five ohms of pre
vious incandescent lamps. Then all sat down to watch the
slender horseshoe of light, half expecting it to vanish. But
hour after hour it continued to glow until the night was
spent.
No one had eaten, no one had thought of sleep. The grey
of a second dawn found them at their vigil. Upton alone
excused himself, feeling that he should not altogether desert
his home, but he hurried back soon after daylight.
About one o'clock on the second afternoon, October 21,
more than forty hours after it first received the current, the
filament burned out.
The spell was broken. The men leaped up with cries of
jubilation. Edison was quiet in the hour of his tremendous
success. As the little lamp glowed, he had envisioned "great
cities lighted from central stations," and his mind was alive
with plans. But all he said, when the glow finally vanished,
was, "That's fine that's fine! I think we've got itl If it can
burn forty hours, I can make it last a hundred."
"LONG-WA/STED MARY ANN"
Edison built these dynamos in 1883.
LIGHT FOR THE NEW YEAR
This lamp, with a filament of carbonized
bristol board, was exhibited by Edison on
New Year's Eve, 1879.
THE EDISON DYNAMO
OF 1886
BRUSH IMPROVES UPON HIS FIRST DYNAMOS
AT MENLO PARK 23
The successful demonstration of a solitary lamp left the
spectators awe-struck. Little did they realize, however, that
what they had seen was to expand electrical usage literally
to the confines of civilization; for the incandescent lamp
could go where the arc lamp could not into office buildings
and into homes. It was a lamp that could compete with gas!
The London technical journal, Engineering, remarked that
"if he (Edison) has indeed arrived at the solution claimed
. . . gas has found a dangerous rival." No wonder gas stocks
were disturbed!
Edison had experimented with a dynamo throughout
1879. The genius of Menlo Park had analyzed the scientific
theories regarding dynamos and had studied the report of
the Thomson-Houston tests at the Franklin Institute. The
highest efficiency of any dynamo then examined was 38 per
cent, and he determined that his machine must not lose
over 60 per cent of the power put into it.
The Edison dynamo had large magnets indeed, designed
to create a powerful magnetic field. They represented much
experimental work. Their dimensions were odd, for the mag
nets rose three and a half feet into the air and were joined
at the top by an iron crosspiece which completed the mag
netic circuit and made the contrivance resemble an immense
Roman numeral, II. Some of Edison's associates dubbed the
dynamos "long-waisted Mary Anns," though officially they
were termed the Edison bi-polar. The armature was modeled
after the efficient drum type. But it had the advantage of
being laminated; that is, it was constructed of sheets, or
discs, of iron, insulated from each other although mounted
on a single shaft. This innovation resulted from innumerable
experiments by Edison's mathematician, Upton. When the
ungainly machine was tested, the result surprised even Edi
son and Upton. It was ninety per cent efficient!
24 MEN AND VOLTS
Notwithstanding this remarkable performance, the other
inventors gave no indication of relinquishing the field to
any "incandescent lighter/' even though sponsored by the
miracle man of Menlo Park.
[ PART TWO ]
The Period
of Commercial Introduction
of Electric Lighting
The Arc Light Takes the Field
AN ARC LAMP, hanging from the balcony of Dr. Long-
worth's residence in Cincinnati, was attracting curious
crowds through the early days of 1878. Current was supplied
from a Brush dynamo in the basement, but to the mystified
watchers the lamp was an entity in itself.
One evening when Brush was in Cincinnati to examine his
invention, he walked through the crowd before Dr. Long-
worth's home. A man with a knowing air was explaining to
his neighbors how the light was obtained.
"See that little box at the top?" he said, pointing to the
metal case containing the control mechanism. "That's a can
full of oil. The oil flows down through those side-pipes to
the burner of the lamp and feeds the flame. That's all there
is to itl . . . And what are you smiling at?" he asked the
stranger who had joined his listeners.
"I didn't realize the lamp was as simple as that," answered
Brush.
In Cleveland, Brush's home town, there was no such skep
ticism to surmount. On the streets and in Monumental Park
the first large-scale installation of arc lighting, as an exhibi-
27
28 MEN AND VOLTS
tion rather than a commercial development, was accom
plished.
It introduced a method of early outdoor arc lighting soon
to become characteristic the elevation of lamps upon tall
masts, or towers. This practice caused people to think of
the arc light as a substitute for the sun and, with an immense
naivety replacing their skepticism, they thought that a few
such lights, hf ted high above all surroundings, would turn
night into day.
This first Cleveland installation was a modest one. Twelve
lamps, mounted on eighteen-foot posts, were supplied with
current from a Brush dynamo in the Telegraph Supply Com
pany's shop. They were first lighted on April 29, 1879.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, describing the scene the day
after the lights were first turned on, said:
"Thousands of people gathered . . . and as the light shot
around and through the Park a shout was raised. Presently
the Grays Band struck up in the pavilion, and soon after
ward a section of artillery on the lake shore began firing a
salute in honor of the occasion.
"The light varied some in intensity, when shining its
brightest being so dazzling as to be painful to the eyes. In
color it is of a purplish hue, not unlike moonlight, and by
contrast making the gas lights in the store windows look a
reddish yellow.
"The Telegraph Supply Company's establishment . . .
was thrown open to as many people as could be accom
modated at a time to go through the works and inspect the
machinery which sends light over the wire to blaze out
between the carbon points in the lamps."
Two months after Cleveland had so proudly applauded
the achievement of one of her citizens, the Brush system
found its way from the Middle West to the Pacific coast.
THE ARC LIGHT TAKES THE FIELD 29
In San Francisco, on June 30, 1879, was incorporated the
California Electric Light Company. George H. Roe was the
organizer, and William Kerr sold the electrical equipment,
holding Brush territorial license for California, Oregon,
Washington, and Nevada.
This pioneer company proposed to sell electrical illumina
tion to cash customers, something never before attempted.
The few commercial installations of any inventor's apparatus
then in existence had been solely for private use. Individ
uals, merchants, hotels, and theaters had purchased plants
and arc lamps; they had had their premises wired; and the
lights, supplied from their own private generating plants,
were utilized for private benefit on their own property.
These were designated as "isolated lighting plants."
The San Francisco Company was the first in this country,
if not in the world, to enter the business of producing and
selling electric service to the public. Its generating plant was
in the rear of what is now the Pacific Building, and modest
indeed was the equipment first installed. It consisted of two
Brush dynamos, one supplying six lamps and the other six
teen. In December two dynamos of the larger size were
added. Customers were not lacking, though the rate was
high. A flat rate of $10 per week per lamp was charged, as
metering of the current was quite unknown. As the system
was improved, rates were reduced, until eight years later it
was $3.00 per week for current furnished up to 9:30 o'clock
in the evening (11:00 on Saturdays), $4.00 for current up
to midnight, and $6.00 for all-night service. No current was
furnished on Sundays and holidays. The city and county of
San Francisco were eventually among the customers of the
plant, setting up a street lighting system of 21 masts, 50 feet
in height, each having four 4,000-candlepower lamps.
Brush saw that the early carbons had high electrical re-
30 MEN AND VOLTS
sistance and burned out rapidly, thus becoming expensive.
They were made from gas-retort carbon and contained from
three to five per cent of ash, which was fatal to steadiness
in the light, causing a flickering.
Both Thomson and Brush worked to improve carbons as
soon as they had developed their systems of arc lighting.
When George S. Garrett expressed doubt concerning a satis
factory supply, Thomson accepted the challenge: "If we can
not buy carbons in the market, we can certainly make them."
In 1879, with the assistance of the photographer, Thomas H.
McCollin, he procured a supply of hard carbon as raw
material, powdered it, mixed it to secure cohesiveness, and
moulded it into sticks, which were afterward baked.
Brush attacked the problem in a totally different manner.
He utilized the by-products of mineral oil distilleries to pro
duce his "still-coke" carbon, which contained only three
hundredths of one per cent of ash. After the carbon sticks
were moulded and baked, he electroplated them with cop
per to reduce electrical resistance and to retard combustion.
This was the origin of his "copper-coated" carbons, on which
he obtained a patent in 1877.
Having won their way in the West, Brush lights were in
troduced in the East, where they were installed at Wana-
maker's Philadelphia store and exhibited at the fair of the
Massachusetts Charitable Association in Boston.
Niagara Falls was illuminated for the first time on July 4,
1879, by a sixteen-light Brush dynamo and arc lamps. The
dynamo, driven by a waterwheel, was a pioneer hydro
electric plant. A full complement of lamps was always op
erated; there was no need to switch off some and leave the
rest burning.
In the year 1880 the Brush fortunes were given a tremen-
THE ARC LIGHT TAKES THE FIELD 31
dous impetus by an actual sale of a system to a little com
munity in northern Indiana.
The governing authorities of Wabash, Indiana, had found
that electric lighting would not only cost some $800 a year
less than gas lighting, but would yield a greater volume of
illumination. Accordingly they contracted for a Brush instal
lation with four lamps of 3000 candlepower each, mounted
on crossarms atop the dome of the Court House 200 feet
above the ground. This was the first municipally owned
electric lighting plant, and Wabash the first town wholly
lighted by electricity, for it was planned to illuminate the
city from a single point.
Both press and public followed the progress of the experi
ment with intense interest. Early on the day when the cir
cuit was to be turned on, awed and wondering folk com
menced to pour into Wabash from the surrounding country.
Newspaper correspondents traveled from cities as far distant
as Chicago and New York. By 8:00 o'clock on the moonless
evening of March 31, 1880, more than 10,000 persons were
crowded about the Court House.
Let newspaper accounts tell the tale.
The Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel: "Promptly as the court
house clock struck eight, the thousands of eyes that were
turned toward the inky darkness over the courthouse saw a
shower of sparks emitted from a point above them, small,
steady spots of light, growing more brilliant until within a
few seconds after the first sparks were seen, it was absolutely
dazzling. A loud shout went up from the crowd, the band
began to play. . . ."
A Chicago Tribune reporter went, he says, "up into the
dome, right under the light, where (he) beheld a scene of
magnificent splendor. For a mile around, the houses and
32 MEN AND VOLTS
yards were distinctly visible, while the far-away river flowed
like a band of molten silver."
An eye-witness pictures the emotions of his fellow specta
tors: "People stood overwhelmed with awe, as if in the
presence of the supernatural. The strange, weird light, ex
ceeded in power only by the sun, rendered the square as
light as midday. Men fell on their knees, groans were uttered
at the sight and many were dumb with amazement. We
contemplated the new wonder in science as lightning
brought down from the heavens."
The Wabash Plain Dealer was pardonably exuberant:
"Yesterday morning the city of Wabash woke up and found
itself famous. It is today the best advertised town in the
United States. From Maine to California telegrams of the
Associated Press flashed the intelligence that the problem of
lighting the streets of an entire city solely by electricity was
solved. ... In the street in front of the residence of Levi
Linn, who is, we learn, still denouncing the electric light as
a fraud, our reporter, standing three squares distant from
the light, was able to read with ease the advertisement of
Ebblinghouse and Austin."
Thus was Wabash given its baptism of light. For the
moment Brush's competitors were out-distanced and for
gotten. But one of them at least, Elihu Thomson, already had
his second wind and was pressing strongly forward.
Transplanted Pioneering
PROFESSOR THOMSON'S PRESTIGE had already travelled into
New England when New Britain, Connecticut, sent a group
of men, headed by Frederick H. Churchill, to make a proposi
tion to this promising inventor. They wanted to organize an
electrical company on the strength of his patents. It was an
interesting offer and Thomson was not long in giving a favor
able answer.
News of his impending departure spread through the
Boys' Central High School as commencement day drew
near. The honor man in the class of 1880 was Edwin Wilbur
Rice, Jr., who had been Professor Thomson's most brilliant
pupil. A few days after graduating the young man cast his
lot with the professor. Before autumn the two men, opti
mistic and courageous, departed for New Britain. Neither
suspected that they were to spend the rest of their lives in
a common enterprise, were to "team up" together through
many viscissitudes, were to help shape a new industrial
structure.
A company was chartered with William Parker, president;
Mr. Churchill, Treasurer and General Manager; and Pro-
33
34 MEN AND VOLTS
fessor Thomson, "Electrician" a term commonly used to
designate the technical man, or inventor, whose patents pro
vided the foundation for commercial organization. Profes
sors Thomson and Houston executed a formal contract with
the new American Electric Company. Briefly, it bound the
company to manufacture "with all reasonable diligence" the
inventions covered by the Thomson-Houston patents. These
articles, enumerated in the contract, were to be sold and put
into public use "by diligent and continuous attention . . .
in all reasonable and advisable ways." In case the company
failed to live up to stipulations, the patents were to revert
to the patentees; stock of the company, given to the two
professors in exchange for the patents, was to be surrendered
by them.
So Thomson, with the spirit of the scientific explorer tin
gling in his brain, set up his humble working quarters in the
basement of an old factory; and he and his young assistant
set briskly to work to improve the Thomson-Houston arc
light system.
Both men personally wound the wire on the armatures of
their first dynamos. When they were not helping in the shop
work factory hands were few and inexperienced at first
they were ceaselessly experimenting. They were always at
work at seven in the morning; they seldom stopped before
six at night. Frequently they worked in the evening, with a
few assistants as devoted as themselves. On one such occa
sion they improvised a luncheon of raw oysters, on which
somebody suggested using paraffin in lieu of butter. Thom
son, however, took his without garnishing, saying that he
objected to "the candlepower flavor."
His residence at that time was in New Britain's principal
hotel. Rice had moved to a locally celebrated establishment,
Mrs. Moore's boarding house, which became a counterpart
TRANSPLANTED PIONEERING 35
to Mrs. Jordan's famous boarding house in Menlo Park.
There Rice shared a room with a young bookkeeper and cost
clerk, George E. Emmons, who had been hired by Churchill
to establish a bookkeeping system for the new American
Electric Company. Rice woke up once in the middle of the
night and found his room-mate hard at work on the com
pany's accounts. When he inquired what was going on, Em
mons replied that he was trying to run down a shortage in
his trial balance.
"How much is the shortage?" asked Rice.
"Three cents."
"Good Heavens!" cried Rice. "Come to bed and 111 give
you the three cents in the morning."
Whereupon the young cost clerk laid down his pencil and
gave his sleepy room-mate an academic lecture on the art
of bookkeeping and the tremendous importance of a few
missing cents in the trial balance.
The first machines in these days ran only about ten or
twelve lights. Machines of larger capacity were demanded,
and Professor Thomson set to work to design one to operate
twenty arc lamps. Thomson was constantly looking ahead,
and he foresaw that, as arc light systems grew in size with
correspondingly higher voltages, lightning protection would
become a problem. Discussing the question with Rice, he
pointed out that an electrical discharge caused by lightning
could be led harmlessly to earth, but that a heavy arc, pro
duced by the current of the circuit, would attempt to follow.
This arc would have to be overcome.
Thomson took a large steel magnet and walked over to
several arc lamps which were shining in the test room. He
placed the magnet in such a position that the arc was be
tween the two magnetic poles. Immediately the arc vanished
and the lamp went out. A magnet had blown out the arc.
36 MEN AND VOLTS
As long as the magnet remained in proximity it was impos
sible to produce a fresh arc. From this experiment came
Thomson's application of the magnetic blowout principle.
He used it first in an efficient type of lightning arrester and
later utilized it for electric switches.
8
Manhattan Initiated
A SINGLE MAN, IN 1880, precipitated a scientific contro
versy, caused dismay to gas companies, and threw the stock
market into turmoil. Shares in the Edison Electric Light
Company rocketed. Stock that had a par value of $100 a
share was not uncommonly sold at $500. In fact, the day
came when three shares sold for $2000 each, were resold
in a few minutes for $3700, and later the same day for
$5000 apiece. While speculative activity was at its height,
stock at times rose $100 a share within an hour. Yet this
was but a surface indication of a general undercurrent of
excitement. People everywhere were confident that a revolu
tion in artificial illumination was at hand. And so it was
largely through the resistless energy of Thomas Edison.
Foremost in Edison's mind was the necessity of producing
incandescent lamps in quantity. Even while experimenting,
he sought to begin manufacture for he knew that he had a
product which could be commercially handled.
The word "filament" was Edison's contribution to the no
menclature of the future industry. His immediate purpose
was to find the best possible material for this filament. Ex-
37
38 MEN AND VOLTS
periment followed experiment; day-and-night activity at
Menlo Park was incessant.
"Somewhere in God Almighty's workshop," Edison said,
"there is a dense, woody growth with fibres almost geometri
cally parallel and with practically no pith, from which excel
lent filaments can be cut."
For nearly eight years Edison explorers searched the
world for that "dense, woody growth" especially in the form
of some species of bamboo. Bales and boxes containing plant
specimens were shipped to Menlo Park from China, Japan,
Ceylon, Cuba, and South America. No less than six thousand
vegetable growths were tested at the laboratory, not to men
tion scores of non- vegetable substances.
Most of the specimens were of bamboo, the virtues of
which Edison discovered by experimenting with fibre from
a palm-leaf fan lying on one of the laboratory tables. In
those days everything that met the eye was potential fila
ment material. Edison placed the fan under a microscope,
then had the bamboo cut into strips, carbonized, and
mounted in test lamps. They proved to make better filaments
than any he had yet developed.
In the lamps for a second public exhibition, which Edison
was planning, bamboo filaments were used exclusively. A
complete system of incandescent lighting was to be tested
on a large scale and its economy compared with that of gas.
As an underground system it was to extend along the main
streets of Menlo Park so as to provide light for most of the
dwellings.
For the exhibition Edison's men dug trenches along the
roads of Menlo Park. In them copper wire, without insula
tion and encased only in wooden moulding, was laid. It was
believed that a pressure of 100 volts would not require in
sulation, but the first attempt to transmit current in this
- . . 7.'i.< >v V-'
^Nt ' -~
ONE WAY TO LIGHT A TOWN
Arc lights, mounted on high towers, were expected to illuminate whole
communities from one central spot in early attempts at street lighting.
THE AMERICAN ELECTRIC COMPANY
The factory at New Britain, Connecticut, where Thomson started his
commercial career.
MANHATTAN INITIATED 39
fashion failed. Leakage of electricity blew out the whole cir
cuit.
Experiments in insulation were immediately begun. Coal
tar, a composition of powdered slate, and wrappings of mus
lin failed successively as non-conductors. When Wilson S.
Howell of the Edison staff, after thorough study of formulas,
offered to "cook" an insulating compound, he was installed
with kettles and raw material in the chemical laboratory.
More stench than success attended his first efforts. Dr.
Otto A. Moses, chemist, after acute discomfort, gave up try
ing to work. Howell not only smoked him out of his own
laboratory, but earned the disgust of adjacent parts of the
plant for his obnoxious "cooking." At length, however, the
martyr brought forth a successful compound of refined Trin
idad asphaltum, mixed with oxidized linseed oil, paraffin,
and beeswax.
Boys from neighboring farms were then rounded up, the
conductors were placed on saw-horses and the boys wound
on strips of muslin soaked in the compound. Each boy strad
dled a conductor, walking along as he proceeded to wind.
The tape was put on in three layers.
It was Election Day, 1880, when Edison was told that the
circuit was ready. A presidential campaign was just closing.
Interested in the fortunes of James A. Garfield, Edison re
solved to link the first trial of his system with the result of
the election.
"If Garfield is elected," he ordered, "light the circuit."
For hours a telegraph key at the plant clicked off poll
returns.
Edison in his residence waited as dusk changed into dark
ness. Suddenly Menlo Park blazed with light as current was
shot into many bamboo filaments. A political and an elec
trical triumph were commemorated together.
40 MEN AND VOLTS
A delegation from the New York Board of Aldermen,
which made the pilgrimage to Menlo Park late in December,
1880, officially appraised the new inventions. The New York
Herald, reporting the demonstration, observed that the al
dermen wanted to form an opinion of the "resident wizard's
work/'
"Stretching away on either side," the account went, "and
intercepting the Park at intervals, ran long lines of light.
There were illuminated spaces about all these gleaming
points and the prospect was very beautiful as the visitors
looked out upon it.
"But at a sign from the Wizard, all changed. A workman's
finger pressed the key and in an instant Menlo Park was in
darkness. A ripple of applause involuntarily ran through the
onlookers, but before it had subsided the finger was applied
again, and the landscape was illuminated in a twinkling."
The Newark Register recorded, on February 9, 1881, that
"Menlo Park, the little hamlet where the great electro-
scientist, Edison, holds communion with the hidden things
of this world, was visited last evening by three hundred of
Newark's best citizens."
From the country-side farming folk poured into Menlo
Park after nightfall to see the lights. One old fellow who
drove in twenty miles was heard to say: "It's a pretty fair
sight, but danged if I see how ye git the red-hot hairpin in
the bottle."
Multitudes that went to Menlo Park from New York night
after night were eventually to see the "Edison lights" on
their own streets. Edison and his counsellors had already
planned the introduction of the incandescent lamp in Man
hattan. On December 20, 1880 the Edison Electric Illumi
nating Company of New York was chartered to operate on
lower Manhattan, in an area termed by Edison the "First
MANHATTAN INITIATED 41
District" roughly a square mile included between Spruce
and Ferry Streets and Peck Slip on the north, Nassau and
Wall Streets, and the East River.
Plans for installation were complete in essential detail,
from a standardized lamp socket to the indispensable
current-meter. It was one of few instances in electrical his
tory of the invention by one man of an article for public use
together with a perfected system for bringing it into accept
ance. It was a Herculean task to plant this acorn of the
electric light and power industry a far greater undertaking
than the impatient public realized.
Thus it was that there came first to Manhattan lights of
the older type. In December, 1880, Brush lamps were in
stalled along Broadway for three-quarters of a mile, the first
electrical illumination of the famous street. The operating
organization was the Brush Electric Light and Power Com
pany of New York. This company also contracted to illumi
nate Union and Madison Squares by means of masts 160
feet high.
The system was a spectacular success, and the New York
Evening Post of December 17, 1880, tells of prospective cus
tomers other than the city of New York: the Steinway Ware
Rooms, the Park Theater, the Brunswick and Sturtevant Ho
tels, and Koster and Bial's music hall.
While sophisticated New York showed less excitement
upon first seeing Brush lamps than did Wabash, Indiana,
they were nevertheless well received. Nearly two years were
to pass before the wizard of Menlo Park, with his bamboo
filament and his ninety per cent efficient dynamo, would
make good his promise to supplant the gas jet.
During the winter of 1880-81, hundreds of persons wrote
to ask the Edison Electric Light Company how soon incan
descent lamps would be available. Hundreds of others so-
42 MEN AND VOLTS
licit ed agencies for the purchase of territorial rights. Had
the company sold territory that winter, it could have en
riched its treasury fabulously. But no one knew what prob
lems would be encountered in putting the proposition on a
commercial footing, and Edison himself had not obtained
sufficient experience in the practical operation of his system;
so the company refrained from engaging agents, who could
not possibly have given satisfactory service to customers.
A single agreement was made that winter with the Edison
Electric Illuminating Company of New York regarding the
famous "First District" where the Edison Electric Light
Company was to make the installation. Edison would per
sonally direct the work, conduct the necessary tests, start
the central station machinery, and satisfy himself that the
system was functioning properly.
When Edison "personally directed the work," he was on
the spot every day. He neglected sleep, and spent hours after
the workmen had gone home going over the ground or
solving minor problems.
Meanwhile activities of a different character were devel
oping downtown, where Edison had acquired a factory on
Goerck Street for the establishment of the Edison Machine
Works to manufacture the Edison dynamo. Miles of piping,
or "tubing" were required to contain the underground con
ductors; likewise shafting and pulleys, for connecting dy
namos to the steam engines that drove them, lamp sockets,
switches, meters, fuses, cutouts, brackets, junction-boxes, in
struments, and electroliers. Most of these were Edison's in
ventions, created in perfecting the system. As no existing
manufacturers produced them, he set up plants of his own.
"There was nothing that we could buy," he said, "or that
anybody else could make for us."
So, simultaneously with the Edison Machine Works, the
ELECTRICITY UNDER MANHATTAN
An artist for Harper's Weekly pictures the laying of the Edison "tubes'
or cables in the Citu's streets.
EXTERIOR OF THE PEARL STREET STATION
Edison's first generating plant.
MANHATTAN INITIATED 43
Edison Tube Company was started on Washington Street,
and the Edison Shafting Company on Goerck Street. Aux
iliary appliances were produced by Bergmann and Com
pany on Wooster Street, where Sigmund Bergmann, a for
mer Edison employee, was proprietor. The manufacture of
lamps by a force of forty-five men had been going on for
six months at Harrison, New Jersey, at the rate of 700 a day.
In the summer of 1882, among other new "hands," it gave
employment to a youth named George F. Morrison, whose
job was to unwrap and smooth tissue paper from lamp bulbs
as they came from the glass works at Corning, New York,
so they could be used again in packing finished lamps. His
pay, if he worked sixty hours, was a dollar a week. This boy,
undismayed by hard work, diligent and intelligent, was one
of the future managers of the plant.
As a "man of business" Edison showed himself coura
geous as well as sagacious. He did not hesitate to manufac
ture a lamp himself when the Edison Electric Light Com
pany was reluctant to do so. He recognized that the com
pany's policy was to hold patents, issue licenses, and promote
commercial efforts, but not to manufacture. Accordingly on
March 8, 1881, he executed a contract to sell the company
all the lamps it needed for forty cents apiece, delivered in
quantity, ready for commercial use, and with a manufac
turer's guarantee as to qualify, the contract to run through
the life of his patent. Each lamp cost Edison $1.10 to manu
facture.
In the first year not quite 30,000 lamps were sold to the
Edison Electric Light Company. Each year thereafter sales
increased, and manufacturing costs lessened. In 1881 Edison
produced lamps at seventy cents apiece; in 1882 at fifty
cents; in 1883 at thirty-seven cents, realizing then a profit of
three cents per lamp. The volume of sales that year wiped
44 MEN AND VOLTS
out deficits of the previous three years. In 1884, the cost
dropped to twenty-two cents, and lamps were sold by the
hundred thousand. The Edison Lamp Company was at last
a profitable enterprise.
All this while, there was going on at the Edison Machine
Works a relentless search for a monster generating machine.
The idea came to Edison as he studied the ten eight-
horsepower dynamos which supplied current at the Menlo
Park exhibition of 1880. A slow-speed engine drove all dy
namos through a complicated system of belting and shafting.
The power loss indicated considerable inefficiency. Hence
Edison conceived the plan of substituting for the ten dy
namos a single large-capacity unit with a direct-coupled,
high-speed steam engine.
No outsider saw the test, in the engine room at Menlo
Park, of the experimental unit which preceded the first prac
tical Jumbo.
The steam engine used in that test was planned for a
high speed of 600 rpm, and was to operate at a steam pres
sure of 120 pounds per square inch. Heretofore the average
speed of stationary engines was rarely more than 60 rpm
and the average steam pressure ranged from 60 to 80
pounds.
It was a winter's night when the test took place. Charles
T. Porter, who had designed and built the engine, opened
the throttle a little at a time, his eye constantly on the gov
ernor. It did not rise until the engine was making a racket
that sounded "like an immense drop-forge foundry with ten
thousand hammers in operation." The link motion was so
rapid that it 'looked like a triangular-shaped bit of haze
or fog."
Edison related this experience with appreciative gusto:
MANHATTAN INITIATED 45
'We set the machine up in the old shop that stood on top
of one of these New Jersey shale hills. We opened her up,
and when she got to about 300 revolutions, the whole hill
shook under her . . .
"After a good deal of trouble we ran her up to 700 revolu
tions. Every time the connecting-rod went up, she tried to
lift the whole hill up with her."
After this experience the engines finally built for driving
the Jumbo dynamos were not run above 350 rpm.
The first practical Jumbo dynamo was built at the Edison
Machine Works in New York in 1881. Its size alone made
visitors pause and stare. But they were chiefly puzzled by
the seemingly endless operation of winding. They saw work
men carry insulated copper wire around and around the long
cylindrical cores, from one end to the other, with patient
repetition; then start on a second layer and a third and a
fourth, until six had been completed. The wire was wound
around the core almost two thousand times, and there were
six magnet cores.
One further innovation was devised by Edison to meet the
difficulty of a drop in voltage in the multiple circuit. While
lamps nearest the dynamo received a full current of 110
volts, the next lamps beyond received only 109 volts, the
next 108, and so on. In the simplified system at Menlo Park
such a defect was not serious, but when Edison began his
layout for Manhattan, he perceived that, to correct a voltage
drop, conductors would have to be thick at the generator
end, and taper off gradually to a small diameter at the other
end. To supply a large area by this means would have meant
a prohibitive copper bill. Edison's tireless critics remarked
that there was "not enough copper in the world" to permit
of such a plan.
46 MEN AND VOLTS
Defeat seemed close at hand. But its very proximity pro
vided the spur which led to the invention of the feeder
system of current distribution.
Instead of starting the parallel circuit direct from the
dynamo, Edison interposed feeders, which ran between dy
namo and central points in the parallel circuit, solely to sup
ply current to the latter. This system was employed with
complete success in the First District.
A group of Jumbos was built for the District, which in
the late summer of 1882 became a scene of activity prepara
tory to actual operation. Edison was a tireless director, ex
amining the work in the trenches where his tubing for the
conductors was being laid, with insulating compound poured
into every tube and junction-box.
"I used to sleep on piles of pipes in the station," he said,
"and I saw every box poured and every connection made on
the whole job." A total of eighteen miles of street mains was
put in.
By August, 900 buildings had been wired and more than
14,000 incandescent lamps placed in their sockets. No one
knew, except Edison, when the station was to start gen
erating. He told only his associates that it was to be Monday
afternoon, September 4, 1882, at three o'clock. He wanted
no publicity or excitement, for he was apprehensive of the
outcome.
He gave no appearance of this when he entered the dy
namo room at Pearl Street about nine o'clock on Monday
morning, attired in frock coat and tall derby neither of
which went through the day unscathed.
The day's work started prosaically. Through the forenoon
Edison and his chief engineer gave the equipment a final
inspection. Early in the afternoon their seclusion was inter-
MANHATTAN INITIATED 47
rupted by a tread of many feet, and a murmur of voices;
newspaper reporters had learned, in the manner peculiar to
their craft, that on this day the Edison light was at last to
shine. They met no welcome, however. Edison, famous for
his friendly smile, leaped upon them, and pushed the fore
most bodily back to the door, exclaiming, "Get out! Get
out I" He posted a man at the street door with orders to
admit no one except the personal associates invited.
Edison's motives were natural enough, for the gas com
panies, in his own words, "were our bitter enemies in those
days, keenly watching every move and ready to pounce
upon us at the slightest failure. Big issues were at stake.
Success meant a world-wide adoption of our central-station
plan and its principles. Failure meant loss of money and
prestige, and the setting back of our enterprise. . . .
"All our apparatus, devices, and parts were home-devised
and home-made. Our men were comparatively new, and of
course without the slightest central station experience. What
might happen when a big current was turned into the con
ductors under the streets of New York, no one could say."
A few weeks before, the system had been tested with
curious results. A young man burst into the dynamo-room,
crying excitedly, "Your electricity has got into the pavement
up in Fulton Street and all the horses are dancing."
When an Edison crew dashed to Fulton Street, they found
the report was not exaggerated. The leak carried enough
voltage to give horses setting hoofs upon a certain spot in
the street a galvanic electric shock. Several days were re
quired to locate and repair the faulty conductors. Small won
der that Edison was so inhospitable to newspaper representa
tives on the morning of September 4!
There were scarcely twenty persons at the Pearl Street
48 MEN AND VOLTS
station when the great moment arrived. When Edison
gave the signal, the connection was established and current
flowed. The Edison system was working at last!
Fifty-nine customers were served with current on that
memorable day. Among them were the banking house of
Drexel, Morgan and Company; the Herald and the Times
offices; J. T. Pratt and Company; the Park Bank; and Sweet's
Restaurant on Fulton Street. This was an eating place of
great fame, frequented by Booth and Jefferson, and a stage
coach terminal for uptown and Harlem. On the night of
September 4, 1882 it was alive with excitement as were
the other places where the wizard's lamps shone.
"The giant dynamos," said the Times in recording the
event "were started up at three in the afternoon, and accord
ing to Mr. Edison they will go on forever, unless stopped by
an earthquake."
The system worked perfectly, except for a setback when
a second engine and dynamo were started. The two engines
seesawed, or "hunted," with a terrific racket. As Edison put
it: "Of all the circuses since Adam was born, we had the
worst!" He and Clarke spent two nights and a day in con
tinuous session, trying to devise a remedy. They did not sur
render until Edison had contrived a temporary solution,
which permitted him to employ more than one generating
unit at the same time.
DESPITE THE SUCCESS of the incandescents, inventors and
exploitors of the arc lamp systems were not to be downed.
The Boston Journal of Commerce said in January 1882:
"They (the incandescent lamp companies) claim to furnish
light as cheaply as gas. But this is a subject that will require
to be proved, as they also admit that they only furnish seven
lights to a horsepower ... It costs less than a horsepower
PIONEERS IN COMPETITION 49
to furnish a single Brush light of 2000 candlepower . . .
On this basis, neither the Brush Company nor the gas com
panies have anything to fear from Edison."
The American Electric people of New Britain also be
lieved they could meet the incandescent lamp in eye-to-eye
competition, with their more efficient arc lamp and their self-
regulating dynamo. In fact, the Thomson-Houston system
participated in such a tilt and came off the victorl
In 1882 the P. and F. Corbin Company of New Britain
went into the matter of electric lighting. They were ap
proached by representatives of the Weston Electric Com
pany, the Edison Company for Isolated Lighting, and the
American Electric Company. The Corbin Company finally
determined to give each system a week's trial.
First to be tested was that of the Weston Company, in
troducing an arc lamp developed by Edward Weston. One
of the Corbin firm inquired:
"Now that you have the lights going, can you turn any of
them off?"
"Not one at a time," was the reply. "They all turn off to
gether."
The following week an Edison system was installed, with
a bi-polar dynamo and a circuit of sixty incandescent lamps.
Edison's system depended upon a voltage which had to be
regulated constantly. In isolated plants, there was a pilot
lamp on the headboard of the dynamo which allowed the
dynamo tender to watch voltage variations. When necessary,
voltage was adjusted, through a resistance box, which
caused the voltage to increase or decrease at the will of the
operator.
"Does a man have to be there all the time?" inquired one
of the Corbin firm.
"Yes," was the reply, "he has to regulate the voltage and
50 MEN AND VOLTS
adjust the commutator brushes as the load varies." The firm
discovered also how fragile early Edison lamps were.
When the Thomson-Houston system was tried Thomson
and Rice personally installed a twelve-light arc dynamo,
with its lamps. After starting the dynamo and assuring them
selves that everything worked properly, they left the system
to run itself. The Corbin Company found another advantage
in the fact that it was possible to shut off some of the lights
and leave others shining.
At the end of the week the firm sent word to the American
Electric Company: "Your check will be ready for you any
time you call." The Edison system was not yet able to outdo
its rivals.
Meanwhile Thomson's laboratory continued to be the
scene of incessant activity. In those days smooth, well-
joined copper wire for winding armatures and field magnets
was unknown. Lengths of wire were hard-soldered together
with brass. Then the joints were roughly filed and cotton in
sulation wrapped around the wire. Frequently slivers stuck
through the insulation, or the joints were so irregular as to
puncture the insulation and to leak current.
Thomson demanded better joints of the wire manufac
turer. "Don't solder them," he said. "Weld them and then
draw the wire, instead of filing it."
"But copper cannot be welded," exclaimed the wire manu
facturer.
"Yes it can," said Thomson, "if you'll use my method."
Thomson explained the method of electric resistance
welding which he had come upon unexpectedly during one
of his lectures at the Franklin Institute four years before.
While Thomson continued to tap new veins of knowledge,
he realized that he was not receiving from the company the
cooperation he had a right to expect. He was convinced that
THE DYNAMO ROOM OF THE PEARL STREET STATION
GENIUS RIDICULED
This cartoon, which was published in a popular magazine of the time,
illustrates the ridicule which was directed at Edison while he was
working on his incandescent lamp.
'JUMBO" THE EDISON STEAM DYNAMO
SUPERPOWER IN THE 80'S
The interior of a Thomson-Houston power plant in Boston, 1884.
PIONEERS IN COMPETITION 51
it was not marketing his inventions with "diligent and con
tinuous attention," and "in all reasonable and advisable
ways" as his contract demanded. He therefore tendered his
stock in the American Electric Company, and that of Profes
sor Houston, demanding the return of their patents on the
ground that the company had not lived up to its agreement.
It had no sales office outside of New Britain and lacked ade
quate facilities for manufacture or experiment. Thomson's
future was, for the moment, uncertain.
9
The General Electric Succession
ABOUT 1873 A FIRM under the name of C. A. Coffin and
Company appeared in Lynn, Massachusetts, famous for its
boots and shoes. Partners were Charles A. Coffin, a young
man of twenty-nine, and Micajah P. Clough. They pros
pered, for Coffin, though young, had a reputation for selling
goods and designing styles.
One morning he announced to Clough that he had joined
a financial syndicate to buy up an electrical manufacturing
company.
"I'm putting some money into it, Clough," he said. "We
can go in together or not, as you like."
Though Clough did not join the syndicate, this step was
the turning point of his partner's career.
Until 1882 electric lighting had been little heard of in the
shoe city. Yet a rumor was sufficiently enticing to interest
the Lynn Grand Army Post, which was considering the il
lumination of its new building. Silas A. Barton of the Post
was chosen to investigate the possibilities of electric light.
Having learned of an arc light exhibition by the American
Electric Illuminating Company, Barton went to Boston, tak-
52
THE GENERAL ELECTRIC SUCCESSION 53
ing with him a prominent leather manufacturer, Henry A.
Pevear. Their questions regarding a dynamo system and its
manufacturers met with evasive replies, probably because
the Boston company was more interested in selling stock
than in installing equipment.
The visitors made their way surreptitiously to the base
ment of the exhibition building. There they found a six-light
dynamo. The nameplate, which the exhibiting company had
forgotten to remove, read: "Manufactured by American
Electric Company, New Britain, Conn."
A day or so later Barton and Pevear got off a train at New
Britain, engaged a station hackman to take them to the plant
of the American Electric Company, and there met a young
man by the name of Rice. The "electrician" he said, was out
of town. Thomson was visiting several cities in an effort to
interest capital in the electrical manufacturing business.
While he searched for a rescuer, the rescuer came to him.
As Barton and Pevear went through the New Britain fac
tory they were impressed with the practical success of the
arc light. They were impressed also by Rice's personality and
technical knowledge. Their Yankee business minds sensed a
beckoning opportunity.
The Lynn men made tentative arrangements to secure a
dynamo and lamps. Then they went home, called together
some business friends and organized, on April 26, 1882, an
arc-light central station company which they called the
Lynn Electric Lighting Company. Electrical generating
equipment was soon installed. When Thomson visited the
plant, Barton was able to verify his understanding that the
American Electric Company was in the market.
Barton interviewed half a dozen shoe manufacturers in
Lynn, and a syndicate was organized to buy control of the
American Electric Company. Pevear joined the group on
54 MEN AND VOLTS
condition that Charles A. Coffin should also join and should
agree to help actively in managing the unfamiliar enterprise.
The syndicate made sure of the cooperation of Professors
Thomson and Houston, holders of the patents.
This time there was no quibbling over the contract with
THE THOMSON-HOUSTON FACTORY 1884
The first building occupied by this pioneer company in Lynn,
Massachusetts.
the two professors. Mutual faith and cooperation persisted
unbroken throughout succeeding years. The new company
decided to reorganize at a meeting at New Britain on Feb
ruary 12, 1883, under the name of Thomson-Houston Elec
tric Company.
Removal from New Britain to Lynn was not accomplished
before the latter part of 1883, when a building was erected
on Western Avenue consisting of three stories and a base
ment ample, it was supposed, to accommodate the plant
for a considerable period. Pevear thought of using some of
the extra space for drying skins for his leather factory. But
THE GENERAL ELECTRIC SUCCESSION 55
orders flowed in too rapidly for anything more to be heard
about drying skins on the premises.
Largely through Coffin's leadership, the young Thomson-
Houston Electric Company began to obtain business in in
creasing bulk. Dynamos and arc lamps rolled away to the
freight yards in a constant stream. Shop hands increased
from seventy-five to a hundred and fifty. On January 1, 1883,
there were five central station plants whose Thomson-
Houston equipment supplied current to 365 arc lamps. One
year later thirty-one stations supplied 2400 arc lamps.
At this time the company sold equipment to private in
dividuals and concerns. It was not until 1884, under a policy
suggested by Coffin, that the company began to establish
central generating plants. Like Edison, Coffin foresaw that
in this field lay the future of his company.
Electrical science had its great inventors and technicians,
but none of them were leaders of commerce. They were
neither trained nor fitted to raise capital, or to finance the
marketing of their inventions, particularly on a scale es
sential in a country of tremendous size. Both Brush and Edi
son for example worked out in detail their central station
systems. Yet each of these men was glad to relinquish the
commercial development of his ideas to others.
And of the latter Coffin was the greatest. He it was who
looked decades into the future and guided his policies to
ward ultimate ends. His influence was undeniably the prin
cipal factor in shaping a great development which began
with the Thomson-Houston Company. Unsuspected by any
one, a line of succession was being set up which consisted
of two branches; and the roots of the second branch were
just beginning to appear in the first of the Edison companies.
Because of what it led to and because it was an unbroken
chain of development, we have called it the General Elec-
56 MEN AND VOLTS
trie Succession. The term might have been applied when the
Brush Electric Company or the Edison Electric Light Com
pany were conceived. Both of these in due time were drawn
into the succession. But the Thomson-Houston Company
was the first in the succession in which policies and methods
that were later to be perpetuated took form.
And the Thomson-Houston Company meant Charles A.
Coffin. For the former "shoemaker" had become a master
mind in guiding America's progress in the age of electricity.
10
Lighting Up with Incandescents
IN THE SUMMER OF 1883 the Brush Electric Company be
came interested in the American rights of an incandescent
lamp invented by Joseph W. Swan, an Englishman. With
the Swan lamp, Brush visualized an illumination system
which would include both arc and incandescent lighting. He
had completed a storage battery of cast-lead plates, which
were pasted over with lead oxides and treated in an elec
trolytic bath. Experimenting with the battery, he found that
one horsepower, applied to a dynamo, would charge the bat
tery sufficiently for it to operate ten Swan lamps for an hour.
A number of these batteries Brush connected to an arc-
light system, operated by a dynamo of large capacity. Dur
ing the daytime he charged the batteries and at night op
erated incandescent lamps from them. The lamps did not
interfere with the arc-light system, as the batteries were
equipped with an automatic "manipulator" which cut them
into the circuit when they were to be recharged or cut them
out as charging was completed.
This worked so well, notwithstanding occasional trouble
with the automatic manipulator, as to increase substantially
57
58 MEN AND VOLTS
the business of the Brush Electric Company for several
years.
Scarcely more than a year passed before another incandes
cent lamp, backed by the Thomson-Houston Company,
entered the incandescent field, as Thomson resolved to pro
mote both arc and incandescent lamps and let the public de
cide the issue. Where Brush used a storage battery to operate
his arc and incandescent lamp circuit, Thomson used a "dis
tributor box." This he designed for hooking up (anywhere
in the arc-light circuit) a group of eight incandescent lamps,
each requiring the same voltage but only one-eighth the cur
rent of an arc lamp. The entire group absorbed the same
current as the arc lamps, 9.6 amperes, thus preserving the
constant-current characteristic of the system.
Independent control of each lamp was secured through
the distributor box, which contained eight resistance coils,
one for each lamp. The coils, which were loops of wire of the
same resistance as the lamp filaments, were disconnected
while the incandescent lamps were in use; when one of the
lamps went off, a resistance coil was switched into the cir
cuit by a magnet to pass current in place of the lamp.
For a lamp to operate in this system, the company secured
a license from the Sawyer-Man Electric Company to manu
facture and sell their incandescent lamp. A year or two later
Thomson-Houston came out with its own dynamo and began
to install complete incandescent systems, with both series
and multiple distribution of the current.
In adopting the Sawyer-Man lamp, the Thomson-
Houston interests accepted the Sawyer-Man contention
that they had invented a workable incandescent lamp before
Edison had done so. Their lamp had a distinctive type of
base, although it utilized a filament of carbonized bamboo
STYLES IN DRESSES AND DYNAMOS
A woman visitor inspects the Brush central station in Philadelphia,
1883.
ONE OF EDISON'S EARLY POWER STATIONS
LIGHTING UP WITH INCANDESCENTS 59
and embodied the three features which Edison had patented
filament, vacuum, and glass container.
When the Edison company refrained from bringing ac
tion, various explanations were advanced to account for
their passive attitude toward competitors. It is likely, how
ever, that both Edison and his backers were too absorbed in
the project of establishing their system to undertake patent
litigation. They preferred to win against competition by
commerical rather than by legal success.
The first District was in full operation with five thousand
lamps burning by May 1, 1883. Licenses for Edison com
panies in other places had been issued. Edison had worked
out a plan for installing his system in thinly-settled com
munities by means of overhead wires strung on poles, call
ing this idea the "village plant system." And he had con
ceived brilliant improvement upon the parallel circuit.
One morning he came to the Machine Works on Goerck
Street with a rough diagram. "I want you to lay out an ex
perimental line in the laboratory and connect some lamps
to it like this, and put two dynamos in series on the circuit.
Then test it out and give me a report of what happens." The
sketch presented the rudiments of the three-wire system,
one of the greatest single factors in the success of illumina
tion. It was to place electrical service within the limit of
every purse. Edison had developed it in an effort to save
copper in the conductors of his system. The saving that it
finally effected amounted to as much as 62 per cent. Elec
trical systems of today could hardly operate without it.
Four months after Edison found that the three-wire plan
would work, William S. Andrews and Frank J. Sprague, who
had come from London to join the Edison staff, left New
York for Sunbury, Pennsylvania. A license for a local central-
60 MEN AND VOLTS
station had been issued to the town of Sunbury by the Edi
son Electric Light Company. Andrews and Sprague were
to install the lighting system for operation throughout the
entire town by the evening of July 4.
They arrived at Sunbury with forty-eight hours to work
in and proceeded to hook up two "L" type bi-polar dynamos
in the local generating station, then to wire the town for five
hundred 16-candlepower lamps. From the station to the
main circuits, feeders which embodied the three-wire plan
were carried on poles instead of underground. Andrews and
Sprague might have slept the second night had not Sprague
in his enthusiasm given the dynamos a trial run. He burned
out the engine bearings and with his partner spent most of
the night scraping babbitt metal.
Edison arrived at noon on the Fourth to inspect the plant.
Half an hour before sunset he ordered the dynamos started.
As the glass bulbs glowed, excited shouts arose in the town.
At the City Hotel a noisy crowd gathered. There was an in
cessant fusillade of firecrackers, and as evening drew on
fireworks such as the little town could rarely afford were set
ablaze.
Townsfolk asked Edison and his men all manner of ques
tions, "What makes the hairpin red hot?" "How do you light
it from a distance?" "Can you blow it out?" Almost dis
tracted, Andrews complained that they were asking ques
tions he couldn't answer. "This is a new business," Edison
told him, "we must invent answers to go with our appli
ances."
Andrews recalled the advice on a day later in the summer,
when a severe thunderstorm broke. In the midst of it, a boy
ran into the central station, yelling that the City Hotel was
afire. Andrews hurried downtown, found a crowd standing
about the hotel in the rain, but he could see no smoke. In-
LIGHTING UP WITH INCANDESCENTS 61
side a dozen people told him excitedly that they had seen
sparks and flashes leaping from the electric light wires to
the metal gas fixtures around which the wires were twisted.
The wires were insulated only by a cotton wrapping
painted with white lead. Static electricity, built up by the
storm, had leaked through the insulation and shot along the
metal fixtures.
Although Andrews calmed the excited crowd the hotel
proprietor sent for him next day and demanded the removal
of the wires.
"You may not realize it," said Andrews, "but your hotel
was struck by lightning yesterday. If it hadn't been for us
you'd be proprietor this morning of nothing but a heap of
ashes. Those sparks were the lightning being shunted into
the ground on our wires."
"Well!" exclaimed the astonished proprietor, "if that's the
case, well let the wires stay, of course."
Andrews left Sunbury, not long after, to install another
Edison three-wire system in Shamokin. And in the fall of
1883 Sprague became identified with a much more preten
tious installation. This was the Edison central station at
Brockton, Massachusetts, where the three- wire system was
for the first time put in by means of underground con
ductors.
The system, supplying about 150 lamps, was installed de
spite considerable apprehension on the part of the public.
Officials of the local gas company were particularly dubious.
One of them remarked that if the lodge rooms were ever
lighted by electricity he would stop going to the sessions.
Timid citizens wrote to the newspapers, expressing the fear
that life and property would no longer be safe.
Within a year the number of lamps in circuit exceeded
two thousand. In 1885 it was reported to Edison that only
62 MEN AND VOLTS
two customers had gone back to gas one other had gone
so far back as to resume the burning of kerosene!
Sprague was the electrician of this station, and served as
Edison's representative. He was also acting as Edison's
mathematician at that time, calculating the size and cost of
conductors for projected central stations. Blueprints of pro
posed systems were regularly sent to him at Brockton.
This was one of Edison's concessions to the mathemati
cians. His own methods were not mathematical. But he rea
lized that Upton and Sprague could substitute precise, time-
saving calculations for cumbersome, protracted experiments.
The method in the matter of conductors had been first to
construct in miniature an electric-light system for individual
towns. By experimenting with the miniature system, dimen
sions of the conductors were fixed upon. This method took
time and money, and Edison was willing to allow mathe
matics to simplify it.
Sprague's calculations showed that Edison's original plan
for main conductors and feeders could be improved. The
mains were intended to be tapering in diameter; Sprague
made them of uniform thickness throughout. The resistance
in the feeders was intended to be alike in all cases; Sprague
made the resistance low for heavy loads of current and high
for normal loads. This proved to be efficient, and the cover
ing patent was presented by Sprague to the Edison Electric
Light Company. Sprague had joined Upton and Thomson
in being among the first to show what the college-trained
man could do in electrical engineering.
Sprague now seized the opportunity to experiment with
an electrical device he had long dreamed of. Ruthlessly he
converted the little office of the Brockton station into a tem
porary electrical workshop. The office had a luxurious tap
estry carpet and lounge. Sprague soon had them littered
LIGHTING UP WITH INCANDESCENTS 63
with armature cores, magnet wire, jack knives, asphaltum
varnish cans, japan and shellac bottles, paper insulation, and
magnetic testing bells. Most of this bric-a-brac was stored
under the lounge during the hours of mental activity de
voted to the central station blueprints at which times the
blueprints were spread on the tapestry carpet.
* Not the most favorable conditions, one would say, for con
triving anything so intricate as an electric motor. Yet the
motor this young enthusiast finally put together was to lead
the way for electricity across the boundaries of illumination
and into the vast field on the other side of the fence the
field of electric power.
It has seemed a long time from Edison's promises in 1878
regarding incandescent lighting to their fulfillment in 1882.
But four years was a brief period in which to devise and in
troduce on a commercial basis so far-reaching a system. It
was his original purpose to introduce his light solely by
means of the central-station method. Only after tremendous
pressure had he acquiesced in the formation of the Edison
Company for Isolated Lighting. Pursuing its purpose ag
gressively, this company engaged lighting salesmen and sent
them at an early date into conservative New England. Iso
lated Edison plants came to be numerous in that region
within a year. And the business activity which resulted
furnished training and experience to one of the later apostles
of electric power, Sidney B. Paine.
As a youth of nineteen Paine entered a textile mill at Fall
River, Massachusetts. After four years of learning this busi
ness he became in 1881 a sales agent of the Edison Electric
Light Company, and later was established in Boston as as
sistant manager of the New England department of the Edi
son Company for Isolated Lighting.
During the next few years Paine went up and down New
64 MEN AND VOLTS
England, interesting textile mills in Edison lighting. He
could meet the mill men on their own ground; he knew their
business and how electric lights could best serve them.
Among his first installations was the Hampden Mill of
Holyoke, where 120 lights were put in circuit. Mill after mill
became a customer. So energetic were Paine's efforts and so
universal his success that in ten years not a textile factory of
any size in New England lacked its isolated Edison plant.
A great stir was always caused by the lights. The Lowell
Morning Times proudly announced as its "big news" on Feb
ruary 21, 1882, that the prominent Merrimack Mills were
being equipped with 262 Edison lamps, one for each loom in
the plant.
Paine was constantly meeting incredulity and bedrock
conservatism. One mill owner would not hear of lighting his
mill by any such "new-fangled method."
"All right," said Paine, "I won't say any more about it.
But I have an hour till train time and I'd like to tell you
how the electric light works."
"Go ahead," said the mill man, "provided you don't try to
tell me why I should light my mill with it."
As Paine talked, the skeptic listened more and more in
tently. At last he said in an apologetic tone, "How much
would it cost to light my mill by this system?"
And Paine walked out of the mill with another signed con
tract in his pocket.
But men were developing Edison central stations, just as
Paine was cultivating the isolated lighting business. Ar
thur R. Bush, trained both in engineering and commercial
practices, aided many generating stations to take the first
step in supplying current for the "red-hot hairpins" in their
air-tight bottles.
Bush had begun his electrical career on the vessels of the
LIGHTING UP WITH INCANDESCENTS 65
Old Colony Steamship Company, which operated the two
sound steamers, Pilgrim and Providence, between New York
and Fall River. He helped to wire the Providence, for which
2000 lamps were required. Every stateroom had incandes
cent lights, so that at night the vessels were a blaze of glory
and soon were famed up and down the coast.
At Rutland, Massachusetts, Bush helped to establish a
small generating station. Realizing that the station attendant
had little knowledge of things electrical, Bush stayed in the
neighborhood for several days after the installation. Early
one evening the attendant asked him to fill in a supper re
lief. The attendant had scarcely gone when Bush discovered
that the clutch mechanism connecting the jack-shaft to the
dynamo driving pulley was out of order and the clutch was
slipping. If the dynamo stopped, all the electric lights in
town would go out.
Bush knew that it would take two men to repair the
mechanism without stopping the engine and he was alone.
It was a case of leaping into the gap as best he could. He
grasped the clutch lever with both hands and held on. He
was able to keep the clutch in place by main force. The
minutes passed; the strain increased. His muscles ached
sorely, but nobody came. Desperately he stuck to the job.
The tardy attendant finally arrived. And Bush, faint with
exhaustion, discovered that he had held the clutch for an
hour and a half.
Until the late 'eighties there were more Edison isolated
plants than Edison central-station plants. In 1883 there were
154 isolated Edison plants in the country, employing nearly
30,000 lamps.
The Detroit Post in January 1883 published the following
summary of the lighting situation in New York:
"A year ago there were a dozen companies ready to prom-
66 MEN AND VOLTS
ise any city incandescent lights that is, ready to light in
teriors with small shining bulbs like gas jets but at this
moment Edison's company is the only one actively in the
field. It not only occupies the field, it comes near to filling it.
"The Times is lighted on the circuit of the first district. I
went into the counting room and editorial room last night to
inquire about it. They spoke warmly in its praise. 'The best
artificial light I ever wrote by,' said the manager."
The tide was running strong and there was little doubt
as to its direction.
** m
Frank J. Sprague
Charles J. Van Depoele
E. M. Bentley W. K. Knight
THE FOUR WHO PIONEERED IN ELECTRIC STREETCARS
11
Lighting Up with Arcs
PAYING SCANT ATTENTION to the prophet of incandescence,
the pioneer sales agent of the arc light resourceful, rough-
and-ready, versatile as a Jack-of-all-trades was going
everywhere and accomplishing a great deal. He flourished
from 1882 until the early nineties. And he was more than a
salesman; he was a missionary and a promoter.
He went into communities where electric light was known
only by hearsay and where even intelligent folk had their
superstitions about it. He won over men of means; interested
them in financing an electric light company; helped them
find property sites; persuaded the town government to grant
an operating franchise, which he frequently drew up him
self; assisted in the organization of the company; sold it the
necessary equipment, personally drawing up the contract
in proper legal form; and considered his task completed only
upon the arrival of the construction man who took charge of
the actual installation.
The training that electrical manufacturers gave their field
representatives was of the utmost importance in the conduct
of their business. Young men educated at college in elec-
67
68 MEN AND VOLTS
tricity were hard to find. Technical schools had not yet be
gun to offer special electrical courses. In physics courses
then offered, emphasis was on the principle of static elec
tricity.
So electrical companies themselves had to teach the men
to sell and install their equipment. The Thomson-Houston
company lost no time in establishing a regular course of in
struction. Men who completed this course were known as
"experts" and were sent out either as salesmen or construc
tion men.
They took their work with profound earnestness, but they
got plenty of fun out of it as well. They called themselves
"expects" because they expected to do bigger things and re
ceive bigger pay. The first "experts" were a rather nonde
script lot. They were recruits from the "highways and
hedges," and comprised machinists, steam fitters, carpenters,
school teachers, and anybody else with a turn for the me
chanical who was willing to pitch in. "We took agents and
peddlers, prize fighters and preachers," as Coffin put it.
Their first duties were menial. They took turns keeping
the floor of the testing room clean. They fired the ovens
where dynamo windings were dried, and carried coal the
length of the shop. They operated machine tools, or labored
at the workbenches. Eventually they wound up in the test
ing room, where they had to measure and adjust arc-lengths
in the lamps, paint dynamo rods, fit belts to the dynamos,
and sweep up shop at the end of day.
A good deal of fun came when they were taught to climb
poles. As construction men, they did all the work of linemen
today. Sometimes they became nervous when they reached
the top of the pole and wrapped their arms around it des
perately. This brought their bodies perpendicular, loosen
ing the grip of their spurs. Down they would slide with
LIGHTING UP WITH ARCS 69
hands and arms full of splinters. But there was no respite; it
was "up and at 'em" again.
Sometimes arc-lamp salesmen penetrated into frontier
regions. The veteran expert of the Brush Company,
Thomas E. Adams, later the joint inventor of the Brush-
Adams lamp, spent months on the upper Mississippi, install
ing and adjusting arc headlights on lake and river steamers
engaged in logging operations day and night. The Brush
arc headlight, with suitable reflector, was so popular that
more than half the steamers were thus equipped, and a sales
agent was kept busy throughout the logging season.
On one of these trips Adams put up for the night at Lan
sing, Iowa, where the lodging house was by no means luxu
rious. In the dead of night there came a thundering rap on
his door. The voice of the landlord bellowed, "Say, mister,
are you an electrician?"
Adams emerged in his night clothes to meet a couple of
men from a river steamer whose lighting outfit had gone
wrong. In response to their entreaties he got into his clothes,
walked with them half a mile along a railroad track, and
rowed in their skiff six miles down the river.
He found that a novice who installed the headlight had
adjusted it in such a manner that the carbons would not
separate when current was applied. It took Adams about
two minutes to set things right.
The following season Adams went into Canada to install a
Brush arc headlight for Gilmore and Company, a large con
cern that was cutting timber in the wilderness. He took the
apparatus into the woods by boat and pack. It was installed
on a company steamer, and successfully tested.
When Adams prepared to return, the Gilmore people ob
jected. "If you go back," they said, "well have trouble with
the light right away." Adams assured them that everything
70 MEN AND VOLTS
would be all right he couldn't take up a permanent resi
dence in their midst.
He roughed it for several weeks, getting back to the
border and finally reaching Buffalo. There he made for the
first barber shop he could find. It was filled with men who
turned and stared at him. He looked like a wild man, with
tangled hair and a thick beard, and his face, neck, and
wrists were swollen from bites of the Canadian black fly.
Months later the Brush offices received a letter from the
Gilmore Company which said curtly, "Your man came up
here, put your light on our boat and then abandoned it. We
must confess, however, that it has given no trouble."
Colorful legends have also been handed down of the
breezy methods of R. T. McDonald, general manager of the
Fort Wayne Electric Light Company. The chance which
created this electrical plant in Fort Wayne has been re
counted by John Kise, one of its earliest employees.
Kise, who in 1881 was employed in the warehouse of
Evans, McDonald & Company, overall manufacturers, made
a week-end excursion to Cleveland in July. There he saw
the dazzling light of Brush arc lamps, and was so attracted
by them that he visited the works of the Brush Electric Com
pany to learn more about electric lighting.
When, some time later, Kise met two strangers in the din
ing room of the old Aveline Hotel, in Fort Wayne, he could
talk of nothing but electricity. He was astonished to learn
that his table companions were themselves electrical inven
tors.
"We are in Fort Wayne," they said, "trying to arrange a
demonstration for an arc lamp we've designed, but no one
seems interested. You can't sell patent rights without a dem
onstration."
"Have you tried my employer, R. T. McDonald?" asked
, &***> Spa!
"*f^-
A CLEVELAND TROLLEY POSES FOR ITS PICTURE
This Bentley-Knight car got its power by contact with an electric con
duit between the tracks.
A SPRAGUE STREETCAR IN BOSTON
THE CAR THAT FRIGHTENED JAY GOULD
Frank J. Sprague and his demonstration electric car. It was here that
Jay Gould tried to jump off when a safety fuse blew out.
LIGHTING UP WITH ARCS 71
Kise. "He'll help you exhibit the lamp. We've a small steam
engine that could run your dynamo. You come out to the
factory tomorrow and I'll introduce you to Mr. McDonald."
So James Jenney and his son Charles, who had invented
an arc lamp in their home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan,
were introduced to Ronald T. McDonald. The moment Mc
Donald understood the nature of Jenney's invention, he saw
its future possibilities. Not only did he offer the warehouse
for an exhibition of the light, but with characteristic vigor
he also rounded up his townsmen, invited them to the dem
onstration, and then stood by to give Jenney the opportunity
of proving his invention.
McDonald soon interested other Fort Wayne men in the
new lamp. After a brief interval of negotiations and con
ferences, a new concern came into existence, on November 1,
1881. It was known as the Fort Wayne "Jenney" Electric
Light Company though legally Jenney's name was not in
cluded in the title. McDonald went after business with un
bounded energy, and was usually successful despite his er
ratic methods.
McDonald is said to have traveled sometimes in a private
railroad coach. He would roll into town with a flourish, hire
a local band, and start a parade to draw the crowd to a public
hall. There McDonald addressed them on the wonders of
electric light and the importance of a local company for the
community. Before he left he usually had a company started,
and tucked away in his pocket was an order for electrical
equipment.
Frequently his salesmanship outran his company's ability
to meet contracts. But he had a remarkable construction
man, W. H. Driftmeyer, and from all accounts Driftmeyer
saved McDonald's bacon more than once.
During some jobs Driftmeyer slept on the premises, work-
72 MEN AND VOLTS
ing every minute of his waking hours. On one occasion a
pulley burst and struck him on the head. He couldn't afford
to quit work, so a private hospital was rigged up for him in
the power plant and he directed the installation from a cot,
his head wound in bandages.
While he was completing an installation in New London,
he received a hurry order to go out to Paris, Illinois, where
McDonald was in difficulties. Two dynamos had been in
stalled with the understanding that they were to be self-
regulating. When the company had found that they were
not, payment amounting to $28,000 was held up. Could
Driftmeyer build a regulator and get it on in time? He
rushed home on a Friday night, worked until the following
Tuesday, hardly stopping to sleep, and made a regulator to
fit the dynamos. It worked. McDonald received the delayed
payment and entertained the whole construction crew at a
celebration dinner.
In New York and the nearby territory, during this period,
the Fuller- Wood Company and the compact, low-weighted
dynamo of "Jmmry" Wood continued to find numerous cus
tomers. Wood himself did not hesitate to canvass for pros
pects.
By the middle eighties each of these companies was mar
keting a dynamo of respectable capacity. The Brush dynamo
operated forty arc lamps; the Thomson-Houston, twenty-
eight; the Wood, twenty-five; the Jenny, thirty. The Edison
bipolar incandescent dynamos at that time were made
in four sizes: the "E" lighting fifteen lamps of sixteen-
candlepower; the "Z" 60 lamps; the "IT 150; the "K" 250.
Now as arc-light stations multiplied and incandescent sta
tions began to appear, there came upon the scene a new
type of experiment the electric streetcar.
[ PART THREE ]
Electric Transportation, Motors,
the Transmission of Power
12
Broomstick Cars
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, at the age of eighty, wrote a set
of rollicking verses called, The Broomstick Train; or The
Return of the Witches. He fancied that the curious pole on
the roof of every electric streetcar, reaching up to the
slender "cobweb" of wire above, was a witch's broomstick
put to prosaic use.
Thus in 1889 did a poet herald the innovation in methods
of transportation. He discerned, as many did not, the spirit
of conquest which it typified.
"Look here!" he exclaimed in Over the Teacups, "There
are crowds of people whirled through our streets on these
new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead
if they don't come from Salem they ought to! and not
more than one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or
cares a nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought
for their convenience . . .
"We ought to go down on our knees when one of these
mighty caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mystic
impulse which seems to know not whether its train is loaded
or empty."
75
76 MEN AND VOLTS
To be introduced to the reading public by Oliver Wendell
Holmes was a bit of fortune. Such lines in the poem as "On
the rattling rail, by the broomstick train," must have made
many persons feel more kindly toward the strange electric
car. But for years after an indubitable triumph over techni
cal difficulties the electric car struggled against popular
prejudice. People who felt at home with the "red-hot hair
pin" could not get accustomed to a vehicle moving through
the streets with nothing to pull it.
Men had been attempting to move locomotives or single
cars by electricity for two generations. Thomas Davenport
of Brandon, Vermont, in 1835 "ventured his little all" in
striving to construct an electric motor, operating a minia
ture railway with it; Robert Davison of Aberdeen, Scotland,
drove a five-ton electric locomotive in 1839 between Edin
burgh and Glasgow. Dr. Werner Siemens in 1879 operated a
sizeable electric railway in Berlin, the first to be driven by
current from a dynamo instead of storage batteries.
And Thomas A. Edison built and operated two experi
mental electric railways at Menlo Park in 1880 and in 1882.
He employed reversed dynamos for his driving motors, as
Siemens had done, conducting current from dynamos to
motors and back again through the rails and wheels of the
locomotives.
The first of these railways was a crude and ludicrous
affair. The locomotive was a four-wheel species of flatcar
with board seats and a medley of apparatus, from which two
long brake-handles protruded. Motive power came from a
"long-waisted Mary Ann" utilized as a motor and laid upon
her side.
With this queer locomotive Edison "rode to glory," or at
least to newspaper fame, at a speed of twenty miles an hour.
BROOMSTICK CARS 77
He hauled a train of two cars, one of which had a canvas
awning and was fondly dubbed "Pullman."
The second experimental railroad had two locomotives
and was far more sophisticated. The track was two and a
THE PLEASURES OF ELECTRIC TRANSPORTATION
Edison's electric railway at Menlo Park, in 1880.
half miles long and the locomotives were capable of forty
miles an hour.
Nothing tangible came of Edison's adventure into the
realm of electric railroading, nor of the joint three-ton loco
motive which he produced with Stephen D. Field in 1883 to
appear under the name of "Judge" at the Chicago Exposition
for Railway Appliances. The locomotive was supplied with
current from a third rail and had a Weston dynamo for a
motor. In two weeks the "Judge" had run 446 miles. But
though it led to nothing practical, Edison's experimental
electric railway set people thinking for the first time about
78 MEN AND VOLTS
electric traction upon the elevated roads of Manhattan. The
New York Herald took up the idea and used the Edison rail
way to create considerable agitation. But it was twenty years
before any action was taken.
The electric locomotive was never thought of as adaptable
for street railways. And the "broomstick car" was finally
evolved through long and arduous effort by a memorable
group of American pioneers, among them Frank J. Sprague,
Leo Daft, Charles J. Van Depoele, Edward M. Bentley,
Walter H. Knight, and J. C. Henry.
Sprague had worked out a motor in his luxurious office in
Brockton. His development of the trolley pole was later to
bring him into a dispute with Van Depoele. To follow the
contribution of Bentley and Knight, however, carries us
back to Cleveland and the Brush Electric Company, which
furnished shop facilities for these two men who set out to
master one of the most obdurate problems in the electrical
field.
"If you want to pull a car, you must put something in
front to pull it," said a serious street-railway official in 1884.
That was the way people talked when electrical men an
nounced their plan of moving a car by means of a motor in
stalled inside.
Frank J. Sprague put the problem of the electric street
car a little differently. He summed it up as follows:
"On the car must be mounted one or more motors, weigh
ing anywhere from 1000 to 3000 pounds, whose speed must
be reduced ten or twelve times, while perfect freedom of
axle movement and resilience of car springs must be pre
served, as, with this additional weight and system of gear
ing the car is driven over irregular tracks, around sharp
curves and up heavy grades. It must, moreover, be handled
by men ignorant of electrical technique; must be reliable,
BROOMSTICK CARS 79
not apt to get out of order; and must have a reasonable de
preciation, although exposed to the worst abuses of any
class of machinery."
The word "abuse" sums up the contrast between the
streetcar motor and its brother, the stationary motor. The
latter is started in the morning and runs all day at the same
speed. But the streetcar motor is started and stopped hun
dreds of times a day and is made to run at all speeds up to
its capacity. It is constantly in the hands of strangers.
It was a nerve-straining enterprise upon which Bentley
and Knight embarked when they ran their first electric car
on Garden Street, Cleveland, July 26, 1884. The Associated
Press announced it as the "first electric railroad for public
use in America."
Unquestionably electrical apparatus was ready at that
moment to venture into the domain of transportation. For
several years the dynamo had been earning its salt, though
its construction had become increasingly intricate.
Electrical men had known for ten years what would hap
pen if a dynamo, supplied with power by a steam engine,
was connected to another dynamo in the same curcuit so
that current generated in the first machine would flow to the
second. They knew that the mysterious interaction between
magnets and armature would cause the armature in the
second dynamo to rotate with enough force to drive a
machine shaft or car axle. Thus the mechanical power which
originated in the steam engine would reappear in the second
of the two dynamos called now a motor. This is the idea
of dynamo reversibility, revealed as far back as the days of
Pacinotti and Gramme.
Means had been found, long before this, to magnetize
field magnets in a direct-current dynamo by a connection of
the armature coils with the field-windings. Variations in this
80 MEN AND VOLTS
practice resulted in the series-wound, shunt-wound, and
compound-wound dynamos.
Bentley and Knight understood the principle of the motor,
but to apply it to propelling cars was not easy. The prob
lem was three-sided. There was the design of the motor, the
manner in which it was to be installed in the car, and the
method of transmitting power from the motor armature to
car axles.
Bentley and Knight used as their source of power a thirty-
horsepower, 500-volt constant-current dynamo of the Brush
Electric Company, located at the car barns on Euclid Ave
nue, Cleveland. Another Brush dynamo, series-wound and
of smaller capacity, was used as a motor. It was suspended
underneath the car body and connected to front and rear
axles by belts of coiled wire.
The attitude of the railway company toward the new
fangled mode of locomotion seems to have been one of
chilly tolerance. The electric car was assigned to the worst
piece of track on the system and left to bob along as well as
it could.
Prejudice against overhead wires was so widespread that
the inventors enclosed them in an underground wooden
conduit which ran in the middle of the track. It had a con
tinuous slot through which a contact device called a "plow"
reached down and carried current for transmission from the
wires to the motor.
The backers of the East Cleveland Railway were not
exempt from the general feeling of awe which the strange,
horseless vehicle aroused.
Said the Cleveland Herald when cars commenced to make
regular runs: "It was amusing to watch the passengers who
boarded the car. Some took the invention as a matter of
BROOMSTICK CARS 81
course, while others, especially the ladies, evinced great
curiosity ... An unexpected drawback is the fact that half
the horses that pass the car are frightened by it. There is
nothing unusual in the appearance of the car; it makes no
noises besides the whirr of the motor . . . But even old
plugs were frightened; and one passenger opined that the
horses, jealous of a loss of business, had combined to express
their disapproval of the invention."
This was all very fine. But within three days the electric
car encountered difficulties. The motor was supported at one
end by a spring connection, and the springs started to break,
with loud reports, at the rate of one an hour. When the wire
belts began to give way, the car had to go to the repair shop.
A new method of connection between motor and axles
was tried. Friction wheels made of strawboard with a sys
tem of link belts were employed. But the first time the car
endeavored to move a heavy load the friction wheels slipped
and developed flat spots. Finally the inventors adopted spur
gearing, built up of paper to lessen the noise. This worked
fairly well. But when two and then three cars were run in
parallel operation electrically, with a fixed or constant cur
rent, the dynamo balked. It was being overloaded to almost
double its capacity.
Despite these problems Bentley and Knight struggled to
keep one or two cars running. They did so through the rest
of the year and well into 1885, changing their methods to
use constant voltage and varying current. The service
proved sufficiently reliable during winter storms to give a
hint of the superiority latent in electric traction. It was cer
tain, however, that the conduit method of supplying cur
rent was impractical, for it involved heavy expense.
Bentley and Knight did not make a practical success of
82 MEN AND VOLTS
the electric street car. But they with Van Depoele and others
started a ripple of expectation which lasted until the electric
car seriously took up its task.
Charles J. Van Depoele was early apprenticed to a cabinet
maker in his native town of Lichtervelde, Belgium. Artistic
in his tastes and skillful with his hands, he became a wood-
carver of considerable reputation, until the mechanical and
scientific side of his nature began to gain the upper hand.
He hob-nobbed in the railway shops of East Flanders, where
his father was a master mechanic. There he found an atmos
phere to his liking, and there, despite his father's disap
proval, he served another apprenticeship, this time to study
elementary electricity.
In 1869, at the age of twenty-three, Van Depoele came to
the United States and established in Chicago a prosperous
wood-carving business. Unexcelled at this trade, he was soon
making more money than he needed and the surplus went
promptly into a series of experiments with electric arc lights.
In less than ten years he had an arc-light system of his
own; had installed lamps in Chicago; and had lighted the
front of an opera house in Detroit, where the strange glow
of the first lights caused a nervous citizen to send in a fire
alarm.
Van Depoele was also experimenting in a modest way
with motors, operating them on his series arc circuit. On one
of these motors he placed a current-collecting brush made
from a block of carbon, which served the purpose as well as
the old copper brush. Without knowing it, he had made one
of the most valuable discoveries of his life which was one
day to play a dramatic role on streetcar development.
By 1880 this erstwhile wood carver had made friends in
financial circles, and his own manufacturing concern, the
Van Depoele Electric Manufacturing Company of Chicago,
BROOMSTICK CARS 83
was in the forefront of those trying to move the streetcar by
electricity. Most notable of his early demonstrations was the
mile-long railway which he operated in 1884 from the street
car terminal in Toronto to the Toronto Annual Exhibition.
The cars were made up in a train and drawn by a motorcar.
The method conceived by Van Depoele for supplying
current to the motor was an innovation. On the roof of the
motorcar he mounted a pivoted beam with a contact wheel
on its upper end. This wheel was placed against the under
side of an overhead wire. At the opposite end of the beam
was a powerful spring which pressed the beam, and hence
the contact wheel, continuously against the wire. Connected
to the wheel was a flexible cable which provided a path for
the current from wire to motor. This was nothing more than
the simple trolley pole, now universal. It was the most practi
cal and workable method that had been tried.
Upon applying for a patent a year or so later, Van Depoele
found himself in conflict in the United States Patent Office
with Frank J. Sprague, who laid claim to the invention of
the under-running trolley as far back as 1882. He was at that
time an officer in the United States Navy, on a year's leave
of absence. While riding on the Metropolitan District Rail
way in London, Sprague had pondered the notion of run
ning the road by electricity, with a conductor supported on
insulators between the tracks, and automatically kept in
tension. But at the Kensington Station he saw such a formi
dable complication of switches connecting the four tracks
that the idea came to him of substituting an overhead con
ductor and an upward-pressing contact mounted upon the
roof of the car.
The patent office refused to recognize Sprague's inventive
work previous to his return to the United States in 1883, de
spite the fact that part of the time he was on board an
84 MEN AND VOLTS
American vessel and hence on American territory. The rul
ing gave priority to Van Depoele, to whom the patent was
issued.
In November 1884 the Sprague Electric Railway and
Motor Company was incorporated under an agreement
which committed Sprague to experiment with motors both
for traction and stationary work. It represented his major
ambition and had caused his resignation from Edison's
organization the previous April.
Under the agreement, Edward H. Johnson, later president
of the Edison Electric Light Company, assumed the financ
ing of whatever work was undertaken. This was probably one
of the most unusual concerns, as regards its finances, in the
whole range of electrical activity. For months it existed
mostly on paper.
The company did little to attract public notice until the
winter of 1885-86, when Sprague gave a demonstration be
fore officials of the Manhattan Elevated Railway on a short
stretch of track in New York. Beneath an ordinary flatcar
mounted on an elevated-railway track, he placed two of his
motors. The experiment was not without results despite the
fact that, in working the controller too abruptly, the safety-
fuse blew out with a startling flash. Jay Gould was one of
those who tried to jump from the car, and never afterward
could he be persuaded to take the slightest interest in elec
tric traction.
The results came when Sprague was approached a few
days later by C. E. Chinnock, superintendent of the Pearl
Street Edison Station, with an offer to purchase for $30,000
one-sixth of Sprague's interest in the company. At the mo
ment Sprague did not have enough ready cash to pay his
boarding-house bill, yet he declined the offer.
BROOMSTICK CARS 85
Sprague was away on a vacation when he received a
telegram from Johnson announcing that he had promised to
show Cyrus W. Field, chief owner of the Manhattan Ele
vated Railway, an electric car in operation on his road the
following Tuesday only four days distant.
Sprague rushed to New York and set feverishly to work.
Monday night found him with one assistant completing the
electrical connections of the motors by candlelight. He had
no opportunity to make tests and had no idea whatever
whether the motor would work.
The situation was tense. But the motors responded with
out a fault. For two hours every possible feat was performed
with the car, including regenerative braking, which seems
to have been tried that day for the first time in America.
Geared motors were mounted by the "wheelbarrow" method,
later universal; interpole winding was used, as well as rheo-
static control and other innovations.
At the end of the day Sprague received another call from
Chinnock, who offered $25,000 for one-twelfth of Sprague's
interest, nearly double his first offer. And this time Sprague
accepted.
He was rather mystified about the proposition, however,
for Chinnock was not a man of means. Later he learned that
the Superintendent was acting as agent for an officer of the
Edison Electric Light Company, who had been advised to
buy into the Sprague Company by a spiritualistic medium!
In less than three weeks another twelfth interest was sold
for $26,500 to other parties, who doubtless bought on more
materialistic advice. When officials suddenly lost all interest
in the project, the Sprague Company had to abandon its
attempts to electrify the elevated railway. It turned conse
quently to the street-railway field, where half a dozen elec-
86 MEN AND VOLTS
trical inventors had small installations operating with just
enough success to encourage the sanguine, just enough fail
ure to arouse scoffers.
With people beginning to talk of electricity as the emanci
pator of the horse, it was high time for an emancipator to
appear. Horses frequently collapsed in the traces from the
heat. They could be worked only two or three hours a day.
The streetcar stables were immense, and property surround
ing them invariably depreciated in value.
As William Wharton, Jr., put it: "Electric cars never get
sick with epizooty or other diseases, and during strikes or
other periods of enforced idleness do not require to be fed."
But opposition to electric transit, continuing up to 1888
and even later, revealed human motives at their worst. The
backers of cable roads did everything they could to impede
the entrance of electric cars. Superstitions of the people
were played upon; the danger of electric wires was exag
gerated; readers were gravely informed that the heavy cur
rents passing over the wires would kill the shade trees; or
that the presence of so much electricity in the air would
cause sickness.
Meanwhile electric light companies were coming more
and more to be an important factor in the transit situation.
The day was near when the Edison Electric Light Company
and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company were to place
themselves solidly behind electric traction.
THOMSON-HOUSTON DYNAMO, ABOUT 1890
A TYPICAL SWITCHBOARD OF THE EARLY PERIOD
ELECTRICITY COMES TO NARRAGANSETT PIER
Construction gang of the Thomson-Houston Company engaged in
erecting poles and stringing wires.
ASSEMBLY ROOM OF THOMSON-HOUSTON PLANT, 18S5
13
From Shoes to Dynamos
THERE WAS NO SPOT IN Lynn, Massachusetts, more indus
trious than the factory of the Thomson-Houston Electric
Company in 1885. But it was a mysterious business. Passers-
by loitered as their ears caught the unfamiliar drone of dy
namos. Through basement windows they beheld with star
tled eyes the weird green flashes of commutator brushes and
the steady blue gleam of arc lamps.
By 1885 a broad, smoothly functioning organization was
shaping. Executive minds were developing above the com
mon level and gravitating into their proper spheres. Rice
was made general superintendent, his career diverging at
this point from his former close association with Professor
Thomson. He held a combined engineering and plant-
production office. Under him was an able assistant engineer,
Albert L. Rohrer, and under them both was a fast-growing
and efficient departmental organization. George E. Emmons,
meanwhile, had become factory auditor from which he ad
vanced by logical steps into the realm of factory manage
ment.
The company was expanding from insignificance to first
87
88 MEN AND VOLTS
importance. Routine was in flux; minor departments were
taking shape. There was one draftsman, W. O. Wakefield,
and the small supply of blueprint paper he required was
home-made.
Everywhere there was teamwork. Rohrer was in the shop
at seven in the morning, laying out work with the foreman
and starting the production of new products as they were
worked out in Thomson's laboratory, a definite procedure
for manufacture having been decided upon in consultation
with Rice. Thomson's was the true analytical mind. He per
ceived difficulties before they were reached, and altered
his plans accordingly. It was the antithesis of the "cut-and-
try" practice, which demanded innumerable experiments,
and was a conserver of time and effort.
Sometimes he and Rice received helpful suggestions un
expectedly from Charles A. Coffin, the man of finance and
commerce. They would look at each other in surprise and
confess that he had brought up a technical idea which de
manded consideration.
From intensive activity and the rising hum of industry
the nucleus of a great corporation was emerging. Already
the company contained rich human talent. It had a great
scientist-inventor in Thomson, a keen engineer in Rice, a
capable factory manager in Emmons, and a genius of finance
and salesmanship in Coffin.
One thing alone clouded its horizon the restriction of
competitive patents. This was a problem in which the whole
future of electrical development was inextricably bound up.
Finance rather than patents absorbed Charles A. Coffin
in the first two years of Thomson-Houston activity. It was a
double-headed problem with a manufacturing side, and a
public-service or operating side. The company did not sell
direct to the public but to local electric lighting companies
FROM SHOES TO DYNAMOS 89
whose welfare meant the success or failure of the Thomson-
Houston Company.
Local companies must receive financial stimulus. Much
depended on them; yet they were small and inexperienced,
and their problems were considerable. The investment re
quired for launching local companies often was prohibitive
to the small capitalist. As an associate of Coffin's said in later
years:
"The business was new and presented problems which
were substantially without precedent . . . People generally
did not at all appreciate the need or the value of electric
ity ... There were few who had the courage and the neces
sary capital to buy and install apparatus. Customers did not
exist; they had to be created."
These matters filled Coffin's days with anxiety and his
evenings with study. But the policy which he finally inau
gurated was simple.
He offered to sell electrical equipment for part payment
in cash and the balance in securities of the local company.
That was all, but it was enough to assist many local com
panies in getting a start. It was a policy which resulted in
many new Thomson-Houston customers.
Twenty-eight local companies were equipped with
Thomson-Houston apparatus during 1884, and forty-seven
during 1885. Three thousand arc lamps were sold in 1884,
and seven thousand in 1885.
Meanwhile Coffin was working out a commercial organi
zation. The young company needed salesmen men with
youth, initiative, and brains. He found such men now and
then among young leather salesmen who came into his office
at C. A. Coffin and Company. Whenever one of these men
made a favorable impression, Coffin talked electricity to him
and offered a chance with Thomson-Houston. Between 1883
90 MEN AND VOLTS
and 1885 he drew an appreciable group of salesmen from
shoes to dynamos, and the Thomson-Houston yearly class
of "experts" swelled in proportion.
Coffin realized about this time that he must give up either
the manufacture of shoes or the manufacture of electrical
equipment. He could not do justice to both. Should he stake
everything upon the innovation of electrical development?
In the midst of his doubts there came an unexpected prop
osition. The American Electric and Illuminating Company
of Boston made overtures to Coffin for the purchase of the
Thomson-Houston Company for $300,000.
Coffin's decision was quickly made. He informed them
that he could not consider the offer and told his shoe partner
that he was giving up shoe manufacturing to devote himself
to electricity. From that decision he never turned back.
About the beginning of 1885 Coffin asked one of his
former shoe customers, J. R. McKee, if he would take over
the managership of one of the Thomson-Houston commer
cial departments.
"But I don't even know what electricity is!" answered
McKee.
"That's just our trouble," Coffin replied with a laugh.
"We've too many men who know what electricity is, or
think they do. What we want now is somebody to care for
the commercial side. Perhaps the less you know about what
electricity is, the better!"
Coffin felt that Thomson-Houston needed in the com
mercial field men with reliable merchandising instinct, who
were free from the conservatism which technical electricians
would be apt to display in the selling field. Coffin was exer
cising his talent for picking out individuals of ability. He
had known McKee for years, since the time when as a young
man McKee had gone farther west than any other salesman
STANLEY AND HIS ORIGINAL TRANSFORMER
THOMSON-HOUSTON
CO.
84 5700
FOURTH OF JULY 1890
The Thomson-Houston float in the Li/nn parade.
PROFESSOR THOMSON AND HIS WELDING TRANSFORMER
FROM SHOES TO DYNAMOS 91
on the road. He believed that McKee had the energy and
enthusiasm to take the electrical message wherever he could
get a hearing.
So McKee took charge of some of the supplemental activi
ties carried on under Thomson-Houston auspices. He be
came president of the Thomson- Van Depoele Electric Min
ing Company, a subsidiary organized to sell an electric drill
invented by Van Depoele, and an electric coal-cutting ma
chine. He also headed the Thomson-Houston Motor Com
pany, which began to compete with other electrical manu
facturers in offering stationary motors in sizes ranging from
1/2 to 110 horsepower.
The Thomson- Van Depoele Company also embarked
upon a campaign for equipping mines. A line of electrically
driven hoists and pumps and a type of electric mine loco
motive made their appearance. In 1889 the first installation
of a mine railway was made at a colliery near Scranton. A
forty-horsepower electric locomotive operated on a track
having a gauge of thirty-six inches.
Thousands of dollars were spent in endeavoring to de
velop mining mechanisms, particularly electric drills and
coal cutters. Young men just out of college, some from aristo
cratic Boston families, were hired to operate coal-cutting
machines in the mines. But eventually the line of electric
coal-cutting apparatus had to be abandoned. The machines
were not commercially feasible.
The Thomson-Houston International Company was or
ganized in 1884. Men had been sent abroad from the first
and had found opportunities for trade as good as at home.
The South American business became extensive. An arc-
light station at Hammerfest, Norway, was long the most
northerly electrical installation in the world. Products went
to Egypt, Hawaii, Peru, Russia, Spain, and elsewhere.
92 MEN AND VOLTS
Thomson brought out his transformer for electric resist
ance welding in 1885, thereby creating a new division of
the electrical art. It was introduced commercially by the
Thomson Welding Company, organized in 1888 for that
purpose.
In 1885 Thomson designed a direct-current dynamo for
incandescent lamps. Thus the Thomson-Houston Company
was prepared to compete with the Edison Electric Light
Company in the field of incandescent lighting. Desperate
rivalry and astounding expansion were close at hand in the
commercial development of this little unit of light, which
Edison could not keep in his own hands without a struggle.
When the first glow-spots of incandescence shone out
around the First District in lower Manhattan, the lamp was
transformed from an experiment to a standard utility. Its
welfare and its future became the concern of the factory as
well as of the laboratory, and the saga of its commercial
development had begun.
Skeptics flourished, nonetheless, on through the middle
eighties. Conservative Henry Morton, President of Stevens
Institute of Technology, was not yet won over. In December
1884 he dourly remarked: "Ten thousand mechanical en
gineers are wanted to every ten electricians; and it would be
a mistake for a very great number of young men to deter
mine to devote themselves to electrical enterprises." In that
very year 125,000 incandescent lamps had been sold, an
increase of 55,000 over the previous yearl
It was impossible to make lamps more than just so fast,
however great the demand. Manufacturing processes at
Edison's factory at Harrison, New Jersey, were mostly hand
work. A hundred workmen produced only three hundred
lamps a day. Expert glassblowers were necessary to blow
the bulbs and other glass parts. The bamboo filament went
FROM SHOES TO DYNAMOS 93
through eight operations, all performed by hand, before it
was ready for carbonizing. And it took five hours to exhaust
the air from each bulb to produce the vacuum.
Men sat for weary hours at workbenches handling bam
boo. The cane, received in long strips, was slit with a knife
over and over until the smallest possible diameter was ob
tained. One piece of cane yielded five filament-strips, each
of which was planed on one side before it was baked. Next
it was finished in straight form, then bent into horseshoe
shape.
The same laborious operations were in vogue at the
Thomson-Houston Electric Company, where the Sawyer-
Man lamps were manufactured. But here the filament
went through an extra process of treating, or "flashing," the
invention of William E. Sawyer. The filament was placed
in a bulb containing rarefied hydrocarbon gas, such as gaso
line vapor, and was heated by passing a current of electric
ity through it. Heat decomposed the vapor and deposited
a coating of graphite upon the filament.
The filament produced by flashing was a better con
ductor of electricity, and was practically uniform through
out its length. It could be treated to the correct resistance to
obtain proper voltage and efficiency, and treating increased
its life. The incandescent lamps of the Thomson-Houston
company were now better than Edison's, which gave them
an advantage on the market. There were doubts among
their own men, however, whether in using a bamboo fila
ment instead of the original thread they might infringe on
Edison patents. But, as Thomson put it, "We started out to
make the best incandescent lamp we knew how."
The Thomson-Houston Company was planning an output
of 2000 lamps a week. Already the Edison Lamp Works
was producing almost this many, and Edison was seeking to
94 MEN AND VOLTS
simplify his manufacturing processes so as to get costs below
the forty cents per lamp for which he had contracted to sell
them to the Edison Electric Light Company. He had in his
employ an engineer, John W. Howell, whose ingenuity con
tributed one of the most valuable manufacturing advances
of the period. Howell reduced the time of exhausting air in
the lamp bulbs from five hours to a bare thirty minutes.
Toward the end of 1883 Edison, while watching pumps
working on his lamps, noticed a bluish glow inside the glass
globes. This glow kept up until a high vacuum was obtained,
then disappeared.
The glow had no effect upon the lamp, which gave its
incandescent light as brightly as ever, but seemed merely
incidental to the process of exhausting the air. Edison sus
pected that it came from a current inside the loop of the fila
ment, because the glow appeared only when electricity was
sent through the filament, heating it so that the gases would
be driven out.
To see if he was correct, he inserted a wire inside the loop
between the two "legs," connected it to one of the contacts
outside the bulb through which current flowed to the fila
ment, and placed a galvanometer between the terminal and
the wire. The needle of the galvanometer showed a small
current flowing between the legs of the filament. But it
flowed only when the wire was connected to the positive
side of the circuit.
Edison had answered the first question about the bluish
glow when he took out a patent based upon the "Edison
Effect" in October 1884; however, he did not suspect how
much more lay back of it. Electrical science was not suffi
ciently advanced to explain the glow. Not until thirty years
later did other minds make the "Edison Effect" the basis of
radio.
FROM SHOES TO DYNAMOS 95
Edison's inventive ingenuity, spurred on by a forty-cent
contract, made several cost-reducing changes in his lamp.
The lead-in wires were of platinum, because that metal could
be sealed into the glass neck of the bulb in an airtight joint.
But the cost of platinum was too high for Edison to reduce
his costs below the forty-cent limit.
He overcame the difficulty by placing the platinum-copper
weld in the glass seal, benefiting the lead-in wires, which
thus could be made appreciably shorter. Changes in the
structure of the base aided still further the reduction in
platinum, until finally each lamp contained only one-eighth
of the amount used in 1881.
Electric light companies were now springing up on every
hand, scattering through communities, as lavishly as citizens
would allow, the ''bottled sunlight" of incandescent or the
"blue moons" of the arc. But a generating station able to
operate day and night was then unknown and apparently
unthought-of. Central stations started their dynamos shortly
before sunset, ran on a reduced scale after midnight, and
shut down entirely at dawn. For the most part they were
places of night work only, their function being to supply
illumination.
Edison wrote to W. S. Andrews, under date of January 2,
1884, on the general subject of central station operation:
"I think the wages for men at the station should be as
follows: Engineer, $65 per month, daylight to daylight
running, starting, of course one-half hour before required in
the evening. The meter man should be called manager,
salary, $50 a month. Duties, taking meters, collecting, keep
ing books and running electrical part from one-half hour
before dusk until seventy-five per cent of the load goes
off
"You should have these men on probation and subject to
96 MEN AND VOLTS
passing an examination by me. That will wake them up. Also
I think it very essential that for several days steam should be
raised in the morning, and if there is a spare engine at the
station they should be practiced. We have found that the
Brockton men were not sufficiently practical, hence if any
thing went wrong they lost their heads."
This last referred to an incident the previous autumn at
Brockton, where the engine was run by a locomotive engi
neer who was supposed to be fearless with machinery. The
electric wiring in the station was somewhat crude, as was
often the case in those days. The large conductors from the
dynamos to the switchboard were laid in grooves cut in the
wooden flooring and carried to a wooden partition, where
they were connected to outgoing feeders. One quiet evening
the insulation on these conductors gave way. There was a
sudden flash and flames shot along the floor. The "fearless"
engineer jumped out of the window, while the fireman hid
behind the boiler.
About this time there came a change in the policy of the
Edison Machine Works as to the finished appearance of its
dynamos. Seeking to keep down cost, little effort was made
toward ornamentation. The castings were rough and indif
ferently painted. One day there came a complaint from
Baltimore something the matter with the Edison dynamos.
An inspector went down. He found that the Baltimore
dynamos were all right except for an accumulation of dirt
due to pure neglect. And the neglect was due to the fact that
the station owned several dynamos of another manufacturer,
handsomely painted, neat and trim. They were the pride of
the station attendant, who lavished all his time upon them
at the expense of the Edison dynamos. The inspector's re
port caused the officials back home to sit up and take notice.
As central stations multiplied, so did inexperienced opera-
FROM SHOES TO DYNAMOS 97
tors. And instruments by which voltage and amperage could
be measured were not yet to be had. At Pearl Street the
voltage of the lamps was regulated by a homely, though
ingenious, device, which was an arrangement of magnets by
which a red lamp was lighted if the voltage was too high and
a blue one if it was too low. New stations at first did not have
even this crude voltmeter; yet upon the regulation of elec
trical pressure the life of the lamps depended.
It was small wonder that some stations boasted of good
records for their lamps, while others had such poor records
that the managers thought there was something wrong with
the lamps. Complaints of this sort were heard at meetings
of the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, or
ganized in 1884.
A central station manager got up and declared the lamp
was "rotten," that it could not last two hundred hours.
Whereupon Wilson S. Howell, manager of the unusually
successful station at New Brunswick, N. J., reported that
very careful records had been kept of the life of their lamps,
and the average had been 3000 hours. Whereupon the
original speaker exclaimed:
"Gentlemen, it is easy to account for this difference the
poor quality of my lamps and the excellence of his. The man
who runs the New Brunswick station has a brother in the
lamp works!"
Not long after this Edison selected the New Brunswick
station for the first commercial test of a high grade lamp
having a hydrocarbon bamboo filament. It was one of the
first steps in increasing incandescent efficiency.
To the public, however, efficiency seemed to appeal less
than convenience. An old German shopkeeper who had arc
lamps in his place tried to explain their failings to an elec
trician of the arc-lamp company. The lamps had behaved
98 MEN AND VOLTS
strangely a few evenings before, and he threw up both
hands and brought them down slowly, pantomiming their
action.
"I don't like dot ding," he solemnly remarked. "Why not
you have dose schmall condensed lights what comes in
bottles?"
The spectacular was not overlooked in exploiting "dose
schmall condensed lights." Blase Manhattan was startled
on the evening of October 13, 1884, to see a singular proces
sion coming down aristocratic Fifth Avenue.
Several hundred marching men moved in the form of a
hollow square, each wearing a helmet surmounted by one
of the little glow-bulbs. Inside the hollow square moved a
portable steam engine and Edison dynamo; and the marchers
carried a long rope containing a conductor from which cur
rent was drawn through flexible wires passing inside their
sleeves to the lamps on their hats. A marshal led the column
on a war charger, bearing a baton tipped with a light.
This was also the year of the "Edison darky," a negro at
tendant at Edison exposition booths, whose clothing was
wired to connect with an incandescent lamp on top of his
helmet. The heels of his shoes were equipped with copper
plates that had sharp points which pierced the carpet and
made contact with hidden conductors. Many a timid lady
was startled upon seeing a sudden glow of light appear on
top of the darky's head just as he handed her an Edison
leaflet.
EDISON MACHINE WORKS IN SCHENECTADY, N. Y. 1886
The two buildings of the McQueen Locomotive Company, on the Mo
hawk flats near Schenectady, to which Edison moved his machine
works.
TRAFFIC JAM IN BROOKLYN
The first Bentley-Knight "tram cars" upset the peace of Brooklyn's
streets.
THE ELECTRIC MOTOR DEVELOPED BY FRANK J. SPRAGUE
14
Onward with Volts
TEN YEARS HAD NOW PASSED since Charles F. Brush built
his first dynamo and Elihu Thomson started to design a one-
light arc machine with which to astonish his audiences at
the Franklin Institute.
It had been a brilliant decade. At its beginning electric
lighting was largely in the realm of the magical. Hard-
headed business men smiled at the notion that it was practi
cal, or that it could serve a utilitarian purpose. American
industry, in the column marked "electrical," was an absolute
blank.
But within a single decade what a transformation! The
hum of dynamos was in the air. Factories, generating sta
tions, lights, and horseless cars were proving what the blue
spark could do.
The growing array of essential minor apparatus was keep
ing pace with the development of the basic processes and
machines. Meters and switches had appeared. Edison's
chemical meter in 1882 took its share of the day's work,
measuring the current that each customer used.
This meter was remarkable for its simplicity and operated
99
100 MEN AND VOLTS
entirely by electrolytic action. A fraction of the electric cur
rent which entered the customer's premises was shunted
through a pair of cells, each containing two zinc plates im
mersed in a solution of zinc sulphate. The cells, connected
in series, served as checks upon each other. Through the
effect of the electric current zinc in proportion to the volume
of the current was removed from the positive plate and
deposited on the negative plate. From weighing the plates
before and after use, the amount of current consumed could
be calculated.
The weighing was done with the utmost precision. Cen
tral stations had a regular meter crew, which made the
rounds with a horse and wagon. New meter plates were put
in to replace old ones, which were tagged with the customer's
name and carried back to the station for weighing.
Experience proved this meter perfectly reliable. Mistakes,
when they did occur, were usually caused by human fallibil
ity, as was the case at Sunbury, where the meter in a large
clothing store indicated at one time that $200-worth of cur
rent had been consumed in a month. The meter-man was
aghast. He lost sleep for two nights. Then suddenly the ex
planation came to him. In order to fit the plates into the
meter-box he had been obliged to clip off an inch or two of
copper wire, forgetting that he had previously weighed the
plates, wire and all. The loss in weight represented by two
inches of wire had registered about $150 to the customer's
debit.
Another humble device was the switch. Yet of what practi
cal value was it to know how to produce electric current,
efficiently and in volume, if the current could not be con
trolled? How could an electric circuit operate daily unless it
could be closed and opened at will?
Before the end of the decade 1876-86, the switches, while
ONWARD WITH VOLTS
101
still serving each its own dynamo, were grouped together on
a single frame. In large stations these switchboards were
formidable affairs, the multiplicity of plugs suggesting a
gigantic game board. The early switchboards worked on the
plug principle and were constructed of wood. If a poor
THOMSON'S DYNAMO WITH THE AUTOMATIC CONTROL
contact occurred between plug and terminal, the frame was
liable to take fire.
With the incandescent lamp, the switch entered a new
phase. Edison's system reversed the relation between am
perage and voltage. Arc-lamp systems had a current which
remained fixed or constant; but they had a changing voltage,
increasing according to the number of lamps in circuit and
going as high as 2000 volts. Edison employed a constant
voltage, no higher than 110; but the operating circuits
handled over 700 amperes of current. The switch now con-
102 MEN AND VOLTS
trolled an electric current beyond all previous experience.
Edison developed perhaps the first type of knife-blade
switch, certainly the first of large capacity. He was the first
to grapple with the erratic arc in an electric switch. The
voltaic arc in the arc lamp is useful, desirable and en
couraged by the construction of the lamp; but the voltaic
arc at almost any other point in an electrical system is
harmful. Seven hundred amperes of current, suddenly inter
rupted by a switch, was likely to cause such an arc, resulting
in damage to the apparatus. Edison prevented this by ar
ranging the knife-blade contacts of his switch so that the
current passed through them in series, one contact after
another.
IN THE FIRST TEN YEARS of electrical growth, the forging of
policies was hard put to catch up with the brilliancy of in
vention. In various executive offices, at desk or council table,
America's economic future was taking form. In the plain
office of Edwin W. Rice, Jr., general superintendent of the
Thomson-Houston Electric Company, were originated some
historic policies, determined by him through sheer necessity.
There were few industrial executives of that period who
were so young in years, so discerning, or so prolific as Rice.
It was a time of crowding emergencies and unremitting
labor. Upon the young superintendent fell the task of ana
lyzing a multitude of perplexing situations. He watched the
extraordinary growth of the plant and studied the question
of factory efficiency. And he developed methods so strategic
and fundamental that they became steppingstones toward
a day of huge production, methods that worked a revolution
in industrial supervision.
He divided plant operation along functional lines. A new
staff of supervisory officials was created all of them familiar
ELECTRICITY BECOMES VERSATILE 103
in present industry, but each one then of a fairly unknown
type.
There was a production manager, responsible for getting
the manufactured product out on time; a mechanical super
intendent in charge of mechanical work, new building con
struction and factory discipline; a cost manager, with juris
diction over cost accounting, bookkeeping, and pay-roll; a
purchasing agent, directing the purchase of all raw materials,
supplies, and equipment; and a technical superintendent,
supervising engineering, research, and drafting. All reported
directly to the factory manager.
Then the young general superintendent introduced a
second innovation in factory management, a new method of
determining manufacturing costs in which scientific prin
ciples superseded guesswork. The company set about ac
curately calculating its overhead taxes, insurance, fuel,
maintenance, depreciation and the variation of overhead
as applied to different products of manufacture. To the
actual cost of direct labor and materials were added the
computed percentages of overhead.
The first ten years made large and flourishing enterprises
out of the Thomson-Houston and Edison companies and
they also brought prosperity to the Brush Electric Company.
Out of Cleveland had come in the latter part of the decade
news of the first experiments with an electric industrial
furnace.
The promoters of this endeavor were Alfred and Eugene
Cowles, two brothers interested in the production of alumi
num by electric smelting. They contracted with Charles F.
Brush for a dynamo to be used in their experiments, specify
ing a constant-potential, direct-current unit, capable of pro
ducing 300 amperes at 60 volts.
Current was conducted to carbons mounted in a horizontal
104 MEN AND VOLTS
position in the interior of the furnace, which was a clay
retort, and the experiments, begun on October 2, 1884, re
sulted in the production on October 9 of the first alloy of
aluminum obtained in the United States by this method. It
is also recorded that on October 11 synthetic rubies and
sapphires were produced in this furnace.
The Cowle brothers now ordered a larger unit, which was
built for them in 1886. This dynamo was one of the early
"monsters." It was of the characteristic Brush open-coil type,
and had a capacity of 3200 amperes at 80 volts, or 256 kilo
watts. It was larger than Edison's Jumbo and next to the
largest dynamo in the world.
The Brush Company toward the end of 1887 embarked
upon a new field to keep abreast of the times. Following the
lead of Thomson-Houston, it entered the alternating-current
field. A visitor to Cleveland would have been impressed by
the Brush factory, one of the most pretentious of its day. It
was a beehive of activity, for there were local Brush com
panies in numerous cities, all of them licensees of the parent
company.
"Six years ago," wrote Charles Lever in 1885, "a few Brush
arc lamps strung up along Broadway comprised nearly all
the electric lighting New York could boast of ... Now
there are nearly 3000 arc lamps in operation every night in
New York and Brooklyn . . . These lights are supplied on
the rental system . . . The usual charge is forty to forty-five
cents per lamp per night . . . Cleveland, the home of
Brush, is the largest manufacturing city for electric light ap
paratus in the world."
The Fort Wayne Electric Light Company had branched
into the field of incandescents in 1885. R. T. McDonald, head
of the concern, had induced a new electrical man, M. M.
Slattery, to join his company and work up a system of in-
ELECTRICITY BECOMES VERSATILE 105
candescence, using the alternating current. Within a short
time Slattery's system an alternating-current dynamo, a
transformer, and auxiliary apparatus was on the market.
Customers were expected to purchase their lamps of other
manufacturers thus did the Fort Wayne company avoid
the danger of patent infringement.
Wood, in the meantime, had pioneered in arc lighting by
installing an outfit, despite competition, for lighting the
Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island. Representatives of
several arc-light systems interviewed General Stone prior to
Wood's call. Wood found the General nourishing a notion to
throw electric light upon the clouds so that reflected rays
would illuminate the statue.
"General," said Wood, "such a scheme as that would make
you the laughing stock of the country. What you need for
the job is direct lighting."
The General sprang up with an outburst of emphatic lan
guage. "By gad, sir," he cried, "you're the first one who has
told me the truth. Those other rascals simply agreed with
me, with all sorts of flatttery about the fine results I would
get with my plan."
Wood got the order. And there was no reason for laughter
when the current was turned on and electric rays cast their
brilliance upon the symbolic figure of Miss Liberty.
THE SECOND DECADE of electrical development was inaugu
rated by an event in the Berkshires which influenced the
years that followed. This was the establishment on March 6,
1886 of a local lighting system in Great Barrington, Massa
chusetts, which was totally different from any preceding it.
First it made use of alternating current and was the first
such system to be commercially installed. Second, it used
transformers which were of a particularly efficient type. The
106 MEN AND VOLTS
system was the work of a young man of twenty-eight, an
accomplished electrical technician, William Stanley.
Stanley was the first to develop commercially a practical
transformer, although not the first to conceive it. He utilized
the only efficient principle of design and the only efficient
system of circuit connection.
As far back as 1879, Thomson's dynamo fulfilled the ele
mentary requirements of an alternating-current generator,
and he had devised two induction coils in a working circuit
that were perfect counterparts of the modern transformer.
But he did not utilize alternating current, because of the
greater simplicity of direct current. In 1885 he foresaw that
the day of alternating current was near; and he set up an
experimental system at the Thomson-Houston plant, sending
current from Factory A to Factory B, and making use of
transformers for so doing. This of course was not a com
mercial installation.
Stanley, meanwhile, was working in the same direction
independently of Thomson, and what he did had in the be
ginning no relation to the General Electric Succession. It
was an outgrowth of his association with George Westing-
house. The latter had founded, in 1884, the Westinghouse
Electric and Manufacturing Company, which has become
one of the large electrical manufacturing units of the present
day.
Westinghouse saw the possibilities of alternating current,
and the need of such a device as the transformer to give the
current utmost utility. He bought the American rights to the
patents of a Frenchman, Gaulard, and an Englishman,
Gibbs, who had worked out transformers. Then he com
missioned Stanley to experiment with the transformers,
whose principal drawback was in their series connection so
ALL HANDS TO THE RESCUE
Derailed cars were frequent enough occurrences on the Richmond road
to insnire this nicture hu n. ma^nzine artist.
THE WAR OF THE CURRENTS 107
that they were dependent upon each other in operation and
could not work independently.
Stanley's notable contributions were two. First, he con
nected the transformers in parallel, giving independent
operation, such as Edison obtained by connecting incandes
cent lamps in parallel; and second, he made each trans
former automatically regulate itself, thus permitting inde
pendent control of the devices supplied by the transformer.
Thomson in 1879 had already accomplished the same
things. He, too, had connected induction coils in parallel and
had designed those coils to be self -regulating.
Stanley obtained a patent covering the method of design
ing his transformer, rather than the method of connection in
circuit. Thomson made application for a patent in November
1885, but it was stubbornly contested by several opponents,
one of whom was the Gaulard-Gibbs combination. It was
nearly twenty years before Thomson's patent was granted,
only to be declared invalid in its first court test.
Thomson, Stanley, and Westinghouse all perceived that the
transformer was the key to a new door in electrical progress.
Up to this time men generated electric current with great
success. They distributed current after it was generated and
utilized it in ways that were expanding every year. But they
could not transmit the low-voltage current employed for
incandescent lighting farther than three miles. To send it
over greater distances required heavy currents, hence large
conductors and the incurring of a prohibitive expense for
copper wire.
The arc-light systems had an advantage due to the
higher voltages used. Brush had used his forty-light dynamo
to operate thirty lights at full brilliance ten miles away. This
restriction of transmission was the serious limiting factor of
108 MEN AND VOLTS
Edison's system. An Edison generating station could not
economically supply a territory greater than sixteen square
miles. Transmission became feasible only when the trans
former was made practical.
In Stanley's historic installation at Great Barrington, cur
rent was sent from his laboratory in an old rubber mill on
the outskirts of town into the town proper, a distance of four
thousand feet, the current being transformed from 500 volts
to 3000 volts for transmission, and then reduced back to 500
volts for use.
Thomson did not place an alternating-current dynamo
upon the market until the spring of 1887. His policy in one
regard was distinct from that of Westinghouse and Stanley.
He believed that high-voltage systems, which would ob
viously grow up as alternating current came into extensive
use, required protective devices to safeguard customers. In
1885 he devised such protective equipment and incorporated
it into his first commercial transformers. Until he had done
this, he would not allow the Thomson-Houston Company
to exploit the alternating current commercially. His feeling
on this point was inflexible and won the endorsement of
both Coffin and Rice. Thomson told his colleagues that he
would not permit an alternating-current system to enter his
own house without protection and therefore he would not
sanction its use in the houses of others.
Westinghouse and Stanley disagreed with Thomson. They
recognized the latent danger in a high-voltage line, but they
held that it was exaggerated. So they went ahead, while the
Thomson-Houston Company refrained from entering the
field though at no time did it condemn or criticize its
competitors.
Not so the Edison Electric Light Company, which assailed
alternating current and kept up the attack against com-
THE WAR OF THE CURRENTS 109
petitors that ventured to advocate it. At first the Company
trained its guns upon the Westinghouse people. When the
Thomson-Houston Company put a transformer in the field
with a Thomson protective device it was also included in
the attacks. Sales agents had no trouble convincing cus
tomers that its transformer was now perfectly safe. But the
Edison Company remained adamant toward the alternating
current, regardless of whether protective devices were in use
or not.
In a printed pronouncement, "A Warning from the Edison
Electric Light Company," it sought to show that the alternat
ing current was a menace to life and limb. And this attitude
persisted despite the obvious electrical advantages of uti
lizing that kind of current.
The clash of opinions was intensified by the decision of
the New York State prison authorities to adopt electrocution
for capital punishment and to employ alternating current
for the purpose. That was ammunition for the direct-current
artilleries! What could be more convincing, they demanded,
than the official selection of this current as the most effica
cious means of executing men?
So there grew up this curious conflict known as the "War
of the Currents." The Westinghouse group frequently struck
back at the Edison camp, and these two became the princi
pal antagonists. Coffin never permitted Thomson-Houston
to participate in the skirmishing. He insisted that his men
keep quiet.
As a matter of fact there was never quite the protective
advantage in the direct current that its protagonists sup
posed. At equal voltages, alternating current, as Thomson
said, is less deadly than direct. The danger in alternating
current is that the primary coil in the step-down trans
formers, from which circuits enter houses and offices, may
110 MEN AND VOLTS
accidentally come in contact with the secondary coil, al
lowing the high voltage of the former to enter the secondary
circuit. Should that occur, any person touching the second
ary was likely to receive a serious shock. Under prevalent
methods of manufacture and installation Thomson believed
that the two coils might readily short circuit.
To take care of such a contingency, he invented three
methods of protection, each of them effective. The one
finally adopted, because of maximum reliability and sim
plicity, was to ground the secondary wires of the transformer
with a metallic conductor. Once adopted, the Thomson-
Houston Company did not hesitate to exploit the alternating
current. A complete commercial system was planned at once,
using Thomson alternators and transformers. The latter
raised the current pressure for transmission to a thousand
volts, which was for some years the standard Thomson-
Houston transmission voltage.
15
Destiny Comes to Town
IN THE BRIEF STRETCH of her existence America has grown
with unbelievable swiftness. It has been such a lusty growth
that the present has almost lost sight of the past from which
it developed. The "good old days" have disappeared with
the inrush of machinery, inventions, innovations in a word,
with the touch of progress. Transformations in individual
communities have come about almost within a generation.
And electricity has taken a prominent part in working these
social changes.
In the eastern reaches of the Mohawk Valley of New York
State, along the course of that low-banked, quiet-moving
stream, stands the city of Schenectady. In bygone times
it was a peaceful, prosperous town of Dutch settlement
and Dutch atmosphere. Washington Irving might have said
of it, as he did of Tarrytown: "It is in such little retired
Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great
state of New York, that population, manners and customs
remain fixed . . . They are like those little nooks of still
water which border a rapid stream, where we may see the
straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolv-
111
112 MEN AND VOLTS
ing in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the
passing torrent."
Schenectady was much like that in 1886. It had no large
pretensions, no particular desire to alter its simple mode of
life. The worthy citizens who traversed the grass-fringed
cobblestones of elm-shaded State Street were content with
their Dutch traditions and their unassuming place in the
affairs of the nineteenth century.
Small local industries supported the fourteen thousand
inhabitants. Broomcorn in spreading abundance waved in
the breezes up and down the river banks, for the town
manufactured most of America's brooms and brushes. The
one large-scale factory was the plant of the Schenectady
Locomotive Works, colloquially known as the "big shop."
No citizen of Schenectady in 1886 supposed that the com
munity would be noted industrially other than as a place
where locomotives were built. No more did the president of
the Schenectady Locomotive Works, Charles G. Ellis, or his
plant superintendent, Walter McQueen. These men had
been associated for years. They had guided the growth of
the works; they were fast friends. But they had a falling-out,
and their quarrel, by an odd chance, swayed the whole
future of their community. McQueen, with the assistance of
local capital, organized the McQueen Locomotive Works
and began the erection of two factory buildings.
He secured as a site a broad expanse of level ground west
of the town and along the river. Once it was called the "big
flat," a famous Indian hunting ground. Now it offered many
advantages for the industrious white man with his machines,
his mechanical skill, his manufacturing genius.
McQueen began to build his factory on this spot in 1885.
He had two structures completed, except for the roofs, when
his principal financial backers died, and the project was
DESTINY COMES TO TOWN
113
halted. The unfinished buildings stood in plain sight from
the railroad as the spring of 1886 came in.
In New York, meanwhile, another event occurred which
bore upon Schenectady 's future. Edison dispatched agents
in various directions to scout for suitable sites for a new
EDISON MACHINE WORKS IN NEW YORK CITY 1885
The factory on Goerck Street, New York, shortly before it was
moved to Schenectady.
factory. One went to New Jersey, one to Pennsylvania, and
a third to up-state New York.
So it was that Destiny called to the Mohawk Valley one
day in the spring of 1886 a man who felt an immediate inter
est in such a spectacle as met his eye from the car-window of
a train puffing across the "big flat," past the two lonely factory
buildings on the outskirts of Schenectady. He was Harry M.
Livor, who reported promptly to Edison. Edison went up to
inspect the site in person and the location made a favorable
impression. An appraisal of the property had placed its value
at $45,000. Edison felt it was too high, and offered $37,500,
114 MEN AND VOLTS
declaring he would not pay a cent more. The owners were
equally adamant.
It would have been an impasse had not civic pride burned
in the breasts of some of the townsfolk. These men wanted
to see Edison's plant located in their community. They held
a meeting, discussed ways and means, and determined at
length to appeal to the merchants of the town to make up
the difference between Edison's offer and the owners' price.
The merchants of Schenectady were canvassed, and urged
to consider what it would mean for the town to have the
plant of the famous Edison. The necessary amount was
raised, so that the owners, as well as Edison, were satisfied.
The stage was set for Schenectady to emerge from her
seclusion into industrial prominence among American cities.
The shops immediately took up the task of turning out the
dynamos needed by the numerous Edison generating sta
tions. Within a few months, other buildings sprang up along
side the original shops which McQueen had reared.
,_
RONALD T. MCDONALD
The organizer of the Fort Wayne
Electric Company, and the Com
pany's factory in 1883.
16
The Motor Marches On
EDISON, WITH HIS INCOMPARABLE SYSTEM of incandescent
lighting, utilizing only the direct current, Brush, Thomson,
and Wood, the great arc-light pioneers, ready to exploit the
alternating current as well as the direct these four con
stituted the great pioneers in the nation's electrical illuminat
ing field. All of them had given some thought to electric
power. But none of them, even as late as the middle eighties,
had expressly designed an electric motor as such, nor made a
business of developing electric motors for stationary work.
Edison, when questioned by a journalist in 1884 as to the
"transmission of electrical force," said: "That problem has
been pretty well worked out. A young man named Sprague
. . . has worked the matter up in a very remarkable way.
His is the only true motor."
Sprague had vigorously pursued a well-defined theory of
electric power since his days as a member of Edison's com
pany, when, in his office at Brockton, he had found time to
work out his motor. After forming the Sprague Electric
Railway and Motor Company he perfected the design of a
constant-speed, non-sparking motor to be used on direct-
115
116 MEN AND VOLTS
current circuits, as well as a motor adapted particularly for
street-railway work.
Specimens of these types were displayed at the Philadel
phia Electric Exposition in September, 1884. The largest was
of six-horsepower capacity; the smallest, rated at one and a
half horsepower, drove a weaving loom. These motors were
so designed that they would run at a constant, uniform
speed despite variations in load, with a fixed, non-sparking
position for the commutator brushes.
In the spring of 1885 endorsement of Sprague motors
came from the Edison Electric Light Company, which sent
out a circular to its local companies advising them that "A
practical motor has been a want seriously felt in our sys
tem . . . The Sprague motor is believed to meet ... all
the exigencies of the case, and the Edison Electric Light
Company feels it can safely recommend it to its licensees as
the only practical and economic motor existing today. Our
own company has no interest whatever in the Sprague
company, and does not derive any benefit . . . through
this agreement."
The Sprague Company soon had sales agents in Philadel
phia, New England, and elsewhere. A dozen motors were
installed in textile factories at Lawrence, Massachusetts.
The man who was perhaps most active in the field was
George F. Steele, who served for several years as superin
tendent of the New England Electric Company, eventually
becoming president. Steele was an able salesman with a
good product to sell. He made a reputation for the Sprague
motors and for himself by introducing it into the Boston
garment trade.
Scores of small clothing factories and tailor shops in
Boston used batteries of sewing machines operated labori
ously by hand. Larger establishments were equipped with
THE MOTOR MARCHES ON 117
machine-tables, which had a shaft connecting all the sewing
machines, so that they could be run by power. This device
gave Steele his opportunity, for the Boston Edison Company
had just opened up, making central-station power available.
It needed only one or two Sprague motors, belted to the
shafts of these machine-tables, to sell the idea to the trade.
A SPRAGUE MOTOR OPERATING A HOIST
They eliminated the necessity of a steam engine on the
premises and lessened the expense for power. Steele came
into all the business he could handle; and as he visited the
motors regularly, making any adjustments needed in their
operation, he made staunch friends of his customers. The
clothing men would take no motors except the Sprague.
In December, 1886, the first 220-volt Sprague motor was
installed in a building at Purchase and Pearl Streets, Boston,
for the purpose of running a freight elevator. The motor was
a fifteen-horsepower unit, connected by about three thou
sand feet of copper wire to the three-wire system of the
Boston Edison Company.
118 MEN AND VOLTS
The length of the line was a new factor at the time, and
the size of copper wire had been incorrectly calculated for
maintaining the voltage under load. Steele realized this
the moment he looked at the wires, but it was too late to
make changes, as the elevator was needed to move a new
wheel concern to the sixth floor. A load of big wheels was
immediately rolled into the elevator. When the attempt was
made to start it, the voltage of the motor dropped to 170
and the elevator could not be stirred. All the time fresh
consignments of wheels kept arriving until the sidewalk was
blocked with them.
Steele, in desperation, changed the connections on the
motor so that it would operate with the reduced voltage. But
in doing so he had to subject the motor fields to such intense
heat that the winding insulation began to boil and flow out
through the motor frame. Continuous operation with over
heated windings was impossible. Steele stood duty ten hours
a day, in an unheated building, to start and stop the motor
for every trip made by the elevator. Between trips he had to
jump up and down to keep from freezing.
But the wheels were moved in without further difficulty.
Everyone was delighted. Steele accepted the compliments of
the building owners with a frostbitten smile and was wise
enough to keep his comments to himself. Within a few days
he had another circuit run into the building so that the
motor, supplied with proper voltage, could operate contin
uously under normal conditions.
At the end of 1886 the Sprague Company had 190 sta
tionary motors installed and in use, and 80 more under con
struction. In many cities in the East and Middle West, they
served more than a hundred trades and industries. They
drove boot and shoe machinery in Detroit and Boston; coffee
mills in Elgin, Illinois, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania; emery
THE MOTOR MARCHES ON 119
wheels in Des Moines and Chicago; lathes in Chicago,
Boston, and New York; and printing presses, ventilators, ice
cream freezers, and various other mechanisms. The Chicago
fire department; the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company of
New York, where Edison started his career as mechanical
repair man; Drexel, Morgan and Company; and the New
York Stock Exchange installed Sprague motors.
No meters had yet been installed on motor circuits, so that
in most cases a flat-rate charge was made. In Boston, for
example, a five-horsepower motor cost about $33 a month.
The metering of motors began toward the end of 1886.
Steele installed a metered motor for Bigelow and Kennard,
jewelers, in October of that year, to operate a buffing lathe
for polishing silverware; and this motor was destined to
continue in operation for thirty years, staunchly exemplify
ing by is own performance the tireless, muscle-saving power
of the electrical handyman.
But the difficulties the stationary motor had encountered
were small compared with those at that moment besetting
the traction motor.
17
Tribulation on Wheels
BENTLEY AND KNIGHT IN 1887 had abandoned Cleveland as
a scene of operations and now had a contract with the street
railway company at Woonsocket, Rhode Island. By agree
ment, the Thomson-Houston company furnished the gen
erators and motors. After consultation, a rugged fifteen-
horsepower machine was adapted. It was planned for 400
volts, and its speed was twice reduced, by gears and pinions,
before the power passed into the car-axles; that is, it was a
"double-reduction" motor.
Rohrer, one of their engineers, was apprehensive lest a
complicated rig would be required to shift the brushes of the
motor when the direction of operation was reversed. During
the tests, Knight acted as motorman on the front platform,
while Rohrer stretched himself at full length on the floor of
the car, trap door open, to observe the behavior of the
motor. For some hours they ran the car back and forth,
Rohrer shifting the brushes on the motor each time by hand.
Finally he discovered a fixed position for the brushes where
the electrical neutral point was identical for either direction,
and he realized with considerable relief that a brush-shifting
120
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 121
rig would not be needed. A laminated copper brush and a
fixed yoke were accordingly manufactured and attached to
the motor.
In October, 1887, the Woonsocket road went into com
mercial operation with one car. On the first day this car ran
steadily for thirteen hours, carrying eleven hundred persons,
"curiosity loads," as they were termed. The road had an ele
vated conductor.
The Bentley-Knight Electric Railway Company now ob
tained a contract for equipping the road of the Observatory
Hill Passenger Railway Company of Allegheny City, Penn
sylvania. This was one of the most difficult propositions they
could have accepted. The total ascent on Observatory Hill
was a rise of 295 feet in a stretch of 4900 feet, an average
grade of six per cent, with a maximum grade of twelve per
cent located on a sharp curve. On the entire road there was
scarcely a fifty-foot stretch where a car could stand without
the aid of brakes and there were thirty-four curves. This was
a tremendous undertaking for a car still in the experimental
stage!
The line was four miles in length. It was decided that one-
quarter of the distance should be of conduit construction
and the remainder of the overhead system. The cost per mile
of the conduit was $23,000; of the overhead wire, $4000.
These figures indicate the reason why the overhead wire,
except in densely populated centers, survived the conduit.
So severe was the grade on Observatory Hill that the cars
were given additional mechanical assistance in making the
ascent. This consisted of a steel rack laid parallel to one
rail, the teeth of which engaged a gear wheel mounted on
the car axle.
The Thomson-Houston men again went into conference
over the type of motor to serve the road. They determined
122 MEN AND VOLTS
upon a voltage of 500, and placed two motors instead of one
on each car. Generating current were four dynamos, built for
250 volts each and operated as two units, two machines in
series constituting a unit.
The road opened in January 1888, and service was main
tained for nineteen hours a day. The records show that on
one occasion a single car carried forty passengers up the
long grade at eight miles an hour.
That seemed to indicate success. Yet a few months later
the Thomson-Houston company received an urgent call for
help. There was trouble with the commutators on the
motors, and six cars were laid up for repairs. A few days
later Rohrer, who had been sent out to adjust the difficulty,
had his first contact with what proved the most vexatious
difficulty in the history of the streetcar motor.
"I well remember my sensations," he said, "when I stood
at the end of the road looking up the street on which the
underground conduit was laid, and saw two streaks of cop
per dust on the paving. ... I donned my overalls, got busy
with file and sandpaper, and after working the rest of that
day, all night, and all the next day, I had four of the cars
in service. After getting some sleep, I soon had the other
two ready. Fortunately, I had carried with me a supply of
new copper brushes, which I put on the motors. The old
brushes had become cutting tools, the edges having melted
from the severe sparking, and the commutators were a sight."
The severity of streetcar service, repeated starts and
stops, reversal of direction, all going on for nineteen hours
a day, had been accompanied by flashing and sparking
whenever these variations occurred. Every flash melted cop
per from the brushes until their edges were so sharp that
they ground copper off the commutators.
It was said that there was a small fortune in copper de-
NUMBER TWO MACHINE SHOP AT SCHENECTADY, ABOUT 1888
BUSTLES AND TAIL-COATS IN INDUSTRY
A view in the wire-insulating department at Schenectady, about 1888.
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 123
posited along the tracks of the Allegheny City street railway,
and for a while express shipments of brushes left Lynn
almost nightly.
The day of triumph for the electric street railway seemed
far in the future. Yet with all its present uncertainty, an
enterprise far more audacious than this venture at Allegheny
City was being planned. And the man to undertake it was
Frank J. Sprague.
Out of a clear sky his company was offered the contract
to build an electric road at Richmond, Virginia. Sprague
himself remarked years later, "We had little to show, but
faith was strong and the contract was taken under terms,
price, and guarantee easily placing it in the Icnave or fool'
class, especially in view of the unprepared state of the Com
pany to undertake work of such magnitude." Probably no
one familiar with the circumstances would have dreamed
that the enterprise, foolhardy though it seemed, meant the
turn of street-railway fortune.
Certain it is that no particular attention was drawn to
Sprague's departure for the Virginian capital with his care
fully designed motor, his boundless faith and little else.
The astonishment of the darkies in Richmond gave
Sprague his first taste of renown. His car eliminated animal
power on the city lines. He was the "emancipator of the
mule." An old negro, watching with bulging eyes the mule-
less vehicle steadily climbing a long hill, cried out:
"Fo' Gawd, what am de white folks a-gwine do nex'?
Fust dey freed de darkey, an* now dey freed de mulel"
Certain it is that nothing so "impossible," so beset by
difficulty, discouragement, and tribulation was ever turned
into a virtual success. Yet it is universally conceded that the
birth of electric traction dates from the solution of the tech
nical problems presented by Sprague's road at Richmond.
124 MEN AND VOLTS
It was Sprague's first attempt to set up a street railway
system of any size. It was to be an entirely new road new
construction throughout. It was to be city-wide, twelve miles
in length, and the contract specified that forty cars were to
be equipped and thirty were to be operated simultaneously.
No electrical railway in America had yet operated more than
a dozen cars at once.
Electrification, under the contract, was to be completed
in ninety days from the time work started, and the price to
be paid was $110,000. The contract did not state that Rich
mond has several hills, making the steep grades many and
the curves sharp. Yet Sprague signed that contract without
either sight or knowledge of Richmond or the route of the
road, and knowing that not a foot of track had yet been laid.
The construction syndicate did a poor job of roadbed
construction. The track was laid with light-weight rails of
inferior quality; the curves were built on a radius of thirty-
three feet, some only twenty-four feet, and were not bound
in any way; the track was not ballasted from one end to the
other. All this added heavily to Sprague's task. And already
he had enough to weigh him down. He needed advice, as
sistants, time, and experiments.
Sprague knew that he must have trained, reliable men at
the scene of operations; as he put it, he needed "a man who
has nerve and grit and coolness, one who, if he gets on the
front of a car going seventy-five miles an hour and there is
danger ahead, will stay there." So Oscar T. Crosby was per
suaded to resign his commission in the Army engineer corps
and join the new enterprise. Not long afterward Ensign S.
Dana Greene offered his services. It was soon arranged that
Greene should handle affairs at Richmond, while Crosby
took charge of manufacturing details in New York.
Experiments were begun with the utmost perseverance.
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 125
Trolley poles were tried out, including an under-running
wheel; motor-control received unending attention; motor-
suspension beneath the car, brush construction, current
supply, powerhouse equipment, absorbed everyone's
thoughts. Cars were run up and down an experimental track
in the yard of the Sprague company works in New York.
.During one of the first attempts, before a reliable motor
controller had been devised, the car got out of control and
smashed through the side of the office. The only thing that
stopped its wild career was the office safe, in which by an
odd chance there lay the one asset of value possessed by
the company the Richmond contract.
Within a few weeks the motor was under control and the
system began to take tangible shape. Sprague had heard that
Van Depoele sent out his cars with a man riding on the
roof to keep the trolley wheel from jumping the wires, and
he was determined to avoid a similar arrangement.
But overwork and loss of sleep lowered his physical vital
ity, and without warning he came down with typhoid fever.
It was the very moment when the organization needed to
drive ahead at full speed. Yet for nine weeks during that
crucial period the helmsman's hand was absent, while the
complication of problems grew and difficulties multiplied
with every day that passed. The entire burden of piloting
the Sprague ship of fortune during those nine weeks rested
upon the shoulders of the two young assistants, one trained
in the Army and one in the Navy.
When Sprague, convalescent from his sickness, went to
Richmond late in 1887, the tracks had been laid and the
overhead wire system was in place. He was now able to go
over the route, and he watched with dire apprehension as the
car approached a ten per cent grade. As he himself recalls
that moment:
126 MEN AND VOLTS
"My heart fell within me, and I said, It is utterly impos
sible for any car to climb that hill/ I felt that there were two
things that would probably happen. First, the car would not
ascend the grade, no matter how powerful the machines, for
lack of track adhesion; and second, the machines were not
powerful enough, even if the wheels would cling to the
track.
'We had built very light machines (motors) with one
reduction of gearing, to which the street-railway practice is
now gravitating, and the torsional effort of these machines,
while great, was not sufficient for the duty now demanded
of them. An eight per cent grade would strain them, a ten
per cent grade would be fatal. . . .
"Should we operate the particularly heavy grades with a
cable, to be run by electric motors, in sunken pits under
neath the track, and depend upon motors for the regular
duty on the rest of the road? This seemed feasible if the cars
could not by their own adhesion mount a ten per cent grade.
On the other hand, if a car did have sufficient adhesion to
mount this grade, it was plain that there must be a change
in the machines. We must double the reduction of gearing,
and this was a serious problem to face. . . .
"We had on board a number of our employees and Gen
eral Manager George Burt, who was in Richmond represent
ing the syndicate's interests. ... A short distance from the
end of the line we stopped in the middle of a sharp curve.
Burt thought we could not get out of it. I said we would if
I wrecked the machine, and out of it the car came. No
more enthusiastic man, I think, was on the car that night
than Burt himself, after seeing that exhibition of what a
motor could do when pushed to an abnormal strain. . . .
"Arriving at the foot of the hill we stopped and I said,
'Burt, we won't make it!' He said, 'You will; if you can get
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 127
out of a curve like that, you can go up the side of a wall/
I offered to bet him five dollars, but needless to say I was
in hopes I would lose. If we succeeded in climbing the
hill, I knew what would happen to the machines. But it was
vital to know whether a self-propelled car could be made to
go up that grade."
It did go up the grade. Reaching the top, the highest point
on the line, it came to a stop amid the cheers of an enthusi
astic throng. But the motors were hotter than the outside of
a furnace.
Sprague was in no hurry to proceed. He hoped the motors
would cool down after a brief delay. But the crowd was
impatient, and he again applied the current. As the car
stirred, Sprague felt a peculiar bucking movement and re
alized that it was seriously disabled. One of the armatures
was crossed, and the odor of burning insulation filled the air.
Sprague called out loudly enough for all to hear, "Greene,
there is some trouble with the circuits. You'd better go back
to the carbarn and get some instruments so that we can
locate it."
Greene realized the situation at once. He took his time
about getting the instruments. Sprague turned the lights off
in the car, and the crowd, tired of watching a dark, motion
less car, gradually dispersed. Greene finally arrived with
four powerful mules, which corrected the trouble by hauling
the car back to the shed.
The long hill had been surmounted. But the problems left
in the wake of this achievement seemed as insurmountable
as the hill itself. A change in the gearing between motors
and car axle was imperative. But time was practically up
and the construction syndicate was clamoring for operation
to start.
Sprague went to Brown & Sharpe of Providence, and told
128 MEN AND VOLTS
the foreman, "We have forty cars and are under contract to
run. If we fail, we're likely to go under. I have everything
at stake. The electric railway is largely at stake. The road has
to succeed. Would you put some of your men and material
at my disposal until I recover the position we have lost?"
The foreman said he would. In a few weeks the only
practical mechanism for converting the single-gear reduction
equipment into double reduction equipment was completed.
Sprague had conceived the method himself.
There were countless other problems to be solved. Be
tween forty and fifty schemes of trolley construction were
attempted before one of Sprague's draftsmen, Eugene Pom-
mer, thought out the plan of the swivel trunnion mounted
on a tripod. This supported a trolley pole with a retrieving
line attached to it. It proved to be the happy solution and
was installed on all the cars.
The brushes on the motor commutators were as aggra
vating to Sprague as they had been to Bentley and Knight
at Allegheny City. Every shape and design of metal brush
was tried. Flat brushes wore through, doubled over, and
stuck to the commutators; solid and laminated brushes
caught in the commutator bars or split and straddled half a
dozen bars, causing crossed armatures and burnt-out fields.
Tilting brushes would not work. Brushes of copper, bronze,
or brass in various shapes, set on end and pressed down by
springs, served for a while but finally gave out. At last a
number of bars of brass about three-eighths of an inch square
were installed and lasted tolerably well. But as the cars
moved through the streets, a shower of brass particles fell
at the rate of nine dollars worth a day!
In October, 1887, experimental operation had been at
tempted, and on February 2, 1888, in a drizzling rain, the
road was opened for public service. People swarmed upon
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 129
the cars. Service was satisfactory until cars began to stop
and could not be budged. The new gears had developed a
trick of locking. One of Sprague's workmen thought the
trouble was lack of lubrication. And so it proved.
During a sleet storm workmen had to get up on the roofs
of the cars and knock the ice off the overhead wire by
clugging it with a broom.
Then the metal brushes began to ruin the commutators,
and in turn the armatures. Interruptions became continuous.
Motor fields had to be rewound and rewound. It was a cease
less nightmare. But the road kept running, regardless of
mental anguish and financial drain. Dismay stalked through
the offices of the Sprague company in New York as reports of
these troubles came in every mail.
Somehow the cars continued to run. Mechanics sweated
and electricians swore, and Sprague himself spent his time
commuting between Richmond and New York. The public,
unaware of the strain upon tempers behind the scenes, ex
claimed over the electric cars whose fame became wide
spread.
Sprague gradually increased the number of cars in service
from ten to twenty, then thirty, and finally forty. "We felt
that we owned the whole street, and the city as well," he
said the first time thirty cars were run May 4.
By the end of April nearly 6000 passengers were riding
on the cars every day. There were delays and interruptions,
but the public was tolerant and patient. The motormen were
referred to as "motoneers." Sometimes a car ran off the
poorly-laid rails and passengers and pedestrians alike would
hoist it back on the track.
Sprague's practice in motor installation on these cars in
general adhered to the plans adopted for his Elevated Rail
way experiment of the preceding year. He was the first man
130 MEN AND VOLTS
to sleeve the motor on the car axle at two separate points,
and to support the free end of the motor from the car-body.
This arrangement maintained parallelism of the gears under
all conditions of car movement.
In distributing current Sprague won success on the prin
ciple of the parallel circuit. There was a working conductor,
a main conductor, and a feeder. The first was suspended over
the center of the car track; the two latter ran above the
center of the street curb, parallel to the road. Current from
the dynamos travelled at 450 volts over the feeder, which
supplied the main conductor at four widely separated points.
The main conductor in turn supplied the working conductor
by connecting wires placed at intervals of five hundred feet.
Each car was driven by two motors, originally of seven and
a half horsepower each.
Trouble with the metal brushes continued. A man was on
duty all day in front of the carbarn to meet each car as
it came in. The motors would be cut out of circuit in turn,
and while the car was run backward and forward, the work
man would smooth off the mutilated commutators with a
file. This trouble with the brushes was far more serious than
people realized. Not to solve it was to endanger the prospect
of ultimate success.
Relief for the Richmond road, and for many others as
well, finally appeared in the fall of 1888. The nightmare was
laid forever when Charles J. Van Depoele, then in the serv
ice of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, made one of
the most brilliant suggestions in the history of electric street
cars.
Early in January, 1888, Charles A. Coffin told Professor
Thomson that he believed the Thomson-Houston company
should undertake electric-railway development. Coffin's de
cision to enter this new field came before the success of
FACTOKY STYLES OF 1902
Coil winder and helper in the Schenectady plant.
THE LUNCH BRIGADE
Taking fathers lunch to the Schenectady Works each noon used to be a
small boy's chore.
ELECTRICITY ON MOUNT WASHINGTON
The searchlight tower erected on the summit in 1892.
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 131
the Richmond road was consummated. He foresaw at an
early period the great possibilities of electric traction in
urban development. People could live in residential suburbs
if quick transportation was at their disposal. Every city and
town the country over could use electric streetcars.
Coffin's faith was rising at the moment when that of others
was declining. One magnate who had grown faint-hearted
was Aaron K. Stiles, manager and chief financier of the Van
Depoele Electric Manufacturing Company. The company
had been doing an excellent business. Van Depoele himself
was as optimistic and persevering as ever. But Stiles found
the financing of the company far more difficult than he had
expected.
The previous autumn Van Depoele had told the American
Street Railway Association that the electric railway was
"ready for the market." He had enumerated eight electric
railways installed by his company, all of them running at
that time, and averaging seven or eight cars in operation.
The most notable railway was at Montgomery, Alabama, a
road thirteen miles long, with twelve cars running simulta
neously.
But Stiles had not sufficient resources upon which to draw,
and he knew he would have to look elsewhere for financial
backing. He had already approached Sprague in the matter
at the very time when Sprague was swamped with activities
at Richmond. But Sprague, too absorbed in his own prob
lems to undertake new ones, rejected the offer.
So it happened that Coffin purchased the Van Depoele
Company and brought it into the Thomson-Houston com
pany, which acquired the rights to Van Depoele's patents,
and added Van Depoele himself to its staff of engineers.
Terms of sale were largely on a royalty basis. Stiles was
to receive a royalty of $50 for every streetcar equipped
132 MEN AND VOLTS
under Van Depoele's company patents; and Van Depoele
received a royalty of $5 per car in addition to his salary.
Before a year had passed Stiles was satisfied that electric
streetcars would never amount to much, and asked for a
cash settlement of his interests in lieu of further royalties.
Years after his interest was bought, enough cars had been
equipped to make him a wealthy man had he retained the
old royalty basis.
In the month of March, 1888, the month of the great bliz
zard, two men were added to the Thomson-Houston organi
zation. One was William J. Clark; the other was Eugene Grif
fin. Griffin had made an extensive trip through the United
States, gathering data on the electric-light business, and inci
dentally on the electric street railway.
Now began a new and busy era in Thomson-Houston
affairs. The company was committed to the great enterprise
of electric traction. Yet the disquieting situation centering
around the metal brush was unsolved. Until that spectre
was laid, the development of electric traction could not
proceed.
Van Depoele had his own ideas. He had been placing the
motor on the front platform of the car. This arrangement
required a sprocket chain to convey the driving power from
the motor to the car axle which Thomson and Rice at once
pronounced a clumsy method. Van Depoele's reason for so
placing the motor was that the motorman could shift the
brushes by hand whenever serious sparking occurred, and
especially when the direction of rotation was reversed.
But the plan was abandoned in the system which the
company now sought to design. Hoping to dispose of the
metal brush dilemma in some other way, Thomson and Rice
put the motor back under the car and equipped it with the
best type of metal brushes they could make.
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 133
Then they set about electrifying their first streetcar line,
a modest road a mile and a half long, at Crescent Beach, a
coast pleasure resort between Boston and Lynn.
On the evening of July 3, 1888, a party of five men regis
tered at Young's Hotel in Boston. Three of them were di
rectors of the newly organized electric railway company of
Des Moines, Iowa. The other two were Thomson-Houston
sales agents, Theodore P. Bailey and William J. Clark.
The clerk on duty handed Clark a note which he and
Bailey read with dismay. They managed to conceal their
feelings from their three prospective customers through din
ner, and made an appointment with them for the next
morning.
Alone together, Bailey and Clark exchanged looks of con
sternation. Their guests had come east expressly to see the
first Thomson-Houston road at Crescent Beach, where they
expected to be taken the next day. But the note announced
briefly that the motors on both cars at Crescent Beach had
burned out and the cars were not yet back in service.
No need to ask the cause of the trouble. The copper
brushes were again working havoc, and the cars might not
be running for two or three days. What should they do with
their prospects?
The next day was a holiday and Clark and Bailey sug
gested a sight-seeing trip for their guests before starting for
Crescent Beach. First they visited Nantasket Beach, which
proved so delightful that they missed their return boat and
had to wait two hours for the next one.
At lunch the service was painfully slow, although the
westerners were fortunately unaware of the covert signals
passing between Clark and the waiter. After lunch the visi
tors were persuaded to go out to Bunker Hill, which they
might not have another opportunity of seeing. On their re-
134 MEN AND VOLTS
turn the carriage broke down, and the driver devoted him
self endlessly to searching for a lost bolt in the road, while
the close of day drew on.
When they finally got back to Boston, it was too late to
visit Crescent Beach, and the unsuspecting Des Moines di
rectors agreed to postpone the trip until morning. Returning
to their hotel, Clark and Bailey were greeted by another
note. It said, simply:
"Motors replaced. Crescent Beach road running beauti
fully." It had been delivered early that morning!
They lost no time in getting to Crescent Beach the fol
lowing day. The cars behaved perfectly on every trip. The
Des Moines men were greatly impressed, and signed a con
tract with Thomson-Houston in due course.
It may be surmised that the success obtained at Crescent
Beach was hardly more than superficial. But it was no time
for giving up, and before long the company signed a con
tract for equipping the Eckington and Soldiers' Home Rail
way at Washington, D. C.
No sooner were preparations under way on this work than
the United States Senate reported a resolution revoking the
permit previously granted to the railway company to erect
overhead wires in the city of Washington. The railway
company, however, was granted a public hearing before the
resolution was reported.
Documentary evidence, amassed in considerable bulk,
was laid before the committee. Several street-railway offi
cials sent letters asserting in positive terms that overhead
wires were not dangerous and that 500 volts, such as these
systems employed, and not yet caused a fatal accident.
The argument of the Thomson-Houston counsel con
cluded with the following excellent logic:
"No doubt there is danger in electric wires, but the danger
CHARLES P. STEINMETZ
A portrait taken shortly after his arrival in America.
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 135
to people generally in the city is extremely small. The danger
in crossing the streets is thousands of times as great. The
danger on the railroad train, on the steamer, in eating your
lunch or drinking soda-water, is far greater; you do these
things without a care for the consequences. The other day
I read of two or three fatalities caused by falling bricks
blown from a chimney, but the paper said nothing about a
proclamation by the mayor ordering all chimneys taken in."
The committee of the Senate was not proof against such a
strong defense, and the resolution was not passed.
On October 17 the road was opened and created favorable
comment because of its neat and ornamental appearance.
At the same time the hearing before the Senate committee
and particularly the endorsement of the overhead wire sys
tem had given electric street railways excellent publicity.
By the fall of 1888 the Thomson-Houston company had
equipped several electric railways. The work was done with
the utmost care, and under Coffin's policy the company gave
service along with the sale of the products. Hence there were
continual reports on the behavior of the motors, continual
supervision by the experts over the commutator brushes.
An alarming situation was created both by unexpectedly
heavy operating loads placed upon the street-railway motors
and by the neglect which the motors had to undergo. Spark
ing at the commutators became so troublesome and the effi
cient operation of roads so difficult that something had to
be done before the company was financially ruined.
Thomson immediately called a conference. Everyone
agreed there was desperate need for a remedy. But no one
appeared to know what could be done. Finally Van Depoele
spoke in his quick way:
"Why don't you try carbon for a brush?"
Rice exclaimed, "Carbon has a resistance a thousand times
136 MEN AND VOLTS
greater than that of copper. It would be impossible to carry
the current from the commutator."
Van Depoele was unperturbed. "I tried carbon brushes on
a motor in Chicago once, and they worked pretty well."
"What did you try them on?" persisted Rice.
"On a small motor operating on a series arc circuit."
"Well, they might work for a current of ten amperes and a
small motor for one-quarter or one-half horsepower, but
they wouldn't be likely to work on the fifty or sixty amperes
current which our railway motors use. But we can try them."
The trial was made. Van Depoele and Rohrer fitted the
extemporized carbon brushes to one of the standard F-30
motors and gave it a test. Rohrer was delegated to inspect
the motor every half hour. Before long he reported with con
siderable excitement that the commutator showed not the
slightest sign of sparking and was taking on a smooth, glazed
surface!
A severer test was immediately conducted, with a fairly
heavy load. Still no sparking, not even when the direction
of rotation was reversed.
The good news was soon all over the plant. One of the
most disturbing problems ever encountered had been ban
ished. The spectre of the metallic brush was laidl
Rice communicated with the carbon manufacturers and
before many days passed, carbon brushes had been placed
on a Thomson-Houston railway motor in Woonsocket. In
due time a report was made that the motor had run 4000
miles without the renewal of either brush or commutator,
an incredible distance in those days. The report added that
the brush showed hardly any wear and that the commutator
had taken on a splendid polish.
Those were days of rejoicing in the Thomson-Houston
organization. Congratulations were bestowed upon the ami-
TRIBULATION ON WHEELS 137
able, quick-spoken young Belgian, who had remembered at
the crucial moment about his block of carbon.
Only a few weeks slipped by before the news of the
carbon brush went among other electric railway inventors.
Sprague heard of it almost at once and seized upon it for
his widely heralded, but sadly harassed, road at Richmond.
The carbon brush saved the day for that famous under
taking.
Thomson said of the brush, "It is the most important
invention ever made in the electric-railway field." It seems
almost incredible that on this unobtrusive little block of
carbon the whole future of the streetcar rested. But the
only alternative, had no satisfactory brush been discovered,
would have been some form of alternating-current streetcar
far more complicated and far less efficient than the direct-
current apparatus.
It was probably fortunate that the serious nature of the
brush problem had not been obvious to the laity. For there
came to Richmond in the early summer of 1888 a man who
was to set the streetcar humming at a faster pace. This was
Henry M. Whitney, president of the West End Street Rail
way of Boston who was considering either electric or cable
propulsion for his road.
Sprague arranged a special demonstration for him in Rich
mond. There had been some criticism as to the ability of
electric power to handle traffic when the cars were closely
bunched. To prove that it could be done, Sprague gathered
twenty-two cars at one end of the line, far removed from the
powerhouse. Operations had concluded for the night, and
Whitney was aroused from sleep to witness the demonstra
tion.
At the wave of a lantern, twenty-one motormen all started
their cars at once. The line pressure, which had been raised
138 MEN AND VOLTS
to 500 volts, immediately dropped to 200 volts, dimming all
the car lights. Then it gradually rose again, and the cars,
which had started slowly, went rapidly forward. There was
no more talk of cable power in Boston. Sprague, however,
did not get the contract, but that story will be taken up later.
Meanwhile, a new contribution to the electric street-
railway had been made, an invention of Professor Thom
son's. It embodied the magnetic blowout principle of his
pioneer lightning arrester, used also for correcting other
disturbances than lightning. In the design of an efficient con
trol device for streetcar motors the idea proved of the
utmost value. The controller is simply a form of switch,
and as with all switches, it is necessary to prevent the cur
rent from forming a destructive arc when it is interrupted.
Thomson's arrangement was easily adapted to Thomson-
Houston railway work, and was embodied therein from the
outset. It consisted of two metallic horns surrounded by a
magnet, the latter "blowing out" the arc by forcing it toward
the tips of the horns where it broke harmlessly.
It was one more step toward reliable streetcar apparatus
which would hasten the final departure of the plodding
horse from the car tracks of American cities.
[ PART FOUR ]
The Period of Expansion
and Consolidation
18
The Dilemma of Patents
As THE YEAR 1889 came in, the Thomson-Houston Com
pany had little reason to feel dissatisfied with its progress.
The volume of business per year had grown from $300,000
in 1883 to $3,500,000 in 1888.
The only fly in the ointment was the question of patents.
During the hours that mean to most men leisure and relax
ation, Coffin pondered over this problem. Suppose some of
his customers should desire an underground conduit instead
of an overhead trolley? He could not install a conduit system
without the risk of infringing the Bentley-Knight patents.
Regarding the best type of motor and the best method of
motor installation he was again on uncertain ground. The
practice of the Bentley-Knight company had been followed
in a general way in the Thomson-Houston product. There
were many who felt that this motor summarized the best
qualities of its predecessors. It was a fifteen-horsepower unit
weighing almost a ton and having a speed of a thousand
revolutions a minute. It delivered its power by double-
reduction spur gearing, the armature revolving about nine
times as rapidly as the car axle. The magnetic strength of the
141
142 MEN AND VOLTS
fields was particularly good in proportion to the total weight.
Two motors were used per car, one to drive each axle.
Successful as it was, no one supposed that this represented
the ultimate in streetcar motors; and rumors that there were
others which embodied radically new ideas hardly lessened
Coffin's perplexity over the prospect of patent difficulties.
The principal advocate of the single reduction motor at
this time was no longer Sprague, who had had to abandon
the type at Richmond, but Professor Sidney Howe Short,
whose inventions formed the nucleus of the new Short Elec
tric Railway Company of Cleveland. His experiments with
single-reduction motors were awakening excitement in the
offices of other electrical manufacturers. Before his retire
ment, he was to produce the first motor that operated with
out gears of any sort, having its armature direct-connected to
the car axle.
All of Short's experimental work was performed at the
plant of the Brush Electric Company, which also manufac
tured his motors for the market. In effect, Short was the suc
cessor of Bentley and Knight. He made use of Brush dynamos
for his generators and motors as they did. In so doing he took
full advantage of the easy regulation afforded by a series-
wound motor. This regulation could be accomplished simply
by properly shifting the commutator brushes whenever a
change in speed was desired. In the Sprague motor the regu
lation was obtained by means of a commutator field, and in
the Thomson-Houston, a resistance rheostat was employed.
The Brush company itself never entered the street-railway
field. Its specialty continued to be arc lighting, and as such
it was a powerful rival of Thomson-Houston. Brush had
patent control over the double-carbon arc lamp, and it was
believed that his storage-battery patent was so broad as to
exclude any competitor in that field.
THE DILEMMA OF PATENTS 143
Another competitor was the Fort Wayne Electric Light
Company, which was active in the middle west and south,
installing Jenney and Schaffer direct-current arc dynamos
and Slattery alternating-current incandescent dynamos. Mc
Donald was a personal friend of Coffin's, and toward the
middle of 1888, perceiving the need of additional working
capital, he entered into negotiations with Coffin. As a result
the Thomson-Houston company purchased a majority of the
stock of the Fort Wayne company, obtaining a controlling
interest. Coffin did not seek to acquire any patents by the
transaction, as he felt that his company could hold its own
in the open markets without infringing upon the Fort Wayne
patents. What he had in mind was the desirability of con
ciliation and confidence among competing concerns. Coffin
appreciated McDonald's unusual executive ability, and knew
him for a bluff individual, erratic and daring, but just and
shrewd. McDonald's methods were not Coffin's, but the two
men were probably the most successful merchandisers in the
electrical industry in that period.
Almost simultaneously, the Schuyler Electric Company
entered the market. This concern had started a competing
arc-light campaign in New Britain, in the days when Thom
son and Rice were working there, under the guidance of a
commercial promoter named Spencer D. Schuyler. Its prin
cipal inventors were D. A. Schuyler and A. G. Waterhouse,
who had put out a sixteen-light arc dynamo and a lamp. In
1887 they moved to Middletown, Connecticut, and carried
on a fairly prosperous business. In 1888 they were installing
a 45-light machine in New England under the nose of the
Thomson-Houston people.
But the company lacked Coffin's genius for securing new
capital and could not expand as its operations required. In a
financial quandary, the Schuyler officials were apprised that
144 MEN AND VOLTS
the Thomson-Houston company needed additional plant
facilities. When Coffin made an acceptable offer, the chief
construction man, J. A. Dalzell, as well as Schuyler and
Waterhouse, joined the Thomson-Houston forces.
THROUGH THE 'EIGHTIES, the Thomson-Houston experts con
tinued to meet with adventure at home and abroad. Their
day's work was seasoned with more than the average spice
of excitement.
One of them, William B. Potter, who had technical train
ing to his credit, and who went through the instruction
school with unwavering zest, was sent out to adjust com
plaints from the central stations of local companies.
He was delayed in a small town in North Carolina one
night when there was no train out until the following morn
ing. While chatting with an attendant at the generating sta
tion, the door suddenly opened and a determined-looking
gentleman stalked in. He was the president of the local gas
company with a few threatening remarks to address to the
arc-light people.
"I've heard how your plant is going to put our gas com
pany out of business," he said, "and I've come around to see
that you don't do it. I'm going to shoot the daylights out of
your machine."
He w r hipped out a revolver and advanced upon the dy
namo. Potter acted quickly.
"Here, have a care!" he cried. "You put a bullet in that
dynamo and you'll cause a flash of electricity that will kill
us all. Don't go near with metal in your hands."
As he spoke, the dynamo emitted a bright, blue flash. The
gun was drawn back in panic. The dynamo flashed again,
and the gas president waited no longer. He dashed for the
door and disappeared into the night. The two electrical men
INVENTION AND ADVENTURE 145
wiped a cold perspiration from their brows. And the dynamo
placidly continued its intermittent sparking.
Shortly after this Potter was despatched to San Antonio,
Texas, to install the Alamo Electric Railway, with instruc
tions that it must be in operation in forty days, generating
station and all. The road was about five miles in length, and
there was one street within the city where right-of-way per
mits had not been granted. Potter decided he would have to
lay track on that street between Saturday and Monday and
get the permits afterward.
About two A.M. on Sunday, while operations were at their
height, he was arrested. The chief of police was particularly
hostile because he had been awakened from sleep. But Potter
was able to put his arguments so convincingly that the chief
sent him back to work. The right of way was legally secured
a day later. Operation was begun on the thirty-eighth day.
Potter himself broke in the green motormen, stressing the
importance of deft work with the hand brakes in making
emergency stops.
Meanwhile, at Lynn, Professor Thomson was doing sig
nificant work with alternating current. His experiments had
been suggested back in 1884, when he built an electro
magnet, large for those days, having a core six inches in
diameter and twenty inches in length. He had noticed that
after it was magnetized, if he dropped a disc of sheet copper
about one-sixteenth of an inch thick upon one of the mag
netic poles, the disc would not fall with a quick contact but
would settle gently, at variance with the laws of gravity. It
was evidently slowed up as it encountered the magnetic
field.
Before long he found that when alternating current, in
stead of direct current, was passed through the coils of the
magnet, the copper disc was alternately attracted and re-
146 MEN AND VOLTS
pelled but repulsion was stronger than attraction. He ex
plained the cause as "electro-inductive repulsion."
It was not until 1887 that he worked out a practical device
based upon this discovery. Then he built a motor having a
laminated field; that is, a field constructed of many discs of
metal pressed together, and a laminated iron armature, with
three coils, three commutator segments, and brushes. He
short-circuited the armature coils and passed an alternating
current through the field coils. The armature of the little
machine thereupon set up a revolution and he obtained con
siderable power. It was one of the first induction motors ever
built, and certainly the first repulsion motor.
But motors, both traction and stationary, had not yet come
into their own. There were scores of Sprague motors already
spinning in countless New England industries. But Thom
son's repulsion motor was to become the father of a long
line of machines which were to outstrip them in efficiency
and number.
Thomson described his experiments with the repulsion
motor in a paper before the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers in May, 1887. It aroused scientific excitement, and
started the keenest among contemporary inventors working
with alternating current. As a result, refinements of practice
in alternating-current design were accelerated throughout
the whole electrical world.
Every effort was made to introduce the safeguarded
alternating-current system. Old customers were encouraged
to substitute it for the direct-current system. By the end of
1887, the shipping department at Lynn had seen twenty-one
alternators go out to central station customers, and more than
four hundred transformers. These represented a capacity of
more than 10,000 incandescent lamps of sixteen candle-
INVENTION AND ADVENTURE 147
power. In 1889, over 300 alternators and more than 9000
transformers left the works.
In one period of twenty-four months, no less than 300
local companies were established by Thomson-Houston
efforts; and year after year the number of new companies
regularly averaged between 100 and 150. On January 1,
1887, there were 171 companies in existence, operating 21,-
000 arc lamps; two years later there were 419 companies and
51,000 lamps.
Coffin kept himself posted on everything. It is hardly con
ceivable that one man could follow so intimately and so
unfailingly the intricacies of a many-sided business, growing
by such tremendous bounds. At the same time he was inter
viewing some of the biggest men in Boston to offer them
stock in the company. He believed whole-heartedly in the
electrical business. It was a subject which he presented with
all his innate friendliness of spirit, and with the utmost ear
nestness of purpose.
He encountered far more than the usual hesitancy in such
matters. He heard all the customary inquiries as to the earn
ings and volume of business of his company, plus expres
sions of skepticism as to the future of electricity. But he was
able to win over prospective stockholders nine times out of
ten. He secured the participation of such influential men as
F. L. Ames, former Governor of Massachusetts; Henry L.
Higginson, of Lee, Higginson and Company; T. Jefferson
Coolidge; S. Endicott Peabody; and George P. Gardner.
These were among the most conspicuous men in Boston and
they became a phalanx of strength to Thomson-Houston.
No man more completely held the trust and admiration
of his co-workers than did Coffin. No man exercised his
leadership with greater simplicity, greater humility, greater
148 MEN AND VOLTS
regard for others. He dominated, it is true; but he never
domineered. His dominance sprang directly from the confi
dence which others placed in him; those outside the com
pany, who watched his masterly direction, and those within
the company, who served under him and found that service
a memorable experience.
19
Beside the Mohawk
EDISON WAS PROSPERING ALSO. So satisfactory had the placid
Schenectady river site proved that the two original Mc
Queen buildings became the nucleus around which a thriv
ing plant took form.
The Edison Tube Company and the Edison Shafting Com
pany had followed the Machine Works to its new quarters
on the Mohawk. A species of amalgamation was accom
plished on July 30, 1886, when both companies were formally
merged, with the consent of their stockholders, into the
Edison Machine Works. All auxiliary equipment required
for a lighting system, from dynamo to lamp, was manu
factured in these three plants.
Two men of pronounced mechanical talents had followed
Edison from Menlo Park. One was Charles Batchelor, for
mer Shop Superintendent at Goerck Street, and the other
John Kruesi, the skillful Swiss who built the first model of
Edison's phonograph and heard it "talk back" to its inventor.
He had been in charge of the tube works and now began to
oversee several departments, with the title of Assistant Gen
eral Manager.
149
150 MEN AND VQLTS
Under Kruesi was that well-remembered figure, William
B. Turner, familiar to the working force as "Pop." He was a
rough and ready individual, a type which predominated in
the Edison personnel. His manner was genial and he ad
dressed his men as "lad"; he was seldom seen with his coat
on, and never was known to appear at the plant in a white
collar.
Turner was an expert millwright, and his services were
invaluable in setting up the machinery that was brought up
from New York. Kruesi, although rough after his own fash
ion, came to be known as the most gentlemanly among the
immediate bosses. He, like "Pop," was a hard worker and
drove his men. He gave his directions in a bluff bass roar,
but kept his language free from profanity, which was some
thing unusual. His heart was kindly the interests of the
men became a personal concern, and he revealed a fatherly
manner when dealing with a subordinate who he thought
was not making the most of himself.
The Edison bosses soon became personages of standing
in the town. Indeed, the entire plant rapidly took on the
status of a local institution. There was always smoke coming
out of its chimneys. The ring of the hammer and whir of the
saw were heard as new shops rose. The community discov
ered that it had acquired an energetic, progressive enterprise
where the old McQueen buildings once stood in forlorn deso
lation, and felt in it considerable civic pride.
With the spring of 1887 the plant began to spread, and
this enlargement continued with recurrent pauses for nearly
forty years. The original of Building 11 (destroyed by fire in
1892 ) was reared as a new home for the underground tube
works and for the manufacture of wire and cable, under the
general foremanship of Christian Rach. This building stood
CHARLES A. COFFIN
A portrait of the first president of the General Electric Company, taken
at about the time he took office.
THE EDISON GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 1891
The Schenectady plant the year before Edison and Thomson-Houston
joined forces to form the General Electric Company. In the back
ground can be seen the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal.
THE THOMSON-HOUSTON PLANT, IN LYNN 1892
In eight years the Thomson-Houston company had expanded to this
size from the single building on Western Avenue, seen at the ex
treme left.
BESIDE THE MOHAWK 151
on the other side of what was later to become the mile-long
main street of the works.
Two years later Thomas Cromerford Martin, writing for
the Electrical World of August 25, 1888, sketched graph
ically his experiences during "A Day with Edison at Sche-
nectady." Had he known that the handful of shops he then
described would one day become a huge industrial center,
he could hardly have written with more enthusiasm.
"We are looking," he said, "at one of the greatest exem
plifications of the power of American inventive genius, and
at an establishment where, from beginning to end, a new
art is illustrated by new processes."
The works by that time embraced twenty-six separate
buildings and employed from 750 to 800 hands. "The depart
ments," wrote Martin, "include the building of Edison dy
namos, the construction of Sprague electric motors . . . ev
ery branch of the insulated wire business . . . Sims-Edison
torpedo work, the Edison processes for dealing with refrac
tory ores, and a general business in shafting, pulleys, and
hangers, and in millwright and foundry work."
Martin was greatly moved by the "noble machine shop."
"In such a place as this," he says, "the prosaic and the
marvellous jostle each other. Here are six thousand feet of
shafting and some fifty thousand feet of belting, driving
nearly four hundred separate mechanisms in the production
of apparatus whose birth was yesterday."
Even in those days the schedule of work-hours in the
electric generating stations was beginning to undergo a
revolution. The days of night-duty only were beginning to
pass. Says Martin: "The telegraph office, requiring current
for its circuits; the telephone exchange, with its magnetos to
be run; the medical establishments, with patients to be cured
152 MEN AND VOLTS
by electricity; the printing offices; the ice-cream saloons; the
buildings with elevators; the wood- working factories; the
chemical works with bad ventilation . . . each of these and
hundreds of other places need current all day long for direct
use or to drive motors, and they are all becoming customers
of the central stations."
Nor had the day of the isolated plant come to an end.
Mills, iron works, machine shops, publishing offices, and asy
lums, as well as theaters, clubs, banks, office buildings, steam
ships, and ferry-boats, in considerable numbers had installed
Edison isolating lighting plants.
In 1886 the Edison Electric Light Company took over all
the business which had been previously handled by the
Edison Company for Isolated Lighting. After four years it
was merged back into the parent company. The Edison
Electric Light Company still had its headquarters at 65
Fifth Avenue in New York City. It issued licenses, under
Edison's electric-light patents, to the teeming family of Edi
son local companies.
Two other Edison organizations did not move to Sche-
nectady. These were the lamp works at Harrison, New
Jersey, and Bergmann and Company. The latter was op
erated by Sigmund Bergmann, of the Menlo Park group, who
combined to a high degree both mechanical and executive
talents. The plant, at Seventeenth Street and Avenue B, New
York, manufactured practically everything Edison needed
in the line of auxiliary equipment, such as meters, switches,
lamp-sockets, cut-outs, fuses, and electroliers.
20
The Edison Consolidation
PROSPERITY IN THE FORM of new business had also poured
her bounties upon the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor
Company during the years of 1888 and 1889. The long night
mare at Richmond was past, and the prestige of the final tri
umph there brought other street-railway contracts flooding
in. Moreover, the company's business in stationary motors
was far more important than its competitors realized.
The company had for an emergency man Dave Mason,
known as the "wet nurse" because he had hurried out at short
notice to save many an infant electric road from the fatalities
of babyhood. He had installed and watched over the first
long-distance circuit on which Sprague motors worked, one
of the earliest instances of transmission over any appreciable
stretch of territory.
It would seem like child's play to the present electrical
engineer, for this line was but eighteen miles in length. But
for 1887 it was a considerable undertaking. It was located
in a mountainous California wilderness on the Feather River
where it encircles Big Bend Mountain. A hydroelectric
generating station supplied the circuit, in which were con-
153
154 MEN AND VOLTS
nected fourteen Sprague motors scattered along the course
of the stream. Their work was to drive pumps and hoists and
run dinky cars in the operations of placer mining, for the Big
Bend had gold within its rugged bosom.
Officials of the Sprague Company had formed no con
ception of the amazing welcome which would be accorded
the electric motor. It was instantly recognized as a worker
whose driving arm would never tire and whose disposition
fitted well with that of the human operative.
William L. R. Emmet, who like Sprague was trained in
the navy, and Horace F. Parshall, a young man skilled in
engineering mathematics, were valuable additions to the
Sprague personnel. Parshall took charge of the establishing
in Cleveland of the Euclid Avenue electric street railway.
Sprague was astonished one morning to find a letter from
Parshall condemning the No. 5 motor in such language as
only a much-irritated man would employ.
"That motor," he wrote, "is so extremely rotten that unless
a No. 6 type is immediately developed, 111 quit the job."
Sprague knew its weaknesses well; and shortly thereafter
the No. 6 motor appeared. It was larger in capacity fifteen
horsepower and embodied the double-reduction principle.
Its greater physical size was accommodated by the practice,
begun by car builders, of producing independent car trucks.
Emmet, while promptly recognizing the good qualities in
S prague's apparatus, did not consider that it was always well
built, either in the Sprague or the Edison shops. "In most
cases," wrote Emmet at a later period, "the motors gave very
expensive trouble and had to be settled for on terms more or
less disadvantageous to the manufacturer. In spite of these
troubles, there was a great demand for equipment which
would run."
Because of poor workmanship in the shops, Sprague found
DR. STEINMETZ AT WORK AT HIS DESK
W. B. POTTER AND THE STREETCAR CONTROLLER
THE EDISON CONSOLIDATION 155
it imperative to have Emmet rewind many of the No. 6
motors after they had been shipped. He was equipping sixty
cars for a new road at Allegheny City. Under instructions
from New York, Emmet rebuilt the trolleys and the control
lers, altered the system of lubrication, and enclosed the gears
in gear cases. The road ran under Emmet's direction for
nearly a year with little trouble. Maintenance costs and elec
trical efficiency on the road were good.
This experience brought out Emmet's faculty for finding
the weaknesses in apparatus and correcting them. It was a
faculty which was one day to solve one of the great engineer
ing problems in the realm of apparatus design.
Yet with all its success, the internal condition of the
Sprague company during 1888 was far from stable. Possessed
of a splendid future, it lacked proper financing. Its president,
Edward H. Johnson, was burdened with two presidencies
that of the Edison Electric Light Company being the second.
Sprague spoke his mind freely upon the question of Johnson's
relation to both companies.
"Unless this company were to sacrifice everything for
which it has worked so long, and which after such hard work
it has won," he said, "I see no alternative, certainly for the
present, save that you should give up one position or the
other. The two are antagonistic, and held as they now are
will, I fear, end not only disastrously to this company but to
your career as business manager." The crisis was not resolved
until early in the spring of 1889, when the status of the
Edison company itself was changed.
Edison, as a man of inventive genius, is perhaps unique in
entering successfully the field of electrical manufacture and
the field of public-utility operation. But it was as inventor
that he was greatest, and from the other activities he with
drew little by little.
156 MEN AND VOLTS
Edison dropped out of active relationship with the Edison
Electric Illuminating Company. The separation was con
summated suddenly in the spring of 1889 by a merger of
individual Edison manufacturing enterprises into a corpo
rate organization, the Edison General Electric Company.
Four companies were consolidated by this move the
Edison Electric Light Company, the Edison Machine Works,
the Edison Lamp Company, and Bergmann & Company. In
addition, the new concern bought out the Canadian Edison
Manufacturing Company, and the Edison United Manufac
turing Company, which was the selling outlet for the three
American manufacturing units.
The Edison Electric Light Company had throughout its
life been comparatively inactive in exploiting electric power.
Few company officials, from Edison down, could give much
consideration to motors while the lighting business continued
to be so brisk. In issuing licenses to local Edison companies,
the Edison Electric Light Company found business at flood
tide. It had its own sales agents, of the promoter type, super
vised by W. Preston Hicks and similar to those of the
Thomson-Houston Company. And it had a policy similar to
Coffin's of accepting stock from local companies in payment
of royalties due the parent company under Edison patents.
By the autumn of 1889 the parent company had an interest
in more than seventy Edison licensee companies over the
United States. The company's month-to-month revenue was
composed of dividends and interest on stocks, and a royalty
for every incandescent lamp. In the fiscal year ending in 1889
the total receipts from these two sources were $160,500.
Nearly all the large Edison central-station companies had
been established by 1889 Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Brook
lyn, Philadelphia. It had been sufficiently absorbing to main
tain relations with these ventures, to meet expanding needs
THE EDISON CONSOLIDATION 157
for equipment, to supply lamps, and to cope with the progress
of sales agents in securing new contracts. But an attempt to
consider electric motors while electric lighting was so rapidly
expanding would have precipitated serious problems. The
addition of a new department could only come about through
a general enlargement of facilities and this the new merger
accomplished.
The Sprague company needed healthier financing; and the
Edison company was now in a position to enter the field of
electric power. What resulted was the bodily absorption of
the Sprague company into the Edison General Electric.
Joseph P. Ord, a capable executive and a master of financial
procedure became comptroller of the new organization.
Young Whitestone, the bookkeeper of the Sprague concern,
was hard at work over his books when the red whiskers and
strapping figure of Ord appeared in the doorway, totally
unannounced. No official announcement had been made to
the Sprague personnel concerning the change in officers. Ord
strode over to the counter and demanded to see Whitestone's
general ledger. The lad gave one look at the towering appari
tion and shoved the ledger onto his stool and sat upon it. The
bookkeeper's fears were soon put at rest. Indeed, Whitestone
and Ord became fast friends, despite that first encounter.
Thus came into corporate life the Edison General Electric
Company. From the shoulders of Edison it lifted the multitu
dinous details essential to the manufacture of his inventions.
Edison, in alliance with the new corporation, gravitated with
it away from the utility operating field. Since the manufac
ture of his inventions was now to be handled by an organiza
tion fortified by large financial resources, he began to turn
from the manufacturing field as well, back to that mysterious
realm which no true inventor can forsake.
As for Sprague, his affiliation with the new company was
158 MEN AND VOLTS
brief. While the change of control was maturing, he con
tinued as vice president of the Sprague company, but in
July he resigned his office and started out again by himself.
When President Whitney and his directors decided to pro
ceed with the electrification of the West End Road of Boston,
they turned to the man who had accomplished the Richmond
miracle, and in the autumn of 1888 awarded to Sprague's
company a contract for a trial installation on the Brookline
division of thirteen miles of track to be equipped for the
operation of twenty cars. The Sprague overhead wire was
built from the Brookline terminus to the Boston city line,
making use of tapering steel poles. Within the city limits
overhead construction was not allowed, so the Bentley-
Knight underground conduit was laid between the two
tracks instead of in the center of each track. The beginning
of actual operation on the line was delayed by the construc
tion of the conduit, regarded by Sprague as a necessary evil.
The first official run occurred on January 2, 1889, amid
snowstorms which caused trouble with the conduit. Sprague
equipped a snow-sweeper with one of the motors used in his
demonstrations of 1886 upon the elevated railway in New
York, and with this the way was cleared for an impressive
demonstration. The press registered enthusiasm; and the
people through official bodies and organizations hastened to
taste the thrills of riding on this grown-up brother of the
''broomstick cars."
But Whitney was not so easily satisfied. As a business man
he relished competitive trial, and it was to the Thomson-
Houston company that he assigned the Cambridge division of
the West End system. The road was equipped with overhead
wires, utilizing a cross-arm method of suspension from iron
poles. Its cars were supplied with fifteen-horsepower motors,
THE EDISON CONSOLIDATION 159
larger in capacity than Sprague's No. 5, more rugged, more
powerful, and giving a better electrical performance.
Operation of this division began on February 16, 1889,
from which day Coffin and his associates argued the merits of
their system before Whitney with all the vigor and diplomacy
at their command. They knew the prestige it would mean for
their company should they win the final contract.
Three months slipped by. Whitney was a keen trader. He
wanted reliable electrical equipment and required guarantees
that would protect him from unforeseen reverses. The
Sprague company would not make a proposition which
would guarantee to assume the risks.
It was Charles A. Coffin who produced what Whitney re
quired. It consisted of supporting the work of his electrical
engineers with financial guarantees. As a result on June 27,
1889 Whitney placed the contract for the West End Road in
the hands of Thomson-Houston.
A new shop Factory C had to be built to fill the huge
order. Manufacturing schedules were adjusted and the work
ing force increased. Rice recommended a program of expan
sion, which Coffin immediately endorsed.
Already intensive redesigning of the dynamo for the
severe conditions of electric railway service had set in. The
slotted armature, as finally designed, was freely ventilated by
air ducts and was of the four-pole arrangement, finally rated
at 270 horsepower. Rohrer followed the shop work and con
ducted the tests. It required two days to assemble the first
machine for trial, using wooden blocks and hydraulic jacks
in lieu of cranes, which had not yet come into extensive use.
The big dynamos created considerable stir among the
entire force. Yet still larger ones, rated at 360 horsepower
and having six magnetic poles, were brought out for use on
160 MEN AND VOLTS
the West End Road. By 1892 the powerhouse of this road
was the talk of street-railway men far and wide. There were
over a hundred generators weighing some thirty-five tons
apiece. They were driven by belting which aggregated a
length of 1800 feet over a third of a mile and was fifty-
four inches in width.
By 1891 the line was running 130 electric cars at an
average speed of eight miles per hour two miles an hour
better than the best horse-cars could do. Traffic on the road
had increased enormously. During snowstorms, more than
the normal number of cars could be run, as well as electric
plows and sweepers. After the first snowstorm, when the
system was stalled for an hour, the elements were unable
to derange its operation.
Nor was this the only success that electric traction won on
the fateful West End Road. A clause in the original contract
stipulated that the Thomson-Houston Company should main
tain in good working condition and keep in proper repair the
entire overhead wire system on the West End Road, as well
as the motor equipment on the cars, for a period of five years.
Compensation for this service was to be paid by the West
End Company according to a graduated scale based on the
revenue per car mile. Back of this provision can be discerned
the doubts which Whitney still entertained regarding the
practical value of electrical equipment. Opposed to this was
the complete confidence of the Thomson-Houston Company.
In less than two years of operation Whitney was completely
convinced. Cost of maintaining the overhead lines and car
equipment was so much less than what he paid Thomson-
Houston for such maintenance that the latter were realizing
a substantial profit. Whitney thereupon exercised an option
allowing him to take over the work, which saved his company
several thousands of dollars yearly.
THE EDISON CONSOLIDATION 161
The skeptical years were definitely at an end. Electricity,
as a practical agent of power, had come to stay. From then on
there were few to doubt that the pigmy which in 1876 had
whispered such unintelligible secrets of the future would
become in time a giant. Not a master, to rule the peoples of
the earth, but a giant slave, to serve with unlimited strength
and unending efficiency those who would command him.
21
"Experts" on the Job
IN THE MIDST OF SUCCESS Charles A. Coffin was troubled by
visions of the future. He would never be satisfied until the
day he offered his customers complete electric service. Only
thus, as he saw it, could the electrical era dawn in America.
The alternative was a feverish, interminable period of conflict
between patent holders, during which the major competitors
in the field exhausted their energies trying to avoid each
other's patents or fighting alleged infringements.
That was the depressing picture of the future which
troubled his mind, even while the tap of the mason's trowel
proclaimed the rearing of new factory buildings.
Coffin already had a glimpse of what the future would be
like. The Thomson-Houston Company was trying to discover
a double-carbon arc lamp that would avoid the Brush patent.
After hours of conference by engineers and attorneys, the
lamp was declared legally sound. But the Brush Company
promptly served notice of an infringement. A legal combat
loomed, and its menace caused Coffin to think again of
amalgamation.
To his colleagues it seemed a daring proposal. The Brush
162
POWER PLANT OF THE G-E EXHIBIT AT THE CHICAGO FAIR
OF 1893
GENERAL ELECTRIC AT THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION
Exhibits and installations by the Company at Chicago in 1893,
"EXPERTS" ON THE JOB 163
Company was as strongly entrenched as Thomson-Houston,
possessed the prestige of a firstcomer in the field, and boasted
of successful installations throughout the land. Coffin never
theless dispatched a personal representative to Cleveland
with an offer to purchase Brush's stock, which constituted a
controlling interest in the company.
The emissary arrived in Cleveland in October, 1889, em
powered to offer $40 per share. Brush had no interest in this
figure and held out for $75 per share. When he remarked
that he did not suppose the Thomson-Houston Company
would pay his price, the agent wagered a new overcoat that
the offer would be accepted. The wager was promptly
taken.
Next day Brush received a telegram stating that he owed
Coffin's representative a new overcoat. The price of $75 per
share for forty-thousand-odd shares of stock had been ac
cepted and control of the Brush Electric Company passed
into Thomson-Houston hands for a sum in excess of
$3,000,000.
So rapid and so quiet had been the negotiations that the
electrical world was taken by surprise. The first reports of
the transaction were scarcely credited.
No change in the conduct of the Brush Company's opera
tions resulted from the transfer of control for many years
thereafter.
By purchasing control of the Brush concern, Thomson-
Houston strengthened its position as proprietor of one of the
soundest electrical manufacturing organizations in the United
States. It was doing business on a scale equal to that of the
Edison General Electric Company.
A year later there came a new alignment among the
Thomson-Houston subsidiaries. The Fort Wayne Company
believed that the Jenney arc-light apparatus could be im-
164 MEN AND VOLTS
proved. To do this job, they selected a young man named
Wood. At that time Wood was affiliated with the Thomson-
Houston Company, conducting a modest manufacturing
enterprise in Brooklyn which turned out three or four dyna
mos a week. McDonald effected a transaction by which the
Fort Wayne Company purchased from Thomson-Houston a
part interest in Wood's arc-light system with the understand
ing that the designer become a member of the Fort Wayne
organization.
Wood, accompanied by a hundred employees, arrived in
Fort Wayne on December 3, 1890. It was the beginning of
the most productive period in his career. McDonald en
couraged Wood with characteristic ardor in every inventive
idea which offered practical possibilities. Before long Mc
Donald's tactics had established Fort Wayne as the home
of the Wood system of arc lighting.
Hopeful young men kept arriving at the now celebrated
plant of the Thomson-Houston Company, seeking to become
"experts." By the beginning of the 'nineties, college graduates
were noticeable among them. But they were novices when it
came to practical electrical work, and there was nothing
"greener" around the shops than a new expert.
Most of the young men needed all the ambition and grit
they could muster to carry them through weeks of soul-trying
work at menial tasks. But these weeks separated the wheat
from the chaff. The men who survived the testing were
ready to advance in the company.
The expert course had developed into a separate depart
ment. In early years the General Manager of the company,
Silas A. Barton, hired the beginners. Later J. B. Cahoon was
chief of experts.
How green the new arrivals were is revealed in the
"EXPERTS" ON THE JOB 165
reminiscences of A. K. Baylor, who has described his feelings
when he first entered Factory C.
"On either hand crackled and hummed various mighty
dynamos. Belts! I had never seen so many horizontal, verti
cal, and slanting. Those driving the generators were wide
and heavy, flapping as they ran, and shooting little spurts,
here and there, to an occasional guard rail . . .
"By the time we had gone half-way down the line
becoming accustomed to the racket and observing that no
one was being struck dead I gained courage and became
quite elated . . . Then I came to earth, almost literally, with
the proverbial dull thud, as I was put to work wiping up
grease on the floor under the frame of a railway motor. The
task was uninspiring, to say the least; and it seemed so useless.
What mattered a little grease, more or less, on an area already
covered and impregnated with it?"
His working companion that day was a chap whose con
ception of electricity was limited to the familiar explanation
that current passing through a wire is analogous to water
flowing through a water pipe. He had taken this literally,
believing that the cable running across the floor from the
starting rheostat to the dynamo actually encased a tangible
fluid. Planting both feet firmly on the cable he exclaimed to
Baylor, who was about to start a motor, "There! Now let's
see you make her go!"
The experts spent a month among shop motors. Upon them
rested the responsibility of starting the motors before the
whistle sounded, morning and afternoon. "Woe betide the
expert who was late on that job!" writes Baylor. "It was a
well-nigh capital offense. Suspension, following goodness
knows what ordeal in the inner office, was the minimum
sentence. ,
166 MEN AND VOLTS
"I had quarters almost across the street, and I well recall
springing out of bed at the five-minutes-to-the-hour whistle,
to race through the check-house with shoe laces flying, collar
unfastened, coat on my arm, and buttoning my waistcoat as
I ran breathless and breakfastless."
A vanished expedient, the check-house with its wall-board
on which hung the brass check of each employee, was a fore
runner of the time clock and the timecard. As each worker
arrived, he unhooked his check and dropped it into a box.
The instant the starting whistle blew the box was locked
and note was taken of the checks remaining on the board.
Relations between the young experts and the company
officials were warm. Baylor speaks with appreciation of "the
privilege of visiting the home of Mr. Coffin under a standing
invitation to the boys of the course to 'come around' Sunday
afternoons. Done up in our best, and after painful efforts to
make fingernails presentable, we often took advantage of
this opportunity to be served with tea by Mrs. Coffin and
looked over and 'interviewed' by the great 'C.A.' himself.
"In that way, and by a continuation of the personal touch,
augmented by E. W. Rice, Jr., Eugene Griffin, J. R. Lovejoy,
and other officials, were sown seeds that have blossomed into
a world-wide harvest of loyalty that few men or institutions
have ever inspired."
There were occasional nerve-racking occurrences during
the testing of new machines. One happened on the day that
an alternator with bearings of the self -oiling type was first
tested. The engineers had seen a direct-current dynamo so
equipped by the Fort Wayne Company, and were captivated
with the device. They induced Rohrer to permit the bearings
for their own new alternator a seventy-kilowatt "giant"
to be redesigned. When the day for the test arrived, hope
i
WHEN THE BI-POLAR WAS POPULAR
View in Building 12 at Schenectady, about 1890.
THE HEYDAY OF THE ARC LAMP
Arc lamps being assembled at the Lynn Works, about 1892.
A FOREST OF BELTS
Machine shop at the Lynn Works, about 1895.
"EXPERTS" ON THE JOB 167
and anxiety alternated like an electric current in the breasts
of the engineers.
As the belt was slipped upon the pulley of the dynamo, the
armature began to revolve. Then there came a groan, a
shriek, smoke and the belt went sailing through the air.
Dependable, self -oiling bearings indeed! They were almost
red-hot.
Someone asked the test man who had set up the machine,
"How much oil did you put in those bearings?" He looked up
with a blank expression. "Oil? I didn't put any in. I was told
they were self -oiling."
It took two days for a skilled machinist to work the melted
babbitt off the steel shaft. And it was two weeks before the
machine could be tested again, this time well oiled and un
questionably successful.
Every dynamo of greater size completed in the shops
became a nine-days' wonder. When a new manufacturing
tool or shop practice was added to the day's routine, work
men marveled and visitors came to see. The early electric
cranes were held in awe at Lynn as well as at Schenectady.
The first of these began operations in November, 1888, in
Factory K, and had a capacity of twenty tons. Many a week
passed before workmen refrained from staring when the
crane lifted a load.
When a five-ton electric crane was put into use at Schenec
tady in 1887, old-timers recall how excursion trains on the
New York Central stopped by the Edison works to give
passengers a glimpse of the great beast at work.
While these giant industrial "muscles" were lending fasci
nation to the humming electrical factories, Thomson was hard
at work in the laboratory giving scientific counsel, and trying
out new devices. For several years he had been perfecting
168 MEN AND VOLTS
his electric meter. Unlike Edison's chemical meter, it meas
ured not only current consumed over a specific time but also
voltage, thus establishing a true and equitable means of
rendering bills for electric light and power. The meter won
fame as the Thomson recording wattmeter.
So urgently had it been needed that within two years a
meter department and special shop facilities had to be set up
to handle the business. Its ruggedness and simplicity left
little to be desired.
There are some who believe that this meter was one of the
determining influences in electrical development. It won high
honors at the Paris Electrical Exposition of 1890, dividing the
prize with a clock-type meter which was more costly to install
and required regular winding. A factory, established shortly
afterward in France to manufacture the Thomson meter, be
came the nucleus of the French Thomson-Houston company.
22
New Faces, New Companies
IN 1889 A YOUNG MAN left his native country and crossed the
ocean to America. His name was Steinmetz. Steinmetz came
to an America that was conscious of the new pulse of in
dustrial life and the throb of mighty economic and material
energies.
As a young immigrant he entered New York harbor in
steerage accompanied by a fellow-student, Oscar Asmussen.
Together they stood on deck, gazing at the busy harbor. They
saw a multitude of buildings, symbol of a crowded metropolis,
of national vigor, of surging life.
The lad's misshapen body and diminutive figure were in
odd contrast to his friend's sturdier build. A seeming pygmy,
he gazed at vigorous America, preparing to enter the conflict
for sustenance and position that was fought daily on those
shores. In the air was a newly awakened force, a power that
men had aroused from lethargy which seemed to confront
them with passive, inscrutable curiosity as if wondering if
there were any who would truly master it. On the deck of
the steamer, a dwarf in stature, insignificant to his f ellowmen,
stood one of those masters.
169
170 MEN AND VOLTS
He was not conscious of his destiny and had no intimation
that he was to solve some of the riddles of the electrical era.
He had no thought, even, of an electrical career.
Since men are human, and hence unaware of the forces of
destiny, it was not strange that the immigration officers hesi
tated to admit Carl Steinmetz upon that June day in 1889.
Steinmetz, besides his shrunken body, had a severe cold
which had swollen one side of his face. The immigration offi
cers determined that he should be deported.
Then Asmussen took up the cause of his friend. He de
clared his money was Steinmetz's money, that his home
should be his friend's. In brief, he accepted full responsibility
for Steinmetz's future.
Thus friendship won for Steinmetz an entrance to his
future country. He found himself in the heart of the metropo
lis and in the hands of destiny. Events not entirely of his
own shaping guided him into his niche in the new world.
Of the places where he applied for employment, one gave
him encouragement. In the office of Eickemeyer and Oster-
held in Yonkers he had a talk with the head of the firm,
Rudolf Eickemeyer. There he went to work on the tenth of
June as an electrical draftsman, at twelve dollars a week.
Eickemeyer was a manufacturer and inventor, well sea
soned by experience and, like Steinmetz, a native of Germany.
From him Steinmetz caught the inspiration for putting his
great technical ability to work upon electrical problems and
through him was provided the most natural outlet for the
young man's mathematical talents.
So for a year or two Steinmetz, hidden away in an obscure
corner, worked for a modest manufacturer in a humble,
unspectacular post. His life was quiet, contented, assiduous.
His surroundings were pleasant and wholly untroubled.
Only a few weeks after Steinmetz crossed the Atlantic,
NEW FACES, NEW COMPANIES 171
another traveller landed in New York and hurried up to
Boston and Lynn. This was Rudolf Langhans, a young
German scientist whom Rice had discovered during a trip
abroad, and who was believed to have found a way of pro
ducing a new filament for incandescent lamps.
He was installed in the Thomson-Houston laboratory, pro
vided with assistants, and given an interpreter. What
Langhans proposed to do was to combine pure silicon and
carbon in the filament. But pure silicon was difficult to obtain
a fact of which Langhans appeared to be ignorant. The
Thomson-Houston chemists discovered that what he was
using was not pure silicon, but oxide of silicon.
In the end, Langhans regretfully admitted that his idea
was not practicable. He left Lynn, and the attempt to pro
duce a silicon-carbon filament came to an end. Though the
Thomson-Houston Company lost $75,000 on the effort, ex
perimental work did not lag. "A better incandescent lamp,"
was the cry; and it echoed from Lynn to Harrison, where the
Edison Lamp Works was wrestling with the same idea.
Looking at the electric light bulb of today, seemingly a
device easy to construct, even with its hairlike filaments, one
finds little indication of the infinite pains and delicate han
dling that produced it. So intricate is it that in the early days
at the Edison Lamp Works, when a curious soul asked why
the various steps could not be done by machines, he was
laughed at. The work was far too delicate!
Glass blowing was an old and conservative art, and neces
sarily slow. Not only the bulb but the glass stem, in which
the lead-in wires were mounted, had to be blown. Operators
went through months of training, and even then the per
centage of spoilage was considerable.
But one change after another affected the shape and size
of stems until Edison was able to develop a machine which
172 MEN AND VOLTS
held the bulb in a horizontal position and, after the filament
had been mounted, rotated it in a flame while the stem was
sealed in. At Lynn, Branin thought of flaring the stem at one
end, so that it could be sealed to the bulb on the flange prin
ciple a process which permitted a more perfect joint, ob
viated strains in the glass, and caused a saving in glass of half
a cent a lamp.
Hand work persisted in such operations as blowing off
the lower end of the bulb to a uniform length, and in making
an opening in the bulb top through which a tube was inserted
for pumping out air. A succession of efforts to produce a
satisfactory base culminated in Bergmann's base, which is in
use today. The idea for it came to Bergmann while he con
templated the screw-cap on a kerosene can.
But the Edison, Thomson-Houston, and Brush companies
were not the only manufacturers producing incandescent
lamps. In various sections of the country, particularly in the
middle west, small aggressive companies were doing a flour
ishing business. Lamps manufactured by these concerns were
similar to Edison's. The filamentary illuminant in a sealed
glass globe from which most of the air had been exhausted
was always present. Hence all of these companies, as well
as Thomson-Houston and Brush, stood in the precarious po
sition of possible infringers upon Edison's lamp.
They had taken the risk deliberately, because the policy
of the Edison Company gave them a feeling of security. Years
had come and gone since Edison's lamp appeared, and no
steps had been taken to uphold by legal action that valuable
patent. But the issue was soon to be fought out at the bar.
Preliminary proceedings had been begun late in 1886, al
though so quietly and after so many legal delays that the
sense of security persisted among competitors. They kept on
manufacturing and selling.
NEW FACES, NEW COMPANIES 173
Within the stately Edison Building, which stood at 16 and
18 Broad Street, New York, the busy organism of the Edison
General Electric Company found its brain center. It was an
immense corporation for its day, and the forerunner of one
still more immense.
Said the Electrical Engineer in a special supplement en
titled "Edisonia," published with its issue of August 12, 1891:
"One cannot visit the Edison Building without being im
pressed with the sense of irresistible power that a large, well-
knit body in swift, onward motion always arouses. The halls
and elevators are thronged, and at every floor one encounters
the same bustle and hum of activity. . . . The industry of
which these are the headquarters has over 6000 names on
its payrolls, and has a monthly income and outgo of a million
of dollars. . . . The company has between 4000 and 5000
customers on its books."
Virility was heightened by semimystery. Not yet was the
veil wholly drawn so that the untutored public could com
prehend what lay back of its electric lights and motors. Edi-
sonia, however, described some of the broad features of the
process. "The mere handling of the bamboo, as it arrives in
dainty bundles from Japan, tied up in flowery wrappers, and
passing from stage to stage, becoming smaller by degrees
until at last it is ready for the carbonizing retorts, involves the
employment of many sensitive mechanisms and many agile
fingers."
Even the tissue-paper squad, smoothing out the used paper
for repacking, had its glamor. In that lowly environment
lurked the gold nugget of opportunity. Young George Mor
rison, now a foreman, had started out in the squad ten years
before. He was bound to keep on rising, for men still noticed
that whatever he did, he did well.
From process to process the visitor continued his rounds,
174 MEN AND VOLTS
coming at last to the packing room, "where in huge racks like
egg boxes, or in big barrels, the lamps await labeling for the
nearest city or for the far ends of the earth." It was a wide
practice to ship the lamps in barrels. Says another writer:
"A barrel was the piece de resistance in a day when all goods
were merchandised loosely over the counter, stuffed with
excelsior, bound with iron hoops, padded with packing bus
tles." The barrels were made of the stoutest materials for
shipping their delicate cargoes, and "the agent who received a
package of lamps had to be a strong and mighty man and a
good feller with a broom."
Barrel shipments were massive in the aggregate, and the
capacity of the "huge factory" in 1891 was 25,000 lamps every
working day.
"Edisonia" reports of the Schenectady works that they
"grow with the rapidity of a western town. . . . These huge
cathedral shops, swarming, every one of them, with hundreds
of busy artisans and filled to overflowing with machines
and tools and labor-saving appliances, epitomize the progress
to date both in mechanics and in the arts of dynamoed motor-
construction. If you would find the monument of American
skill and genius in such fields, look around you." Colorfully
the writer describes the production of the Edison tubes, in a
building "where huge caldrons simmer and huge piles of
black iron pipe rise to the roof, for all the world like exag
gerated lead pencils," with an electric drill "pounding away
in a ferocious manner at the heart of a block of granite,"
elbow-to-elbow with "demure young ladies splitting mica."
After the consolidation of 1889, the shops of Bergmann
and Company were transferred to Schenectady, and a new
group of buildings was set up. Sockets for lamps, switch
boards, and wiring devices were now made at Schenectady.
Punch presses hammered and thumped from morning to
NEW FACES, NEW COMPANIES 175
night in the new section; and the first porcelain shop was
there established.
Edison and Villard were frequent visitors at the plant.
Their appearance created a general stir. The cry would go
up, "Here comes Edison!" and there would be a lively cran
ing of necks. They were an odd pair, Edison and Villard. The
financier, his moustache close-cut, was always well-tailored,
while the inventor was never mindful of his clothes, usually
wearing a shiny Prince Albert coat, and in summer an old
straw hat.
IN THE WORDS OF AN OLD DARKY SONG, "It must be nOW de
kingdom am a-comin' in, an' de year ob jubilee!" Whatever
salvation electricity has brought, its "year ob jubilee" began
in 1890. The great formative period of electrical development
was at its height.
The nation was passing from one era to another. A new
mode of life was emerging from the mists of uncertainty, was
adjusting, adapting, solidifying. Industry and commerce, tak
ing shape around a new enterprise, developed with it at
tremendous speed.
In the rush and stir of this formative period there arose
much confusion in technical and commercial activity and
competition among sales agencies. The Edison consolidation
set out to minimize this as rapidly as possible by adopting a
policy of centralization. Says Edison General Electric's an
nual report for 1890:
"It was found practically impossible to exercise over so
many distinct organizations the close supervision necessary
to secure rigid accountability and to conduct the business on
an economical basis. It was found further that the prevailing
system of allowing commissions on business obtained through
176 MEN AND VOLTS
local agencies was very expensive, without bringing adequate
returns.
"Your board therefore decided ... to bring about a uni
fication of all the allied manufacturing organizations and
selling agencies. ... It further determined that the entire
business of manufacturing, selling and installing should be
conducted in the General company's own name, through its
own employees.
"The Edison Electric Light Company was excepted from
this arrangement, and it remains an active, independent body
in all respects."
Vice-President Insull and Comptroller Ord addressed
themselves to the task of a complete reorganization. Out of
their work came principles of business administration and
methods of financial accounting which persist today.
Their salient achievement was to set up a district organi
zation. The United States was divided into seven large areas
with a district office in each, and an eighth in Canada. In
New England the district office was in Boston; in the Eastern
district, in New York; Central district, Chicago; Southern,
New Orleans; Rocky Mountain, Denver; Pacific Northwest,
Portland; Pacific Coast, San Francisco; Canadian, Toronto.
These were the units which contacted customers. Many
departments of the company maintained branches in each
district; and each district had its manager. Not the least of
their responsibilities was the negotiation of modes of pay
ment for products purchased by customers. In the company's
annual report for the following year appears this significant
statement: "The General Company could have done a much
larger business if it had been willing to accept securities in
payment for orders; but ... a strict rule was adopted of
declining all such and doing business exclusively on a cash
or short credit basis."
NEW FACES, NEW COMPANIES 177
This represented a departure from Coffin's policy of ac
cepting securities of local electric light companies. Securities
already in the possession of Edison Electric Light repre
sented more than a million dollars, and gave the parent com
pany a financial interest in more than seventy operating
companies. Feeling that its own fortunes were linked too
intimately with those of the local companies, the parent com
pany arranged for a specialist to take charge of the financial
operations of licensees, appointing Henry W. Darling, presi
dent of the Canadian Bank of Commerce.
There was much to be done, for the operating utilities like
the manufacturing companies were expanding lustily. The
local company in New York erected in 1890 a generating sta
tion with a maximum capacity of 200,000 lights, the largest
in the country. The report points with pride to the aggregate
capacity of all the Edison generating stations in the nation
1,300,000 incandescent lamps.
All of these operated with direct current, and alternating
current was left severely alone. The line of cleavage on this
subject between the Edison, and the Thomson-Houston and
Westinghouse policies was never more rigidly drawn. From
1889 to 1891 Edison was in frequent controversy with his
technical antagonists. Even when his company purchased
the American rights to a transformer system invented in
Europe, his inflexible position caused the idea of putting the
system into practice to be abandoned.
Yet alternating current was the touchstone of the future.
Signs proving this were increasing. It was in this same year
of 1890 that William Stanley, who had remodelled the Gaul-
ard and Gibbs system for the Westinghouse company, re
marked to his young assistant, Cummings C. Chesney, "Let's
go off by ourselves and establish a plant for the manufacture
of transformers."
178 MEN AND VOLTS
Stanley had completed his work for Westinghouse, and he
and Chesney went to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where they
succeeded in interesting several capitalists, and on Novem
ber 1 the Stanley Laboratory Company and the Stanley
Electric Manufacturing Company were organized. A small
plant was acquired where a force of sixteen men went to
work. Within three months the first transformers were de
signed, built, and shipped.
A year later John F. Kelly joined forces with Stanley and
Chesney. From that moment the three constituted a team,
whose fame penetrated in ten years to every corner of the
electrical realm. Together they originated a complete line
of alternating-current equipment, announced and advertised
as the "SKC" system Stanley, Kelly, Chesney. They were
an aggressive triumvirate, and their work greatly accelerated
the development of the alternating current.
There is no evidence that the Edison company publicly
opposed the Stanley company during the "war of the cur
rents." When the Stanley company appeared, the greatest in
dividual issue in the Edison camp was the future of the
incandescent lamp, and particularly the validity of its patent.
In 1888 Edison had improved the efficiency of the lamp by
coating the carbon filament with asphalt. As a result the lamp
consumed only 3.1 watts per candlepower, compared with
7 watts per candlepower in 1880. This efficiency held for
fifteen years, even after the "squirted filament" appeared.
Efficiencies of 3.5 and 4 watts per candlepower were also
supplied in 1890, according to the voltage variation in the
circuits of different lighting companies.
Already there had been mutterings of controversy. Feel
ing which centered around the question of patents bordered
on bitterness. Johnson had issued his pamphlet "A Warning
from the Edison Electric Light Company." A counter-blast
NEW FACES, NEW COMPANIES 179
came from competitors, who published anonymously a par
ody of Johnson's style bearing the title: "E N Trium
phant! An inspirational rhapsody in seven cantos. Translated
from the Johnsonese by W. W., poet lariat."
As the 'eighties came to an end, conflict over the Edison
lamp patent No. 223,898 burst in the fury of a legal storm.
The future of electricity hung upon the issue; aspirations,
labors, fortunes, were at stake.
23
A Famous Fight
IT WAS THE AUTUMN OF 1889 when a group of lawyers met
before a court examiner in New York and began taking testi
mony in the momentous patent suit instituted to determine
who was legally entitled to call the incandescent lamp his
own invention.
The opponents were the Edison Electric Light Company,
complainant, and the United States Electric Lighting Com
pany, for alleged infringement of Patent No. 223,898, granted
to Edison in January 1880 and embracing his claims for an
electric lamp consisting of a high-resistance carbon filament
in a sealed glass container which formed a nearly perfect
vacuum. The complainant held that the Maxim lamps, pro
duced by the United States Electric Lighting Company, in
fringed upon his patent.
A spark of controversy that had lain dormant since 1882,
almost hidden from the heedless public, ignored by the elec
trical interests, had suddenly flamed out.
When the Edison company raised the cry of infringement,
other inventors affirmed that his invention had been antici
pated, that his patent was worthless. Many testified on the
180
A FAMOUS FIGHT 181
witness stand that others, Hiram S. Maxim in particular, had
previously done what Edison laid claim to have done.
Although no evidence was presented in court until Octo
ber 15, 1889, the Edison company did not delay so long in
bringing action against infringements as would appear. The
suit was formally begun in 1886, about the time the Edison
company realized that other companies could market com
peting lamps successfully and profitably. Not until then did
it cease temporizing and procrastinating. In June 1886 the
Edison Electric Light Company filed its amended bill of
complaint, to which the United States Electric Lighting Com
pany answered by submitting its amended plea. Preliminary
skirmishes occupied the three-year interval.
The trial, when it was finally instituted, occupied many
months; the record swelled into many printed volumes of
testimony; technical questions were explained, analyzed, in
terpreted, and legally vivisected; the patent, the grand bone
of contention, was systematically picked to pieces, its word
ing attacked, its validity flouted. It bore the full brunt of
battle, and both sides introduced an endless succession of
exhibits, physical and documentary.
Richard N. Dyer was the generalissimo who handled the
legal artillery for the complainant. His right-hand man was
Clarence A. Seward, a keen lawyer. And as advisor to both
was Grosvenor P. Lowrey, Edison's veteran legal friend.
On the opposing side was Samuel A. Duncan, shrewd,
quick, and thorough, usually addressed as General, chief of
counsel for the United States Electric Lighting Company;
with his able assistant, Edmund Wetmore.
The defendant's position hinged upon two main points.
First, it held that the Edison patent was invalid because the
description of the invention would not enable a person
"skilled in the art" to make incandescent lamps by following
182 MEN AND VOLTS
its directions. Second, it asserted that even if lamps could be
so made, Edison's work had been anticipated by other in
ventors who had produced the same sort of electric lamp be
fore the date of the patent.
The defendant introduced the names of five inventors in
the effort to prove that Edison was not the first man to bring
out a successful incandescent lamp: William E. Sawyer, Al-
bon Man, Hiram S. Maxim, Edward Weston, and Moses G.
Farmer. And there was an array of witnesses to testify as
experts that an incandescent lamp could not be made by fol
lowing the directions given in the patent.
The specifications of the patent disclosed how to prepare
filaments of a very small diameter out of lamp black and coal
tar. To prove that these directions were clear to anyone
skilled in the art, the prosecution called upon John W.
Howell, electrician of the Edison Lamp Company, to con
struct lamps by the method described.
Howell made twenty-seven such lamps, and then went on
the witness stand and told how he made them. He kneaded
the lamp black and coal tar into the consistency of putty and
rolled it out upon a plate of ground glass to the hairlike or
filament diameter of from six- to seventeen-thousandths of
an inch. Short pieces were cut off, wound upon a wooden
mandrel into a spiral form, carbonized, and sealed into vacu
ous bulbs all precisely as described in the patent.
When they were tested the lamps burned for six hundred
hours. The record of the tests, the twenty-seven lamps, and
the set of tools which Howell employed were introduced as
exhibits. Howell even offered to construct the lamps in the
presence of the Court, but this was not deemed necessary.
But the chief battle arose when the complainant called
Charles L. Clarke, acting chief engineer of the Edison Elec
tric Light Company up to 1884. He was relied upon to refute
HBB
EDISON PAYS A VISIT TO STEINMETZ AT SCHENECTADY
A FAMOUS FIGHT 183
the assertion that Edison's invention was anticipated by
others. Clarke took the witness stand on July 21, 1890, and
held it almost continually for three months. General Duncan
led the charge in an extremely clever cross-examination. He
asked the witness nearly six hundred questions, seeking again
and again to expose a flaw, a contradiction, an incompetency
in his testimony.
The light-giving element of the lamp what Edison termed
the filament was the storm center of the controversy. Sev
eral inventors contemporary with Edison had employed car
bon sticks or "rods," which differed only in diameter from
Edison's "thread," or filament. The defense contended that
both types were in effect the same thing, and that the carbon
rods therefore constituted a legal anticipation of Edison's
filament.
Day after day and week after week the clash of wits con
tinued. But Clarke's testimony could not be broken down,
and he showed such familiarity with a multitude of published
articles and books that General Duncan found him a full
match for his skillful fencing.
At length Duncan asked the witness if the arc lamps were
not, after all, much more efficient than the incandescent
lamps, and if they were not so regarded by the "prior art"
the inventions brought out prior to the date of the patent in
suit. It was evidently intended as a key question, upon which
a sequence of other questions was to depend. But Clarke
was not wholly unprepared. The moment the questions was
put, Dyer, sitting across the table, turned to Duncan and re
marked: "Here is where you are going to get it in the neck!"
Then Clarke gave his reply. He held that the arc lamp was
only slightly more efficient than the incandescent and that
the prior art so regarded it, citing many authorities on the
point. He pointed out the evident conviction among investi-
184 MEN AND VOLTS
gators prior to Edison that this margin of efficiency was not
so great as to deter them from striving to solve the riddle of a
practical incandescent lamp.
The answer checkmated General Duncan. It upset his line
of attack and left him taken aback. For several moments he
sat silent, stroking his beard.
Dyer at length remarked, "Well, General, why so silent?"
To which Duncan replied, "I was just thinking how much
I'd like to kick a certain young man."
Finally the time came when the evidence was completed
and the case rested in the hands of the Court. The Court's
opinion, written by Judge Wallace, was handed down on
July 14, 1891. It was a complete victory for Edison.
The defendant appealed, and on October 4, 1892, the
United States Circuit Court of Appeals handed down an opin
ion affirming the decision of the lower court. The patent was
sustained.
Judge Wallace looked upon the attenuated carbon burner
of high resistance and small radiating surface as Edison's
signal achievement. It was this, in the opinion of the court,
that turned the incandescent lamp from a failure into a
success.
"It was a remarkable discovery," said Judge Wallace, in
the opinion handed down, "that an attenuated thread of car
bon would possess all the long-sought qualities of a practical
burner. . . . The extreme fragility of such a structure was
calculated to discourage experimentation with it. ... The
futility of hoping to maintain a burner in vacuo with any
permanency had discouraged prior inventors, and Mr. Edi
son is entitled to the credit of obviating the mechanical diffi
culties which disheartened them. . . .
"By doing these things, he made a lamp which was practi-
A FAMOUS FIGHT 185
cally operative and successful, the embryo of the best lamps
now in use."
The higher court, affirming this decision, gave its opinion
in part as follows:
"Edison's invention was practically made when he ascer
tained the theretofore unknown fact that carbon would stand
high temperature, even when very attenuated, if operated
in a high vacuum, without the phenomenon of disintegra
tion. ... It was an invention, in view of the teaching of the
art as to the disintegration of carbon under the action of an
electric current, to still select that substance as a suitable
material from which to construct a burner much more at
tenuated than had ever been used before."
The Court was explicit in maintaining that a carbon rod
is not the same as a carbon thread one of the classic issues
in the suit. Said Judge Lacombe of the Higher Court:
"The evidence fails to satisfy us that the prior art furnished
any burners less than twice this size. In contradiction to these
earlier burners, Edison calls his burner a filament"
These judicial statements make it apparent that the re
duction of the carbon burner from the diameter of a pencil,
or small rod, to that of a thread constituted the germ of a
great invention. Judge Lacombe, in deciding that the Maxim
lamps infringed Edison's filament, declared that the carbon
burners in the Maxim lamps were of threadlike diameter and
that they "indisputably lie wholly on one side of the dividing
line between rods and filaments."
This opinion is identical with that of the English court
which passed on the suit of the Edison and Swan United
Electric Light Company brought against Woodhouse and
Rawson, in which the Edison English patent was sustained
both by the lower and the higher court.
186 MEN AND VOLTS
Four courts had agreed that the prior inventors stopped
short of success when they failed to cross the significant "di
viding line between rods and filaments." When but a few
steps from the goal they halted. Edison alone continued to
the goal.
Legal triumph meant immediate commercial triumph.
Companies desiring to manufacture incandescent lamps were
obliged to pay a license fee to the Edison Electric Light Com
pany. But the patent, which had been so dearly upheld, had
almost run the course of its life; it would expire in 1894.
Hence, counsel for the Edison Company moved as rapidly
as possible in bringing injunctions against infringers. And
the latter, feeling the pinch of sudden stringency, became
extremely resentful. The Edison Company was roundly con
demned for waiting so long before bringing suit, allowing the
infringing companies to invest large sums of money in their
respective enterprises.
But their complaint was well disposed of by the Circuit
Court of Appeals in these words:
"Every one of the manufacturing corporations, the com
petitors of the Edison companies, commenced their opera
tions with a knowledge of the existence of the patent in suit.
They were controlled by business men of intelligence and
experience. Their promoters and managers may have be
lieved, and probably did, that the patent could not be suc
cessfully maintained. But they entered upon the business
with an understanding of its risks and of the consequences
which would befall them as infringers if the patent should be
sustained."
Many of the small lamp manufacturers that had come into
existence through the middle and late 'eighties were among
those enjoined the Sunbeam, the Columbia, the Buckeye,
A FAMOUS FIGHT 187
as well as the Sawyer-Man Electric Company and its succes
sor, the Consolidated Electric Lighting Company.
It might be supposed that the future now looked bright
for the Edison General Electric Company, as smoke of the
long battle in the Federal Courts. cleared away.
But the fight left traces of unmistakable bitterness and
feeling of apprehension, a sense of insecurity. Electrical
men were forced to take the patent question very much to
heart. Were they safe in running the risk of infringing other
patents held by rival companies? Were they safe even in
supposing their own patents valid, in cases where those pat
ents had not yet been tested in court?
The Edison General Electric Company itself shared in this
reaction. The suit had been a costly procedure. If other
patents should be found to require adjudication, the financial
drain might become serious, not to mention the effect upon
the public whose own economic well-being was likewise at
stake. The prospect, even in the face of so decided a victory,
was not bright.
Yet the competing men and their companies were not
naturally belligerent. All the Edison Company sought, all
that any of them sought, was the chance to pursue their busi
ness activities undisturbed; to make and sell articles that they
knew the public wanted without fear of legal complications
either for themselves or their customers. Such was the simple
assurance they desired; and that assurance was the last thing
which the future appeared to offer.
But there was a way out in consolidation. The idea was
germinating in the minds of officials of the Edison General
Electric Company even before Judge Wallace rendered his
opinion in 1891.
WILL/AM M. ("B/LLY") MADIGAN
The foreman who completed the building of the 1903 turbine on time.
TESTING AN EDISON BI-POLAR DYNAMO
Left to right, Peter Mulvey, Charles L. Clarke, and Ben Helm.
[ PART FIVE ]
The Formation
of the
General Electric Company
24
General Electric Emerges
TOWARD THE END OF FEBRUARY, 1891, A. L. Rohrer, assistant
to E. W. Rice, Jr., at the Thomson-Houston factory, received
a telephone call from Charles A. Coffin at his office in Boston.
"Watch for the arrival at the factory of Mr. Lovejoy, ac
companied by Mr. Henry Villard, President of the Edison
General Electric Company," said Coffin. "Mr. Villard is to be
shown through our plant and is to be introduced to Professor
Thomson and Mr. Rice. Please see that his identity does not
become generally known."
Rohrer hung up the receiver with a tingle of excitement.
A visit, with Coffin's sanction, from the head of this great
competitor seemed to indicate but one thing.
Mr. Villard was taken around the factory and shown the
utmost courtesy. At the conclusion of his tour he departed
with an exchange of friendly felicitations. Rice and Rohrer
commented on the significance of all this in a guarded man
ner, which was, nonetheless, privately jubilant. It seemed
as if some of their weightiest problems were to be dissipated.
Coffin was no longer the only one to realize the seriousness
of patent deadlocks. It was evident to everyone that the
191
192 MEN AND VOLTS
burden of heavy license fees disheartened investors who con
sidered buying shares in electrical companies. Natural ex
pansion was threatened by the difficulty of enlisting new
capital. There were irritating delays in meeting public de
mand for electric service, requests for reliable and efficient
electrical systems that could not be met the indefinite post
ponement of America's complete electrical development.
The Edison patent controlling the incandescent lamp had
two years to run, and a two-year handicap was something
the Thomson-Houston Company might have difficulty in
recovering from. And there were other Edison patents the
feeder patent, the three-wire patent without which direct-
current service would be unsatisfactory. Thomson-Houston,
on the other hand, held valuable transformer patents, which
unlocked the whole field of the alternating current.
The conviction was taking shape that the incandescent
lamp and the alternating-current transformer system be
longed together, just as did the overhead trolley and the
magnetic blowout. The two were complements of each
other. Yet they had been kept apart because the patents were
held by rival concerns. It was found that no plant could be
constructed and no system installed by either company with
any hope of rendering efficient service to the public without
infringing the rights of the other company. In many of the
larger cities two rival electric lighting systems existed. One
local company exploited the Edison low-tension direct-
current method of incandescent illumination; the other oper
ated the Thomson-Houston high-tension alternating-current
arc-lighting circuits and series incandescent circuits.
With affairs in this state, minds in the opposing camps
were in a receptive mood regarding consolidation. Overtures
came from the Edison Company before the patent suit was
settled. They were made through a third party, Hamilton
GEORGE E. EMMONS
Manager of the Schenectady Works for many years.
A BUSINESS OFFICE IN 1902
The Correspondence Department at the Schenectadij Works.
GENERAL ELECTRIC EMERGES 193
McKay Twombley, who was chosen because of his familiarity
with the Thomson-Houston Company.
After the visit of Henry Villard and J. R. Lovejoy to the
plant nothing was heard about consolidation by the operating
officials at Lynn. Months came and went; spring passed,
summer, autumn, and winter succeeded each other. The
Thomson-Houston people concluded that the project had
collapsed.
But conversations were going on at Twombley 's residence
in Boston, attended by Twombley, Coffin, and Frederick P.
Fish, counsel for the Thomson-Houston Company. Diffi
culties had arisen over the question of terms. Coffin did not
consider that the initial proposition submitted by Twombley
gave adequate recognition to the record of his company, and
he asked for a modification.
It was nearly a year before he satisfied himself that even
the revised proposition was suitable for recommendation to
his directors. At length, in February 1892, he notified Twom
bley that he was ready to accept the new terms.
So one March morning Rice entered the factory offices and
sought out Rohrer and Knight. They were to go at once to
Boston to meet Mr. Coffin at his office. There they found
Henry Villard and John Kruesi of the Edison General Elec
tric Company. It was then announced that a consolidation
had been agreed to, and that an exchange of visits between
officials was to take place preliminary to the signing of the
papers and the public announcement of the new company.
Formalities were completed on April 15, 1892. On that day
was incorporated the enterprise that combined the wisdom,
traditions, and vitality of two vigorous rivals under the title
of General Electric Company.
Coffin had insisted upon an equality of treatment between
the merging companies and the recognition of certain ideals
194 MEN AND VOLTS
in undertaking the new organization. He proposed that the
new company should consider first the public which it served,
and only secondly its own success. He proposed that the
enterprise be organized to perform better the task of develop
ing the cornerstone of modern industrial and economic life.
Having that for its purpose, the bread-and-butter interest of
the new company would never suffer. No other policy, he
affirmed, could be regarded as "good business."
Conferences, initiated in the late winter of 1891-92, were
concluded nearly a year later. When terms of consolidation
were finally drawn, they were laid before the respective
boards of directors for ratification. The Thomson-Houston
directors met in Boston and the Edison directors in New
York. Few doubted that the two boards would act favorably,
yet their action was momentous.
So passed into one corporation two great undertakings. In
resources and in achievements, the merging companies were
almost equal. The Edison company was capitalized for $15,-
000,000; Thomson-Houston for $10,400,000. The Edison
Company reported a gross business of $10,940,000 for the
preceding year; Thomson-Houston showed a gross of $10,-
304,500. There were 6000 employees on the Edison rolls,
4000 on the Thomson-Houston. The Edison Company had
two manufacturing plants fourteen acres, forty buildings,
and 400,000 square feet of floor space. The Thomson-Houston
Company had one plant covering eight acres, with eleven
buildings and 340,000 square feet of floor space. Both had
between 3000 and 4000 customers each. The Edison Com
pany had approximately 375 central-station companies, and
more than 2300 isolated lighting installations. Against this
showing Thomson-Houston reported 870 central-station com
panies, but very few isolated plants. The Edison Company
GENERAL ELECTRIC EMERGES 195
had equipped 180 street railways and 2230 cars; the
Thomson-Houston 204 roads and 2760 cars.
To most of the employees of both companies, the consoli
dation came as a surprise, despite rumors that had been
abroad during the preceding year. It was announced to the
employees by circular letters posted on June 1, 1892, the date
on which the General Electric Company began to operate in
its own name.
Before this Thomson-Houston men began to appear at the
Edison works in Schenectady, and a general plan of reorgani
zation was introduced. Thomson-Houston ideas and policies
were adapted to existing conditions wherever they seemed
likely to produce improvement. Otherwise the policies of the
Edison Company continued, with considerable readjustment
of personnel.
Among the notable group which had created General Elec
tric, Charles A. Coffin stood out by force of personality. Yet
his new associates were themselves persons of large affairs
and of high administrative caliber.
Distinguished names appeared on the new Board of Di
rectors. Industrialist rubbed elbows with banker, and both
shared places with technical and business experts. The eleven
directors were: F. L. Ames, Boston financier and business
pioneer; Charles A. Coffin; T. Jefferson Coolidge, Boston
banker; C. H. Coster, of Drexel, Morgan and Company;
Thomas A. Edison; Eugene Griffin, Thomson-Houston offi
cial; Frank S. Hastings, Edison official; Henry L. Higginson,
of Lee, Higginson and Company; D. O. Mills, New York
banker; J. P. Morgan; and Hamilton McKay Twombley.
The representation of two such notable banking firms as
Lee, Higginson and Company of Boston, and Drexel, Mor
gan and Company of New York, later to become J. P. Morgan
196 MEN AND VOLTS
and Company, gave uncommon financial stamina to the
board, which was recognized at the time as probably the
strongest brought together for an American industrial con
cern.
Yet among these exceptional men, there stood out that
unassuming and affable New Englander who won every
body's friendship and who thought least of all of his own ad
vancement. To one who met him for the first time, he might
not have appeared to be cast for an industrial chief of high
position. But his associates knew him for what he was. With
out hesitation they selected him unanimously as President
of General Electric.
It was a conspicuous position. And its prominence in
creased with the genuine leadership of the Quaker financier,
who twenty years before had been a salesman of shoes.
As its Chairman the Board elected H. M. Twombley. It is
striking to note that the Board itself included only one of
the inventive geniuses whose achievements had disclosed
the possibilities of electrical manufacture to which the com
pany was now dedicated. Edison was the sole representative
of this group.
His position on the Board, as the champion of direct cur
rent, may seem to have been a difficult one. Henceforth
alternating current was to be both advocated and utilized.
The new company would recommend for a particular in
stallation whichever of the two types was preeminently fitted
for the work to be done. But while Edison did not endorse
this policy, it is certain that he concerned himself less and
less at this period with manufacturing activities.
It was not Edison, but Professor Thomson, who became
the sole member of early electrical inventors to maintain
active affiliation with General Electric. Edison retired to
continue his independent researches. Thomson continued at
GENERAL ELECTRIC EMERGES 197
work in his laboratory in Lynn. He declined the proffered
honor of membership on the board of directors, declaring
his dominant interest was to pursue laboratory work un
burdened by other demands.
The others of those technical pioneers in the General
Electric Succession had gone their several ways. Charles F.
Brush had retired, with the sale of his company, and was
now concerned with independent laboratory operations.
Frank J. Sprague had branched off into the development of
electric elevators, and had organized with Edward H. John
son the Sprague Elevator, and the Sprague Interior Conduit
and Insulation companies.
Charles J. Van Depoele died in the very year of this con
solidation at the early age of forty-six. Edward M. Bentley
had returned to the practice of law. Walter H. Knight, how
ever, came into the consolidated company as one of the
Thomson-Houston engineering staff, continuing in electric
streetcar development until the middle 'nineties.
When it was at length completed, the organization of Gen
eral Electric showed a predominance of Thomson-Houston
men in the corporate offices. Eugene Griffin (Thomson-
Houston) was First Vice President. Second Vice President,
Samuel Insull ( Edison ) , soon succeeded by J. P. Ord ( Edi
son); General Counsel, Frederick P. Fish (Thomson-
Houston); Secretary, E. I. Garfield (Thomson-Houston);
Treasurer, Benjamin F. Peach, Jr. (Thomson-Houston).
Men of tried ability, drawn from both companies, suc
ceeded to the management of the technical and manufactur
ing interests. E. W. Rice, Jr., (Thomson-Houston) was made
Technical Director; John Kruesi (Edison) continued as
Manager of the Schenectady Works; and Francis R. Upton
(Edison) was placed in charge of the Edison Lamp Works
at Harrison.
198 MEN AND VOLTS
In commercial organization, General Electric appropriated
the best in the methods of both its predecessors. It estab
lished four departments, as follows:
Lighting Department, under S. Dana Greene (Edison);
Railway Department, O. T. Crosby (Edison); Power De
partment, J. R. McKee (Thomson-Houston); Supply De
partment, J. R. Lovejoy (Thomson-Houston).
The scientific factory-costs system of the Thomson-
Houston Company and its functional system of factory or
ganization were ingrafted throughout the shops of the con
solidated company introduced gradually, accompanied by
education of the men in the new methods and the training
of shop foremen.
The nationwide district office plan of the Edison company
was made the foundation of General Electric's activities in
the selling field.
The personnel throughout was so strong that the prestige
of the company was quickly established. Coffin took great
pride in the human side of his organization. He wanted fit
ness and loyalty; but he wanted the loyalty to be spontane
ous. He wanted General Electric to give its workers both
opportunity and commendation.
The watchdog of economies in all branches of the com
pany was the gruff but painstaking Joseph P. Ord, who
served as Comptroller for two years before becoming a Vice
President. His business genius was preventing waste of any
sort.
Shortly after consolidation, a name was placed upon the
rolls which was to assure the future of the new company as
the exponent of the intricate alternating current. In January
1892, Thomson and Rice had listened at a meeting of the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers to a mathematical
exposition which they would not soon forget. The speaker
JOHN MILLER
Millwright of the Schenectady Works for years.
JOHN KRUESI
Foreman of the Edison machine shop a\
Menlo Park and later manager of the
Edison Machine Works at Schenectady
WILLIAM B. ("POP") TURNER
eneral Superintendent of the Edison
Machine Works at Schenectady.
'
GENERAL ELECTRIC EMERGES 199
was an odd-looking young fellow, dwarfed in stature, intel
ligent in manner, who spoke with a foreign accent but in a
manner that carried conviction.
The speaker was Steinmetz, the penniless immigrant of
1889, now, in 1892, revealing new mathematical laws to the
acknowledged heads of American electrical engineering!
Steinmetz had distinguished himself in the Eickemeyer
factory by making known the mathematics of the law of
hysteresis the law governing losses in the magnetic circuit
of an electric motor. It was a brilliant discovery. It threw
light into a dark corner of electrical engineering, and simpli
fied one aspect of the art of designing efficient electric power-
consuming apparatus.
As it happened, Eickemeyer's work at Yonkers was under
scrutiny at that time in the Thomson-Houston offices. His
"iron-clad" armature and methods of armature winding had
attracted the attention of Thomson and Rice. They discussed
the proposition with Coffin of acquiring Eickemeyer's pat
ents. Together with F. P. Fish, Thomson-Houston Counsel,
they went to Yonkers to inspect the plant. On their return
they agreed that by all odds Eickemeyer's most pronounced
asset was the young Steinmetz.
That summer negotiations were opened which resulted in
the purchase by the General Electric Company of Eicke
meyer's plant, business, and patents.
Rice has recorded his astonishment on his first meeting
with Steinmetz, describing his "small, frail body, surmounted
by a large head with long hair hanging to the shoulders,
clothed in an old cardigan jacket, cigar in mouth, sitting
cross-legged on a laboratory worktable." This apparition be
gins to speak, and immediately his strange appearance is
forgotten. "I instantly felt the strange power of his piercing,
but kindly, eyes," recalls Rice, "and as he continued, his en-
200 MEN AND VOLTS
thusiasm, his earnestness, his clear conception and marvel
lous grasp of engineering problems convinced me that we
had indeed made a great find. I was delighted when, with
out a moment's hesitation, he accepted my suggestion that
he come with us."
Within a few months Steinmetz left Yonkers to become a
General Electric engineer, located in the Calculating Depart
ment at the Lynn plant, at the head of which was H. F.
Parshall.
Consolidation brought no lag in engineering or sales ac
tivities. Nearly all the engineers and sales agents of both
companies continued under the consolidated company. Now
they worked together instead of in opposition. Some aided
in establishing consolidation in the field. None had a larger
task of this sort than young Dr. Thomas Addison.
Addison had left the medical profession to devote himself
to volts and amperes. He was a salesman in the Thomson-
Houston Chicago office, then headed by B. E. Sunny, who
sent him in March 1890 to the Pacific Coast, where electricity
was one day to go through some of its most dramatic mo
ments. Addison opened a Thomson-Houston office in San
Francisco the following May, and in 1892 was authorized to
effect a consolidation in Pacific Coast territory. He took over
a five-story building and gradually brought under his juris
diction the commercial and construction activities which
agents of the Edison company had been pursuing throughout
the Pacific Coast region.
Among these agents was Sidney Z. Mitchell, who had
taken to the great northwest a tremendous capacity for fight
ing against odds. Mitchell went into Seattle, a bold prophet
of the electrical day. He wanted $10,000 for a hydroelectric
plant, to be operated by a proposed local lighting company.
GENERAL ELECTRIC EMERGES 201
But the people to whom he talked did not perceive the
dawn as clearly as did Mitchell.
Defying fate, he finally secured $10,000, with a towering
forfeit imposed by local politicians should his electric plant
be not running by a specified time. But Mitchell mastered
the situation, completed the plant on time, and saw it become
the first hydroelectric generating station on the Pacific Coast.
Then he went up and down that country, throughout the
great inland empire, promoting, organizing, building, and
operating. He was an economic apostle to one town after
another, bringing the Edison lamp to brighten the dark
shores that bordered the Pacific.
Meanwhile in the East, Hewlett of the New York office of
Thomson-Houston was preparing to install new lights on
the Statue of Liberty to celebrate, in October, 1892, the quad-
ricentennial of Columbus' voyage. Thomson-Houston incan
descent lights were used extensively around New York at
that time. Hewlett had put them on several lightships, a line
of ferry boats, in Tiffany's store, and had installed them for
Paine's fireworks at Coney Island.
A complaint came in one day from one of the ferryboats
that the installation was giving trouble. Hewlett went on
board and became immediately suspicious when his exami
nation failed to reveal anything wrong. He made a conspicu
ous mark on the brush holder of the dynamo, so that he
could tell instantly if the brushes had been shifted. He
showed the engineer what he had done, then got the purser
to put up a cot in an empty coal bunker and stretched out
for a nap.
At two in the morning, after the boat had stopped running
for the night, he went into the machinery room and looked
at the dynamo. It was just as he had left it, and, there was
202 MEN AND VOLTS
never any more trouble with the lights. His suspicions were
well founded the engineer, from professional jealousy, had
tampered with the brushes on the dynamo. It was a case of
regulating not the machine but the man.
People living in western Massachusetts noticed during
that summer of 1892 a long shaft of light sweeping the night
sky from somewhere in the White Mountains. The news
quickly got about among the rural communities: an electric
searchlight surmounted the summit of Mt. Washington. It
was the largest unit of the sort then known. The lens was
thirty-six inches in diameter. The volume of illumination was
equivalent to 20,000 candles, and this was magnified to 100,-
000 candles by the use of a Mangin lens. The light had been
manufactured by the Thomson-Houston plant at Middle-
town, Connecticut.
To get the searchlight in place was a task to daunt the
most determined engineer. A tower fifty-five feet high was to
be built, and it was recorded that gales of over a hundred
miles an hour swept that rugged peak. The Superintendent
of the Mount Washington Inclined Railway wagered the
construction man a silk hat for each one of his thirteen work
men that the tower would not last a year. He lost the bet, but
never paid it.
Watchful, wondering eyes curious eyes in most cases,
unfriendly eyes in some observed the formation of General
Electric. It was a "combine," exclaimed the critic, a "trust."
It brought into existence a corporation which was gigantic
for a period when people were alarmed about trusts.
Coffin heard extremists attack General Electric as a mo
nopoly with menacing possibilities, questioning every item
in the annual financial statements over a period of several
years.
Perils conjured up by suspicious folk never eventuated,
GENERAL ELECTRIC EMERGES 203
nor did the criticisms directed at Coffin and the other offi
cials have any logical justification. The attacks displayed a
signal misconception of the possibilities inherent in the elec
trical business, producing a disquieting effect upon General
Electric's finances in the great panic of 1893.
A weekly magazine called Electricity made savage ac
cusations against the company's bookkeeping methods and
impugned the personal integrity of Coffin himself. Its most
frequently repeated charge was that of overcapitalization. In
its issue of September 7, 1892, it declared:
"Last week we expressed our belief that the Trust was
foredoomed to failure ... To talk of earning interest on
this immense capitalization by honest business methods is
nonsense."
Only a total inability to gauge the immediate future could
have led to such an assertion.
Far different were the comments of technical men, who
have always considered that the merging of Thomson-
Houston and Edison General Electric was a move of great
benefit to American industry. The Schenectady Electrical
Handbook, published by the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers in 1904, says:
"Never in the industrial world did organization effect a
more magical change in releasing pent-up energy. Guided by
master hands, electrical arts leaped into industrial pre
eminence; the volume of manufacture of appliances, progress
of invention, public confidence in electricity, and its general
utilization, all took long strides forward."
Whatever the fortunes of other electrical manufacturing
organizations, whatever their virtues and achievements, Gen
eral Electric set for itself certain ideals which, for forty years,
have kept it from becoming a "soulless corporation." It had
an idealist at its head during its first crucial years. It was
204 MEN AND VOLTS
to a large extent his vision which gave General Electric the
momentum that produced its progress.
From the day of amalgamation, economies were effected.
The company found itself with two factories in which in
candescent lamps were produced, but it was apparent that
one factory would permit of a considerable gain in manu
facturing efficiency. Which of the two should be discon
tinued?
The Thomson-Houston bamboo filaments were treated by
the Sawyer process, and the patent covering this process
had expired about the time of the consolidation. Whereupon
John W. Howell, electrician at the Edison Lamp Works,
visited the plant at Lynn to study the treating process. Back
in Harrison he shut himself up on the top floor of the factory,
started experimenting, and before long discovered a way to
simplify the method.
Under the original Sawyer process, a stream of gasoline
vapor was drawn through a highly heated bulb containing
the filament. Heat decomposed the vapor and coated the
surface of the filament with graphite. When Howell per
ceived that the flow of vapor was too great, causing an un
equal cooling of the filament, he diminished the flow a little
at a time, and with every reduction found that he obtained
a better filament.
While he was experimenting, Rice came out to the factory
and announced the decision to maintain a single lamp works.
"The factory which will continue lampmaking will be the
one at which the best grade of lamps is produced," he said
to Howell. "To determine which one that is, we are going to
make a test. Your factory will make one hundred lamps, send
fifty to Lynn for test and retain the other fifty. Lynn will do
the same."
Howell's discovery was in the nick of time. A month later
GENERAL ELECTRIC EMERGES 205
Rice again visited Harrison and said to Howell, "The Lynn
men admit that your lamps are better than theirs, so we will
shut down the Lynn factory and the men will come down
and work for you."
Howell, meanwhile, kept on with his filament-treating
experiments, until he eliminated the flow mechanism, mak
ing the apparatus practically automatic. This was the most
satisfactory of the filament-treated lamps.
The first annual report of the General Electric Company
remarks of the progress of the lamp, that: "The prices at
which apparatus and lamps are now furnished by the Gen
eral Electric Company for the use of such stations (licen
sees) are, in many instances, lower than those which pre
vailed prior to the sustaining of the lamp patent, while the
quality and efficiency of the apparatus are largely increased.
Thus the licensees are enabled to cheapen their production,
and their prosperity is greatly enhanced."
There are also to be found in this first report other signs
of development: first, generators of larger capacities; second,
an innovation in the manner of operating the generators.
"On February 1, 1892," says the report, "the largest
power-generator manufactured was of 275 horsepower. Ma
chines of 2000 horsepower are now (February 1, 1893) be
ing manufactured by your company. . . . The largest light
ing generators in use on February 1, 1892, were capable of
supplying only 2000 incandescent lights each. There are
now being constructed generators of the direct-coupled type
with a capacity of 12,000 incandescent lights from each
engine."
The first use of the direct-coupled, or direct-connected,
method was in Edison's Jumbo dynamos. But not until the
present period were the direct-connected units started on
their commercial career. Their birth meant the gradual pass-
206 MEN AND VOLTS
ing of the previous type, the belt-driven generator, except
in isolated individual plants. The change resulted both in
improved efficiency of operation and economy of space. The
forest of flapping leather straps which met the eye in the
larger central stations had always produced friction losses.
These were now avoided by connecting the steam engine
and the electric dynamo on the same shaft.
All this had its effect upon the incandescent-lighting situ
ation. More than 2,000,000 lamps were sold in 1892, and the
annual sale increased steadily. No one but General Electric
could legally market the Edison Lamp from 1892 to 1894.
JUST BEFORE THE CONSOLIDATION an engineer in the Thomson-
Houston Railway Department, W. B. Potter, had a conversa
tion with W. H. Knight, the engineering head of the depart
ment, on the subject of the magnetic blowout. There had
been considerable groping about for a better method of con
trolling the speed of streetcar motors during the starting of
the car, when it was necessary to accelerate the speed
gradually in order to prevent the sudden jerks which would
otherwise occur.
Technical differences had developed in the procedures of
the Thomson-Houston and Edison companies. The streetcar
motors of the former, which were connected in parallel, were
controlled by a rheostat. This device inserted resistance into
the circuit, and as the speed of the car increased, the resist
ance was switched out a step at a time. Edison streetcar
motors were controlled by changes made during acceleration
in the wiring combinations of the motor's internal field
circuit commutating the field, as it was termed.
The Thomson-Houston men felt that a master stroke
would be achieved if some way could be found of operating
the motors in series during acceleration and then changing
A PROBLEM SOLVED 207
to parallel connection while the motors were running and
after full speed had been attained. The difficulty was the
excessive arc in the switch at the point where the circuit was
broken, an arc too large for the magnetic blowout, as then
utilized, to handle.
Finally Potter proposed that the magnetic blowout should
be altered so that instead of a small, intense magnetic field,
one of large area should be sought which would draw the
arc out to an increased length, making it more susceptible to
interruption. Days of study followed, during which Potter
drew a rough sketch of motors connected by the series-
parallel method to accompany the new form of magnetic
blowout. The moment Knight saw the sketch he exclaimed,
"That will work let's try it."
They proceeded to experiment. The control apparatus
proved the most baffling factor of all, for mechanical rather
than electrical reasons. Finally, Potter worked out a control
ler, designated as the "J" typ e > which was an arrangement
of plunger contacts, operated in a vertical plane through
bevel gearing from either end of the car. It was encased in
a long flat box and placed beneath the car body, with a con
trol handle on each of the outside platforms. When the
handle was moved, one set of plunger discs was raised until
contact was made with a similar set above. The alignment
had to be perfect, however, and careless handling crippled
the apparatus.
But it worked well enough on early installations to demon
strate the superiority of series-parallel control for streetcar
motors. The Hartford Street Railway conducted a compara
tive trial of this method with the commutated-field method
and the resistance method of the Edison and Westinghouse
companies respectively. The test, concluded in April, 1892,
on the day of the consolidation, showed a saving in electrical
208 MEN AND VOLTS
energy of twenty per cent by the series-parallel method.
Representatives of the competing companies were consider
ably chagrined. Potter remarked that evening to the Edison
Company's man:
"This test gives me a unique satisfaction. Today we have
beaten you as competitors; tomorrow we welcome you as
associates."
But there was trouble ahead for the "J" controller. Com
plaints began to come in about the burning out of plunger
contacts. The Ninth Avenue Elevated Railway in Brooklyn
had ordered a large equipment of the controllers, but only a
few had been installed, and they kept a repair force con
stantly busy.
Eugene Griffin, head of the Thomson-Houston Railway
Department, receiving an appeal from the road, asked Potter
if he could get the cars running again by July Fourth. Potter
said he could. But a brief inspection of the cars in Brooklyn
was sufficient to satisfy him that the "J" controller was a fail
ure. He instructed the shop superintendent to take off the
"J" controllers and replace them with some of the old resist
ance rheostats still in stock. So the cars were ready to operate
long before the Fourth.
Potter went immediately to the foreman of the model room
and said to him, "I see a crash coming on the "J" controller
and I want to forestall it. I don't know how many men I
shall need, but I'd like to have you put men on the work as
fast as I can send you sketches."
Rapidly he evolved a new form of controller. With his
draftsmen and the model-room force working like beavers, a
model was completed within ten days, the final trick lasting
nearly all night. At three in the morning Potter and two shop
men carried the model down to the test room for its first
trial. It worked to perfection.
THE FIRST TEXTILE JOB 209
Knight was skeptical when he heard the news, and told
Potter he wanted to see the new controller after it had been
turned on and off a thousand times with the motors running
at full load. Potter forthwith assigned a man to carry out the
test. He spent the best part of a day turning the controller
on and off, on and off. He counted up to a thousand times,
and still no injury was done.
This sturdy mechanism was cataloged as the "K" con
troller. It was of upright cylindrical design, permitting a si
multaneous movement of the handle and the contacts. The
latter met in the horizontal plane instead of the vertical.
What made it particularly simple was the plan to mount it
on the motorman's platform, thus eliminating over-delicate
mechanisms which had been the undoing of its predecessor.
The "K" controller inaugurated a new era of efficiency in
electric transportation.
MEANWHILE DOWN IN DIXIE LAND, a region heretofore noted
more for agriculture than for industrial ventures, events un
folded which were to bring stationary motors into a white
glare of prominence.
Until 1891 installed motors had been direct-current units,
not above twenty horsepower in capacity. Thomson's experi
ments with his first repulsion motor still remained a pioneer
study of motors using alternating current. But in 1891 engi
neers of Thomson-Houston began work on an experimental
three-phase induction motor under the direction of H. G.
Reist. Most of the later work on this motor was done by
W. J. Foster and Dr. Louis Bell, the latter resigning the
editorship of the Electrical World in 1892 to Join the staff
of General Electric. Together they worked out the new motor
and its generator, conducting a long series of tests.
Two of the units were immediately sold. At the same time
210 MEN AND VOLTS
a direct-current generator at Baltic, Connecticut, and a simi
lar machine, used as a motor in the Ponemah Textile Mills
four miles away in Taftsville, were proving unsatisfactory.
The cost of the heavy copper conductors required for the
transmission line was excessive, and the motors did not oper
ate well for constant-speed textile machinery. The new
alternating-current generators and motors proved a god
send, and two of each were substituted, late in 1893, at
Baltic and Taftsville. A third installation by the Thomson-
Houston plant of General Electric occurred in the same
year at Redlands, California, later to be described.
But it was in the far south, at Columbia, South Carolina,
that there occurred the first historic installation in a textile
mill. : ..-V
From the beginning the Columbia mills scouted the idea
of electricity. C. K. Oliver, agent for the mills, and Stephen
Greene, his engineer, faced a dilemma. They wanted to em
ploy waterwheels driven by the rapids of the Congaree
River, 800 feet from the mills; but a canal for conveying
river boats around the rapids interfered with the plan, since
it ran between the river and the mills. No feasible plan of
mechanical drive could be worked out. Under pressure of
dire necessity Greene turned at last to electricity.
He was besieged by salesmen from three electrical con
cerns. One was Sidney B. Paine, who had put Edison Elec
tric lights in more textile mills than any of his rivals. Now he
devoted weeks to urging General Electric motors upon
Greene. The cost of an electrical installation seemed pro
hibitive, and Greene held out until the last shred of hope in
some form of mechanical drive had vanished. The three
electrical salesmen all submitted propositions, and Paine's
bid was the highest $75,800. Greene dismissed Paine's
proposal from the outset, for it covered alternating current,
THE FIRST TEXTILE JOB 211
while his competitors advocated direct current at a much
lower cost.
"But direct current is not suitable for driving your machin
ery," Paine told him. Then he compared the two types of
electric drive, explaining that machines and lights for the
mills would both be supplied from the same compound-
wound direct-current generators. When the lights were
turned on the voltage of the generators, and hence of the
feeders supplying the motors, would be raised automatically,
increasing the speed of the motors. Yet to run efficiently,
the textile machines required a constant, never-changing
speed.
While the issue hung fire, the World's Fair opened at
Chicago. One of Paine's competitors invited Greene to at
tend the exposition as his guest. Paine promptly said, "Very
good; now will you return as my guest?"
On the return trip Greene told Paine he had made up his
mind in favor of direct current. But somewhere between
Chicago and Columbia, Paine's arguments took effect.
Greene was completely won over.
Now came a struggle to fulfill the contract, which speci
fied fourteen alternating-current motors of sixty-five horse
power each. Thus far the largest alternating-current motors
built by General Electric were for slightly more than ten
horsepower. It was a tremendous jump.
The contract, following the new routine, went before the
sales committee and was approved. Then it went before the
executive committee and was there disapproved. It was too
radical too venturesome and hazardous. The committee,
however, went to the head technical official, E. W. Rice, Jr.,
for advice. Rice promptly told them that the thing was per
fectly feasible, and the day was saved.
The work of designing the units fell upon Parshall, Bell,
212 MEN AND VOLTS
Steinmetz, and the Calculating Department. Parshall was
willing to guarantee that the motors would work. The con
tract, however, required them to be installed on the ceiling
of the mill, to operate in an inverted position, and Bell de
murred at this. "This is the last application of an inverted
motor well ever make," he objected. To which Paine replied,
"Then it's the last motor well ever put into a cotton mill,
because there is no room on the floors of these mills for any
more machinery."
It was far from the last motor General Electric ever put
into a cotton mill. For it was destined to open the eyes of
mill owners all over the south and to precipitate an economic
step that brought industrial wealth to whole communities.
The generating station began to operate in April 1894,
with two 500-kilowatt three-phase generators, water-driven.
The transmission line was only 800 feet long. But in the size
of the alternating-current motors, their inverted position,
the use of both ends of the motor shafts for driving belting,
and above all the innovation of subdividing the mill into
sections each with its own driving motor, the installation
was destined to influence the future equipment of all textile
mills.
25
The World's Fair
SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS astound their predecessors. Sons
amaze fathers and are themselves dumbfounded by their
sons. It was a brief generation that elapsed between the
Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876 and the
World's Fair at Chicago in 1893. And the startling contrast
between the two was due largely to the magic of electricity.
Spectators at the Centennial marvelled at the interminable
lines of shafting which distributed power; at the World's
Fair they saw scarcely a single shaft instead, they heard
the purr of motors. At the Centennial they paid little atten
tion to the light of flaming gas burners; at the Fair, the
illumination was itself a dazzling spectacle.
General Electric, though only a year old, was able to
present at the Fair an almost perfect epitome of the elec
trical art as it then existed. The great Electrical Building was
entirely illuminated by the Edison lamp, and in its center
arose a "majestic luminous column," thickly studded with
thousands of incandescent lamps. Edison lights also illumi
nated the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, the
"largest room in the world," and General Electric search
lights played upon the illuminated fountains.
213
214 MEN AND VOLTS
Even more famous was the Intramural Railway, a complete
electric elevated railroad encircling the exposition grounds,
and installed by General Electric. Here was shown the new
series-parallel controller in operation; in the power plant
was an immense direct-current generator of 1500 kilowatts
capacity (2000 horsepower), gloriously hailed as "the largest
generator in operation in the world;" and in this same power
house were the beginnings of modern switchboard develop
ment. Parshall and the calculating department had designed
the big generator; Hewlett and Knight were prominent in
devising the switchboard.
A "colossus of industry," a "tamed Titan of traction," this
generator weighed ninety tons, while the flywheel of the
engine weighed eighty-five tons and was twenty-four feet
in diameter. The generator was of the multi-polar type with
twelve magnetic poles, and the field frame was sixteen feet
in diameter. It was a direct-connected unit, driven by a
cross-compound engine, and had a horsepower capacity
equal to 250 of the original Edison bi-polar machines or al
most 30 of the Edison jumbos.
Parshall said later, recalling the moments of anxiety while
the unit was under construction, "The machines were so
large and so important, I had the thought in my mind that
if I did not get the anticipated result, my job would not be
worth having." Many times he rose in the dead of night,
turned on the light and went over his notes to be sure he
had made no mistake in calculating the electrical constants.
These constants were so vividly fixed in his mind that thirty-
five years later he could enumerate them!
Another transportation thrill was provided by the motor-
driven sidewalk, 4300 feet in length, equipped by General
Electric. Its driving power comprised twenty-four railway
- "
:
rt/G-OF-WAR STEAM VERSUS ELECTRICITY
The electric locomotive demonstrates its power by outpulling two
steam locomotives.
FORERUNNER OF THE MODERN ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
A General Electric locomotive pulling a train through the Baltimore
tunnel in 1896.
EARLY SWITCHGEAR
Oil switches in the Fiske Street station of the Commonwealth Edison
Company.
THE WORLD'S FAIR 215
motors, each of fifteen horsepower, placed at intervals be
neath the platform trucks. The latter, 340 in number, were
coupled together into one long train, continuously moving in
one direction. The sidewalk carried 6000 seated passengers
at one time, at the rate of six miles an hour.
On the water, General Electric had its motors in the fleet
of fifty electric gondolas that plied the lakes and lagoons.
The motors were of two sizes, supplied from Brush storage
batteries. In Machinery Hall, General Electric exhibited its
electric locomotive, its illumination of the battleship 'Illinois,"
some of professor Thomson's early experimental apparatus,
and a pictorial story of Edison's evolution of the incandescent
lamp.
A service and repair shop were required to keep dynamos,
motors, and lights at top efficiency. Few saw this General
Electric shop hidden behind the scenes. Yet it harbored
during that summer a future leader of General Electric.
He was a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
just through his sophomore year. No place in the world
looked so alluring to him that summer as did Chicago. He
wanted to work there, and he had no fancy notions as to
what that work should be. And so a new name was added to
the payroll: "G. Swope, helper, per day, $1."
General Electric's principal competitors in that year were
the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company, the Siemens
and Halske Electric Company of America, the Brush Elec
tric Company, and the Fort Wayne Electric Company.
The latter two were under the control of General Electric
and classified as subsidiaries; the operation of their plants
was directed by Rice. Yet both companies were free to com
pete with General Electric in whatever line of products they
were particularly strong. Brush and Fort Wayne salesmen
216 MEN AND VOLTS
continually pitted themselves against those of General Elec
tric. Coffin and his associates saw an advantage in competi
tion between different General Electric plants, since it
disclosed the plant which had the lowest manufacturing
costs for a particular product. Manufacture could then be
concentrated at the low-cost plant and low costs meant
low prices, more customers, and ultimately greater prosperity
for the company as a whole.
There was still much activity by the Brush Company in its
own name. Arc lamps were gleaming by the hundred thou
sand in streets, in parks and outdoor areas, and in large halls.
Arc-light generators were brought out in increased capacities,
with four poles instead of two and running to a maximum of
7000 volts. To construct such a generator had been dismissed
as totally impossible in 1877.
There were still local Brush lighting companies, many of
which had added incandescent lighting to their lines. Even
in far-away Manila a Brush agent, W. S. Culver, was install
ing a station equipped to supply 10,000 incandescent lamps
and 300 arc lamps.
No less active was the Fort Wayne Company. McDonald
had remarked to James J. Wood that he considered the
Slattery alternating-current system out of date and proposed
that Wood design a new one. Wood immediately set to work.
He was able and unusually diligent as a mechanic and de
signer. His apparatus was noted for its simplicity of construc
tion, his models had the appearance of finished machines, and
he usually brought out a product not costly to manufacture,
yet possessing great efficiency.
Wood's alternator proved all that McDonald could wish
for. Its maximum internal temperature was considerably
lower than that of the Slattery machine. It rose to this
THE WORLD'S FAIR 217
temperature quickly, however, while the temperature of the
S lattery machine rose more slowly. The Wood machine
weighed about two-thirds less and ran at a slower speed,
although its output was the same.
The first central station engineer to encounter the Wood
alternator remarked, "These little machines will never do the
work the big ones did. And they get so hot you could fry eggs
on 'em!"
Wood hastened to the station and succeeded in convincing
the engineer that the heat losses in his machine were less
than in Slattery's. The egg-frying test was not resorted to.
The Stanley Company at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was
devoting itself exclusively to alternating-current problems.
They were first and foremost transmission engineers. Stanley
was the trail-breaker, never defeated, never down-hearted,
alive with ideas. Kelly, on the other hand, was phlegmatic,
contemplative. He had unquestioned inventive talent and a
prodigious memory, so that whenever Stanley or Chesney
thought of something new they laid the idea before Kelly,
who could usually tell if anything of the sort had ever been
done before. Chesney was the detail man of the group, who
kept the routine going the production engineer who got in
ventions through the drafting room and shop and out upon
the market.
When in 1892 a delegate to the National Electric Light
Association asserted that transformers of greater capacity
than five kilowatts would never be practicable, the "SKC"
men smiled, for at that moment they were building trans
formers of twenty and thirty kilowatts capacity for com
mercial use.
In constructing these units, they established an efficient
practice in the insulation of transformer coils, first by treated
218 MEN AND VOLTS
cotton cloth and later by an impregnating process, a com
pound being forced into the coils until wires and compound
together formed a solid mass.
Stanley was satisfied in 1892 that he had built a transformer
of high efficiency. His data were corroborated when the
department of electrical engineering at Cornell University
tested a Stanley transformer of seventeen kilowatts capacity
and found it to be 96.9 per cent efficient.
Transmission lines at that time usually used single-phase
current of 133 cycles. No satisfactory motor for such circuits
seemed to be forthcoming, and the Stanley company began
to agitate for polyphase circuits of lower frequencies. It
boldly designed a polyphase alternator having a stationary
armature and a revolving field, but for either 66 or 133 cycles,
and for any voltage up to and including 12,000. This was
first used for long-distance transmission in 1893 at Housa-
tonic, Massachusetts. Current was carried to Great Barring-
ton, seven miles away. The transmission line impressive in
length for those days was mounted on poles and insulated
with porcelain insulators and iron pins, both imported from
England. This was one of the first instances of polyphase
transmission, vying with those at Taftsville and Redlands.
Meanwhile the Siemens and Halske Company of America
had been developing business in the Middle West and creep
ing outward from Chicago over a constantly widening radius.
Much electrical apparatus had been imported from Germany
and placed on the American market. Early in 1893, however,
the company began manufacturing at Chicago its "inpole
dynamo," in which the field and field poles were inside the
armature. The capacities of these machines ranged from
about 50 to 1500 kilowatts; they were direct-connected to
the steam engines which drove them.
At first the personnel was almost entirely German. Later a
Charles G. Curtis
William Le Roy Emmet
THE MEN WHO MADE THE CURTIS STEAM TURBINE A REALITY
FORERUNNER OF THE GIANTS
The first Curtis steam turbine, built in 1901 for experimental purposes.
THE WORLD'S FAIR 219
few Americans were taken on, and effort made to introduce
American methods and policies.
These, with the Westinghouse Company, were General
Electric's competitors. All of them met on a competitive basis
at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893.
26
Coffin Faces the Panic
UNDER THE SOMBER CLOUD of the financial panic of 1893
General Electric's future suddenly darkened. Throughout
the greater part of the World's Fair, depression was deep
ening.
The actual money stringency lasted from early in April
until the middle of September, but it was the aftermath which
proved hardest to bear. It was then that the pinch of hard
times was felt by the majority of people.
Buffeted by this economic storm, General Electric needed
a stout heart and a steady hand at the wheel. It needed espe
cially a calm, intrepid mind to chart a course of safety, let
the winds howl as they might.
The corporation had had but a year in which to gather
strength to face the trial. Coffin, though still in the leader
ship, was no longer dominant as he had been in the Thomson-
Houston organization. There were new members on the
Board of Directors, critical New York financiers, who were
not always disposed to concede his soundness of judgment.
One of their first proposals was the setting up of an execu
tive committee to pass upon Coffin's plans and policies, and
220
COFFIN FACES THE PANIC 221
even to override him, should it seem desirable so to do.
Under this committee were departmental committees, which
supervised the conduct of affairs in their respective spheres
of activity the manufacturing committee, the sales com
mittee, the engineering committee.
Coffin was still adjusting himself to the unfamiliar curbs
upon his administrative powers when the panic came. Busi
ness fell off abruptly during May and June.
General Electric had to pay unheard-of rates of interest
for money with which to meet its pay roll week after week.
Few knew the burden with which Coffin struggled. Yet there
was a problem with a more menacing outlook for the Quaker
business man. Its roots went beyond the panic; but because
of the panic, the life of General Electric was threatened.
On July 31, 1893 the financial reports submitted to Coffin
showed that the total indebtedness of the company was
$10,028,000. This consisted of $4,446,000 in notes payable,
$1,579,000 in accounts payable, $609,000 in dividends, and
$3,394,000 in paper discounted under endorsement. Cash on
hand amounted to $1,294,000, making the net indebtedness
$8,734,000.
Direct indebtedness the company's own notes and ac
counts payable was troublesome enough at such a time.
But the situation was aggravated by indirect indebtedness,
the notes of other companies, chiefly customers, which bore
General Electric's endorsement and had been discounted
under that endorsement for ready cash.
These notes were eloquent of the way in which electricity
had taken hold. Enthusiasm in starting local light and power
companies had often outrun capacity to finance the enter
prise. Local companies required equipment and frequently
purchased from General Electric apparatus for which they
could not pay in cash. Such purchases they financed by
222 MEN AND VOLTS
obtaining bank loans, then offering these loans in part pay
ment.
General Electric, believing in the future of the electrical
business, required only that men of integrity and ability man
age the business, and on this condition accepted and endorsed
their notes. This was the Coffin policy. It was his way of
giving local companies their start and had advanced business
in rapid strides. Yet it became a boomerang when the panic
broke.
General Electric's endorsement made the corporation liable
for repayment of the loans should the original borrowers ( the
local companies) prove unable to pay them off at maturity.
Because of the panic, the local companies proved unable to
pay the notes, and banks began to clamor for repayment of
their loans.
That was the prospect General Electric faced as the sum
mer of 1893 wore on. Having encouraged a vast economic
movement during its incipient stages, the company found
itself travelling a thorny path. And the end of the path, unless
an immediate way out could be found, was bankruptcy.
Particularly critical were the New York bankers regarding
Coffin's policy which had been so vital in the development
of both Thomson-Houston and General Electric. It was no
secret that New York banking circles believed General Elec
tric could not survive. It is even said that Twombley, Chair
man of the Board, was openly twitted regarding his connec
tion with the "defunct General Electric," and that this had
something to do with his eventual resignation from the
board.
But Coffin did not falter when criticism of his methods
was outspoken and sharp. He did not for a moment repudiate
his actions or deny his responsibility for the existing situa
tion. He stood unflinchingly and faced the issue, even though
COFFIN FACES THE PANIC 223
he is reported to have said, years later, "There were months
that seemed like scalding centuries."
He had one carefully considered plan, one hope of averting
disaster. Without delay he laid it before his associates on the
board for their scrutiny.
The proposal was to liquidate, even at substantial loss, the
stocks and bonds of local companies which had accumulated
as an outcome of the same business policy and which repre
sented millions in ultimate market value. These securities
had come into Thomson-Houston hands in part payment for
the purchases made by customers, and Coffin had always suc
ceeded in converting them into ready funds through the
United Electric Securities Company. Some of them had
come from the old Edison company, which received them
from its customers in payment of license fees.
The total amount of securities was reported in the balance
sheet of January 31, 1893, at a book value of $9,173,251,
par value of $16,220,391. Some day these stocks and bonds
would be of immense value. But in the great panic they could
scarcely be sold in the open market. The most attractive of
them would hardly have brought twenty-five cents on the
dollar.
Coffin listed the best of these stocks and bonds, a list show
ing an approximate par value of $12,200,000, and proposed
to offer them to the stockholders of the company on the basis
of thirty-three and a third cents on the dollar. The stock
holders had the opportunity to purchase the securities as
soon as the panic passed; meanwhile they were to be de
posited with trustees. Bankers interested in the company were
to be asked to underwrite the eventual sale, which meant an
immediate advance by the bankers of about $4,000,000 in
cash.
It was a great sacrifice to make, but desperate times require
224 MEN AND VOLTS
desperate measures. Nor was the proposition coldly received.
Lee, Higginson and Company stood behind Coffin from the
outset and promptly agreed to the plan.
But what would the New York bankers say? Morgan, who
held the determining vote, was at his summer home in
Maine. The plan was forwarded to him for scrutiny. His
reply was anxiously awaited. For Coffin, it was one of those
months in his life that "seemed like scalding centuries."
Jesse R. Lovejoy, manager of the supply department, who
knew in a measure what Coffin was passing through and
what he hoped to accomplish, inquired one day, "Is every
thing going through all right, Mr. Coffin?" To which Coffin
replied, "Everything is either going through or falling
through by tomorrow morning."
The crisis was at hand. The silence from the Maine coast
had grown ominous. Coffin made plans to catch the next
train for New England to urge the plan in person. Action of
any sort was better than the tension of waiting.
Opening the door of his office, he nearly collided with a
telegraph messenger. Morgan had accepted the plan without
reservation, and another "scalding century" had come at last
to an end.
Thenceforth future endorsements of customers' notes were
based on a more conservative policy. "Today," says the
second annual report (with what a feeling of relief hidden
between the lines! ) "no paper is under discount except such
as it is believed will be paid by the makers; consequently the
indirect obligations of the company are nominal rather than
real."
Other evidences of caution are to be found in this report
of January 1894:
"While the liquidation of the debt has been going on, the
company has also readjusted its basis for sales, either to cash
COFFIN FACES THE PANIC 225
or to short credits to desirable customers. . . . It is believed
that your company has lost little legitimate business in
consequence of its curtailment of credit to customers. It
intends to confine its business to this basis."
The panic had burst upon General Electric before it be
came a smooth-running personnel operating at maximum
efficiency. A problem still unsettled in the spring of 1893 was
the status of the district offices, many of which were working
with such a degree of independence as to be almost separate
concerns. However, the necessary reorganization was, if any
thing, hastened by the severe lessons of the panic. It brought
to the district offices a realization of the value of centralized
control, of having back of them in times of stress the seasoned
board of General Electric.
It was only a matter of months before Coffin, with charac
teristic tact and firmness, transformed these independent
district offices into branches of the general office, cemented
into the general organization and responsible to central offi
cials. It was an arrangement that permitted efficiency and
economy and definitely contributed to the slowly returning
tide of prosperity.
Meanwhile, at Fort Wayne the panic had brought develop
ments which concerned General Electric. The Fort Wayne
company suffered severely, and at the beginning of 1894 had
financial obligations which it appeared unable to meet. Mc
Donald exerted every effort to obtain the required funds, but
with only partial success.
Of the capital stock of $4,000,000, General Electric, the
largest stockholder, held $1,137,000. Coffin and his associates
advised McDonald that they favored a reorganization which
would allow the plant to be operated on a sound basis.
McDonald hurried east for a conference with Coffin, and on
his return to Fort Wayne he petitioned the Superior Court
226 MEN AND VOLTS
for the appointment of receivers and the liquidation of the
company's affairs. This petition was granted. Almost simul
taneously, McDonald organized the Fort Wayne Electric
Corporation, with capital stock of $1,500,000, which forth
with contracted with the receivers to continue the business
of the company.
By this time the middle of 1894 business was slowly
improving. In General Electric shops the six-day week had
returned. The home office was transferred upstate from New
York.
Orders from every part of the country began to come in.
Much of the increased business originated with the local
companies, which were thus building up a strong and durable
new prosperity for General Electric. To them the Coffin
helping-hand policy, despite criticism and misgiving, had
imparted a renewed vitality. And that policy, once the great
panic passed into history, began to pay dividends.
THE FIRST OF THE GIANTS TAKES FORM
The first large Curtis steam-turbine generator being installed in the
Fiske Street station in Chicago.
THE "MONUMENT TO COURAGE"
The Fiske Street turbine soon after it had been brought back to Sche-
nectady and mounted in Works Avenue. Left to right: E. W. Rice, Jr.,
W. L. R. Emmet, Thomas A. Edison, George F. Morrison, Charles P.
Steinmetz, and H. F. T, Erben.
[ PART SIX ]
The Development
of Big Generating Units,
Beginning of Hydroelectric Projects,
Expansion of Systems
through Transmission
27
White Coal
THE TALK AMONG ENGINEERS in 1893 and 1894 was all of
alternating current and transmission the two developments
that represented a new technical era. The foundations of
General Electric's work were laid in the early experiments of
Professor Thomson, but the influence that was to bring Gen
eral Electric into leadership in the field was the brilliant mind
of Steinmetz. The moment he joined the staff the mathematics
of the law of hysteresis and of the alternating current became
available at first hand to General Electric engineers. Into their
midst came the master of these intricate methods to explain
his equations in person.
One of the trials of electrical engineering was the task of
applying mathematics to the phenomenon of alternations,
cycles, and phases. It was being done by slow, complicated
methods. But the young mathematical genius had discovered
a method so simple that the formidable difficulties of the
alternating current were forever eliminated. It meant a sav
ing of years, perhaps of generations, in the electrification of
American life.
But the Steinmetz formula was not easy to comprehend.
229
230 MEN AND VOLTS
Even experienced engineers had to be instructed, and they
became students of this odd young fellow with the hunched
shoulders, the jet-black hair, the keen eyes.
This period of classroom engineering, begun in the old
Calculating Department at Lynn, continued and expanded
when the department moved to Schenectady in 1894. At the
time of that transfer Parshall went abroad, and into his shoes
as Head Engineer stepped Steinmetz.
This happened at the very time when the period of power
and light together was beginning to succeed the period of
light. Lines already established to furnish light by night
offered a new source of revenue if they could also furnish
power by day. The growth of the systems was inevitable.
But if they used direct current, the only way they could
expand without an exorbitant investment in copper wire
augmented by losses in the conductors was to establish a
great number of generating stations.
Alternating current solved the perplexity. With the in
valuable transformer the current could be sent economically
for long distances; lights and motors could be operated from
the same circuit; and economical transmission meant flexible
systems, capable of immense expansion.
In Yonkers, a stone's throw from the Eickemeyer and
Osterheld factory, where Steinmetz began his career, the
Bradley Electric Power Company in 1893 was built around
an invention which meant almost as much in the develop
ment of the alternating current as did the transformer.
Charles S. Bradley was one of Edison's pioneers. He had
later developed a mechanism which permitted electrical
energy, transmitted as alternating current, to be converted
into direct current. Trolley lines, which invariably employed
direct current, and the direct-current lighting lines already
in existence, could thus become part of the unified system.
THE BIRTH OF ELECTRIC RAPID TRANSIT
Sprague (in white suit) demonstrates his multiple-unit control on the
test track in Schenectady.
or tt its
M it IS. U u ..
M H II SS t; .i,
l ti tl II I J .
Si H U n u
> U t$ Irt ii U
t
A BOOM IN REAL ESTATE
The transformation in Manhattan brought about by the electrification
of the Grand Central Terminal. These two pictures were taken from
almost the same spot, the upper one in 1906, the lower, down modern
Park Avenue, in 1929.
WHITE COAL 231
In his laboratory at Yonkers Bradley worked out a rotary
converter, or synchronous converter, having a revolving field
and a stationary armature. It was so designed that it would
receive alternating current at one end and change it by a
commutator into direct current, to be drawn off on a working
circuit at the opposite end.
After the converter, the next step was the substituting
of polyphase for single-phase systems. Polyphase systems
proved far better adapted to light-and-power work. General
Electric in its polyphase service preferred the three-phase, as
used in the first induction motors at Concord, Taftsville, and
Columbia. But the first commercial polyphase system built
by General Electric was at Redlands, California, and it was
the first such system in the world.
The problems presented at Redlands would seem amusing
today but at that time they were gigantic. Redlands was the
nucleus of what finally became one of the largest central-
station service systems in the west that of the Southern
California Edison Company.
The town in 1895, a community of 4500 inhabitants whose
chief occupation was growing oranges, was lighted by oil,
except for a few private plants. Manufacturing of any sort
was at a premium, for coal cost eleven dollars a ton. Alert
citizens felt that electric power would insure for their town a
bright future. In 1892 they engaged as consulting expert an
electrical engineer, Almarian W. Decker. Decker investigated
the field and reported favorably on a plan to locate a hydro
electric generating station on Mill Creek, a branch of the
Santa Ana River. He prepared specifications and corre
sponded with four electrical manufacturing companies, in
cluding General Electric, to secure bids for the equipment.
Then the hesitancy and caution that were characteristic of
the period came to the surface. It was essentially a trans-
232 MEN AND VOLTS
mission installation, and transmission was a new departure.
The manufacturers expressed doubts. One was unwilling to
try three-phase machines, which Decker had specified. An
other insisted upon direct current.
Even General Electric did not bid on generators to operate
at 5000 volts, as Decker originally demanded. It offered to
install two three-phase generators rated at 250 kilowatts and
2400 volts. But it won the contract on the basis of its three-
phase plan.
So to that picturesque region under the snow-crowned
Sierras went two of the first polyphase generators that Gen
eral Electric built.
They were trucked up the creek from Redlands by teams
of horses and installed under the supervision of Fred Barber,
General Electric's versatile sales agent and field engineer in
that section. The construction work was in charge of young
Albert C. Jewett, later to make a reputation for getting things
done against staggering odds. The generators were driven by
one of the first of Lester A. Pelton's impulse waterwheels.
While the station was building, the Redlands Electric
Light and Power Company was hustling for business. The
Union Ice Company became its first large customer, buying
electric power for its plant at Mentone, not far distant. So
cheap was the cost of power that the ice company could ship
7000 tons of ice per year to Los Angeles, at two dollars a
ton railroad freight, and still sell ice in Los Angeles fifty cents
a ton cheaper than anyone there could manufacture it.
Electricity was becoming an economic revolutionist!
On November 7, 1893 the Mill Creek Power House No. 1
began to operate. Dr. Louis Bell undertook to synchronize the
two motors, as specified in Decker's contract, with an acoustic
synchronizer. Two diaphragms of sheet iron, each connected
to a phase of the two generators, were encased in a brass
NIAGARA'S FIRST HARNESS 233
cylinder with an opening in its center. Bell expected the
diaphragms to vibrate in harmony when the generators were
in unison. The men at the power house dubbed the contriv
ance the "growler," a term which proved to be far too mild.
As the generators hummed, the vibrating diaphragms set
up a din. A scrambled medley of sound issued. Bell with
tingling ears backed rapidly away from the listening hole in
the cylinder. Neither he nor anyone else could learn by
acoustics when the generators were in unison. Eventually
the problem of synchronization was adjusted by other means.
Thus the birth of transmission work for General Electric
occurred more than three thousand miles away from Sche-
nectady. But it did not outgrow infancy for some years, even
in California, for three limiting factors delayed progress: the
size and insulation of transmission cables and their protection
from lightning.
MEANWHILE, OBSERVE NIAGARA! Majestic, sublime and use
ful.
For generations Niagara appealed only to esthetic instincts;
then in almost an instant its practical aspects were realized.
Poets, won by the beauty of the spectacle, were replaced by
economists and engineers who saw it as a potential empire
builder. 'Their aspirations to harness its energies formed a
strange contrast to the early superstitions that haunted the
cataract.
Indians worshipped Niagara as an embodiment of the
Great Spirit, offering human sacrifices to the thundering,
mist-veiled cataract. Every year the tribe which dwelt beside
the Onigara (Niagara) placed its fairest maiden in a birch
canoe loaded with flowers and fruit, and pushed the little
craft into the boiling current.
From the riverbank the redskins watched unmoved as the
234 MEN AND VOLTS
maiden swept through the upper rapids and shot over the
curving crest of the falls. She was a sacrifice to Onigara, a
hostage to security and prosperity.
Of a different breed was the white man of modern times,
whose thought lay along another pathway. His ambitions
were not to make war across Niagara's rushing flood, nor to
walk tightropes, as did some of his ancestors, above its thun
dering sweep, but to apply its giant strength to machines that
would increase mankind's material prosperity a far differ
ent sacrifice.
He came not to worship Niagara, but to tame it. Niagara
inspired him to exploits as thrilling as those of the adventurers
of early days and awakened in him as much imagination as
it did in the poet.
In 1845 canals and mechanical waterwheels were first pro
posed for utilizing this concentration of natural force. Not
until the early 'eighties was an installation of any size made.
By that time from 5000 to 10,000 horsepower was harnessed
through canals and waterwheels to the machinery of a group
of mills.
At that time electrical men were awakening to the possibili
ties of the giant working in their whirring dynamos. They
were fascinated by the scheme of making Niagara turn dy
namos, of causing Nature to pay the power bills, of capturing
some of the "white coal" that wastefully plunged itself "from
a rock taller than the tallest pines."
Although they knew there was no prospect of utilizing all
the power of Niagara, they calculated what the aggregate
might be. Estimates ranged from four to seven million horse
power, though Steinmetz, years later, placed it nearer nine
million.
Many ways for harnessing this power were studied; thou
sands of dollars were spent. Compressed air had its propo-
NIAGARA'S FIRST HARNESS 235
nents, as had hydraulic pipes, and a system of manila or wire
ropes. It was even proposed to stretch a steel shaft the length
of New York State to enable factories within reach to attach
belts and gear wheels and secure as much power as they
neededl
Not until 1892 were bids asked from electrical concerns.
A power-house of three generators was specified, each of
5,000 horsepower. It was the first large waterpower installa
tion to be proposed and promised to add a new chapter to
the glamor that was Niagara's. The best brains of General
Electric went to work on the problem. S. Dana Greene han
dled the commercial aspects. Rice, Parshall, and Steinmetz
addressed themselves to the engineering problems. In De
cember 1892 General Electric sent in its preliminary proposi
tion, and submitted a final bid early in 1893. It was an
exhaustive array of data, contained in sixty typewritten sheets
accompanied by twelve exhibits, blueprints, study sketches,
and photographs. It was said that of the five bids none was
more thorough than General Electric's.
On May 12 the Cataract Company notified the bidders
that it had rejected the three-phase idea in favor of two-
phase, and had decided to have its own engineers prepare
plans and specifications for the generators. Rice, Parshall,
and Steinmetz inspected these plans, and then prepared a
new proposition based thereon. But they found it necessary
from professional conviction to depart from certain tech
nical features laid down by the Cataract technicians.
All bids were now in, and the days of waiting began. On
October 27, 1893, President Edward D. Adams of the Cata
ract Company notified General Electric that the contract
had been awarded to a competitor.
It was one of the fortunes of war, but for General Electric
it proved a spur to keener endeavor. Such stamina as this
236 MEN AND VOLTS
was no mean asset. For there were other laurels to be won at
Niagara. Again General Electric leaders went to work. And
this time they were successful.
The proposition submitted on July 23, 1894, was accepted.
It was a transmission job, to send power from Niagara to
Buffalo over a line twenty-six miles long, at a potential or
pressure of 10,000 volts. In the Niagara Falls power station
electricity was generated at 2000 volts. This current was to
be passed into General Electric transformers which were to
subject it to a double process. They would raise the voltage
from 2000 to 10,000, and at the same time change it from
two- to three-phase.
Into a substation at Buffalo current at 10,000 volts passed,
after its transmission over a bare copper cable supported on
several thousand wooden poles with porcelain insulators of
a special type. In the substation it was stepped down by
companion transformers to the original voltage of 2000.
Some of the current at that voltage went direct to syn
chronous motors, driving dynamos in an electric-light station;
some of it supplied motors in a city pumping station at 110
volts; some went to a general lighting system at 110 volts;
and some to a set of rotary converters into which it entered
as alternating current at 370 volts, emerging as direct cur
rent at 500 volts to operate the Buffalo street-railway system.
Here was an example of the flexibility, versatility, and
practical usefulness of an electric service system. It was
Niagara at work a score of miles distant from the thunder of
the great falls. It meant a total of 30,000 horsepower in trans
former capacity.
Around the new powerhouse of the Cataract Construction
Company began to rise factories on land leased to them by
the power company to use the power it sold. The first two
were the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, manufacturers of
ALTERNATING CURRENT FORGES AHEAD 237
aluminum, and the Carborundum Company, manufacturers
of carborundum. Both ordered transformers, rotary con
verters, and special voltage regulators from General Electric.
From 1894 on, the field work of General Electric at Niagara
was in charge of W. L. R. Emmet, the former field engineer
of the old Sprague Company, now engineer of General Elec-
tric's Lighting Department, and a student of the alternating
current.
Nor was this the end of General Electric's work at Niagara.
Shops at Schenectady were to contribute other and larger
halters for the taming of the cataract, the harnessing of this
greatest source of "white coal" in America.
So THEY'VE GOT Mr. Edison's electric lights in the city now?
Got 'em in all the big places, have they? New York, Boston,
Chicago? Well, that's fine, but guess well keep on with gas
light for a while."
So spoke many a sturdy citizen to the wife of his bosom
during the hard times that reigned after the panic. Electric
lights were too expensive, thought the average man, for
those who had to figure carefully over ways and means. A
pretty penny to put into wires, not to mention the little bulbs
with the red-hot hairpins!
It was the alternating current that was soon to send the
little hairpin-container into just such modest homes to replace
the open gas burner that had already been replaced in the
big houses. Hand in hand with the return to more prosperous
days went the transition from direct to alternating current,
reaching further and further into the homes of the common
people.
This was in 1894-95. The Pearl Street Station now served
5000 customers. Electrical lines were crawling northward
toward the Harlem River and into the Bronx. Service circuits,
238 MEN AND VOLTS
however, did not extend beyond Sixty-third Street. People
living farther north began to agitate for light and power, so
the New York Edison Company leased property at Fifth
Avenue and Seventy-second Street for a substation. It was
the task of the Stanley Company, contractors, to lay out an
alternating-current underground transmission line at 2400
volts between these two stations. The current at this sub
station went into a motor-generator set, the alternating-
current motor operating a direct-current generator. The di
rect current was distributed upon the customers' service
circuits.
This method was later superseded, almost everywhere, by
substituting a Bradley rotary converter for the motor-
generator equipment, thus realizing Bradley 's prediction that
the converter could be made the "heart of a system." The first
use of this converter was made by General Electric in Chi
cago in 1897.
In nearly all its installations for central station companies
General Electric now put in alternating current. Motors and
lights came into use upon the same circuit and expansion to
the lively growth of demand was made possible. Communi
ties could be served by distant waterfalls or from generating
stations in other towns. And all because men like Elihu
Thomson and William Stanley had developed an ingenious
agent called the transformer.
Professor Thomson obtained a patent in 1887 on his dis
covery that a pure mineral oil not only insulated, or confined,
the voltage but also carried off the internal heat of the ma
chine. It was not easy, however, to induce customers to em
ploy oil-immersed transformers. They objected that the oil
added to the cost, and constituted a fire risk should it leak
through the case. General Electric engineers sometime in
1893 discovered through a series of tests that the oil-
ALTERNATING CURRENT FORGES AHEAD 239
immersed transformer could work at much greater capacities
than transformers insulated otherwise. Thus the oil, in ad
dition to insulating and cooling, was proved to permit
greater operating loads; and since transformers have no
moving parts, they lend themselves perfectly to oil insulation.
This made possible the eventual discontinuance of air-blast
transformers, and constituted a significant step in trans
former development.
28
The Skilled Workman Appears
BACK IN THE SPRING of 1891, "Pop" Turner, the horny-
handed superintendent of the old Edison Machine Works,
saw a young chap coming between the shops with a handful
of tools and called him into his office.
"Lad," he said, "I want you to take charge of 10 tomorrow.
Take off your overalls."
The mechanic was a foreman in charge of experimental
work in Building 10. Sometimes he knocked elbows with
Edison when work brought the great man to the Schenectady
shops. He could keep up with the "wizard" when it came to
long hours and little sleep, but he was nonetheless astounded
at Turner's words. To "take charge of 10" was a supervisory
position of a high order, such as only master mechanics
could aspire to hold. General foremen, then as now, did not
wear overalls nor handle tools with their men. They were
shop executives of intelligence and pronounced mechanical
and technical skill.
William Madigan obediently doffed his overalls and set
to work. One could see that the smell of the shop, the scent
of lubricated metal, and acrid machine grease carried a
240
THE SKILLED WORKMAN APPEARS 241
tang to his nostrils. "Pop" Turner knew, if "Bill" didn't, that
he was ripe for running the principal shop of the plant.
It was imposing to the dynamo builders of that day, Build
ing 10. It purred and hummed from morning to night and
was cluttered with electrical machines in all stages of manu
facture. Madigan, who loved to see a piece of metal ma
chined true to a hair, delved into the task of turning out fine
work and turning it out on time. He watched fondly over the
old Edison bi-polars and the stolid Sprague motors, and no
less fondly over the later Titans.
The shop had only one crane, a small affair, but a wonder
to those who compared it with the ungainly yard derricks.
There was a planing machine which would take a piece of
work twenty feet long, and a ten-foot boring mill. Both were
considered monsters of their kind.
Bill McCool, one of the millwrights under Turner's direc
tion, handled the placing of all machinery which went into
the plant. McCool once needed an extra man for a few days,
and John Miller of the carpenter's gang was detailed to lend
a hand. Miller never again wore a carpenter's apron. He
stepped into McCool's place when McCool went elsewhere,
and was to move forward, little by little, into the post of
Chief Millwright of the works.
Miller petted every new machine that came in; he and his
men eased them off the freight cars, coaxed them through
doors, and swung them by derrick and crane into place.
Sometimes they took them in piecemeal, put the intricate
parts together, and set them running, with never a hitch or a
miss. As much as Madigan loved to make them do good work,
so Miller loved the machines for themselves. Soon he was
speaking of them with a touch of pride as "my machines."
He had been through some experiences with them, he
and McCool. Once the Mohawk River, transformed into a
242 MEN AND VOLTS
flood by melted ice and spring rains, poured over its low
banks and spread across the "big flat." The Edison works
was soon under water three feet deep, which rose to the
level of shop benches and office desks.
Everybody went to work mopping up. Miller put in 120
hours in one week. He and some of McCool's gang made a
raft at the gate of the plant and poled their way among the
shops, rigging tackle with which to lift machinery out of the
water, to dry it and clean off the mud. Kruesi, the Works
Manager, waded about in hip boots, his coattails dragging
on the surface of the flood.
Some of the office force rowed in a boat to what is now
Building 6. H. L. Baltozer went in through a window, made
steppingstones of bookkeepers' stools, and climbed over
them to the safe to get out the books.
A year later a fire broke out in Building 11, where under
ground tubing was produced. Six hours later Rach, the Gen
eral Foreman, Kruesi and Turner stood surveying the hot
ruins while a crowd of smoke-grimed workmen went on
playing streams of water into the shell that remained.
It was at the height of a busy season for underground tub
ing. Said Rach to the two bosses, "If you'll give me all the
men I need, I'll be running again within a week."
"A week!" cried Turner, "Chris, you're crazy."
But Kruesi gave him the men and Rach went to work while
the ruins were still ablaze. He laid out the work without a
moment's hesitation, giving each man a particular job and
making sure he understood it. Then they started to clear out
the debris.
Men went into the ruins with ropes which they attached
to the ends of smoking beams and ragged corners of hot
metal. Hoses were played on the beams as they were jerked
free.
THE SKILLED WORKMAN APPEARS 243
The men worked in shifts with no cessation, day or night.
As soon as the charred shell was cleared out, rebuilding
began. The works lumber mill, in Building 4, hummed
twenty-four hours a day to keep pace with construction.
Masons, working under canvas covering because of a siege
of rain, rebuilt the brick walls and the ovens used for baking
insulation. Rach slept in snatches until Thursday night, when
he collapsed. But the following Monday morning, almost a
week to the hour, he closed a switch that gave the new shop
its working power and production at full tide went on.
There were orders to fill and promises to keep, new designs
to be placed in production.
A few months later the pall of the panic set in. But the
skeleton organization of foremen the Madigans, the Millers,
and the Rachs carried on. With fresh zest they entered the
new burst of activity that began with the closing years of
the nineteenth century.
In the "New York Shops" other developments were com
ing to a boil. Equipment for Niagara and Buffalo, and shortly
after railway apparatus for New York, raised the inevitable
problem of insulation. Not a mile of line, not a switch could
work at high voltages without proper insulation. How Wil
liam Cermak, the veteran porcelain maker of the old days of
Bergmann and Company, wrestled with the problem. He
had made good electrical porcelain in small pieces, for sock
ets and small switches, employing what was known as the
dry process. But insulators that would withstand 10,000 volts
were another matter.
Experiment after experiment was made. Scores of insula
tors were designed and tested, only to go to pieces under less
than 10,000 volts. Loads of broken porcelain were hauled
from the scene of the struggle. It was a nerve-racking period.
At length Cermak and the transmission engineers produced
244 MEN AND VOLTS
the well-known "petticoated" insulator, a succession of out
spreading ridges, like the old-fashioned hoop skirt done in
flounces which stood every test up to and beyond 10,000
volts.
These insulators for the moment kept the spectre at bay.
But it was yet to be completely vanquished. Cermak and the
factory heads moved heaven and earth to do it. Cermak well
understood that it was his task, that if he could not measure
up to it the works would get someone who could. But the fac
tory heads had not the slightest idea where such a man was to
be found. Yet, unknown to all of them, he was in the Schenec-
tady works at that time in the person of Edward M. Hewlett,
whose great contribution will be discussed in later pages.
Many a service record of which the possessor is proud was
begun by young mechanics shaping themselves into artisans
in those transition days. It was monotonous, winding arma
tures and field magnets, yet it was work for skilled hands to
do. If the winding was done carelessly, there would not be
room on the shaft for the bearings and the commutator.
There were nice calculations to be made to insure proper
clearance between the fields, maintaining the air-gap, and
to insure proper connections and the adequate number of
turns for the machine's capacity. An Edison motor of ten
kilowatts required over sixty pounds of wire for the windings,
and took three men twelve hours to wind.
About this time there appeared at the Schenectady works
a man short in stature with black, well-trimmed beard and
keen, pleasant eyes. He was seen going and coming in the
office of John Kruesi, whose assistant he had been made. This
was the same George Emmons who, in the days of the Ameri
can Electric Company, had astonished his roommate, E. W.
Rice, Jr., by sitting up half the night to locate an error of
three cents in his trial balance. Rice had sent for him a few
THE SKILLED WORKMAN APPEARS 245
years later when the Thomson-Houston Company wanted a
man to keep track of its costs. He was then appointed Factory
Auditor, and, under General Electric, Plant Manager at
Lynn.
Kruesi had laid a solid foundation for the growth of the
plant at Schenectady. Emmons was made his assistant, and
through the following year they gauged together the needs
of the thriving factory and planned its future. Then Kruesi
was appointed consulting engineer, and Emmons succeeded
him as Works Manager.
To every man his profession. That of George E. Emmons
was originally the study of costs. But from this scrutiny in
business, and especially in industrial business, Emmons
worked out policies directed toward developing economy.
This took him into the domain of management, where his
executive qualities came to the fore.
When he came to Schenectady, Emmons applied the
Thomson-Houston cost system and functional plan of factory
organization to their utmost. As Works Manager, he had un
restricted authority to build slowly, soundly toward his ob
jective an efficient factory, conducted on scientific princi
ples of management and cost.
Before long it was apparent among the shop force how
well Emmons understood men, and how completely he
represented the cooperative conception of industry. All,
himself included, were working together for industrial
achievement.
Before long he had an extensive acquaintance among the
men. He had a habit of greeting everyone he passed, whether
he knew their names or not. He had a way of swiftly looking
a man over as if to place that man in his mind; yet his glance
seemed to carry the assurance that they were brothers in a
common task. After awhile a quaint phrase grew up among
246 MEN AND VOLTS
the men of the plant. They alluded to Emmons as the "little
man." It was a token of respect. Sometimes there were differ
ences of opinion or definite disagreements between Emmons
and the workers; but that sense of personal relationship
between them was never lost. They called him the "little
man" even when problems were knottiest and opinions most
divergent. They still felt confident of fair treatment at his
hands, and they knew that his first concern was the efficiency
of the plant.
That efficiency did not come easily. It meant the sub
stitution of new methods. It meant putting factory work on a
planned schedule, and creating a system of reports by means
of which the factory heads could tell the daily status of a
specific piece of work; such innovations as assigning each
man a permanent place in the shop a practice which saved
much confusion and valuable time.
Good business came back to General Electric. New shops
sprang up. Machines grew to giants, and with them grew the
problems to be faced. Emmons and his men became the
veritable giant killers of their time, for every problem had
its gigantic aspect.
But the problem that never stayed killed was that of keep
ing manufacturing facilities abreast of commercial demands.
The rush of orders was ceaseless. For a while neither the
Schenectady nor the Lynn plant could handle them.
So it happened that despite Emmons' efficiency, the Sche
nectady works toward the middle of 1895 found itself ten
weeks behind in deliveries, and customers became querulous.
Every effort was made to relieve the congestion. Several lines
of products were transferred bodily to Lynn. Langdon Gib
son, taking up the task of Production Manager, worked out
improvements in the shipping routine which permitted faster
it-
THE CRADLE OF G-E RESEARCH
The barn on Liberty Street, Schenectady, where General Electrics Re
search Laboratory was founded.
DR. WILLIS R. WHITNEY
The founder of the General Electric Research Laboratory.
THE SKILLED WORKMAN APPEARS 247
shipments to be made. And Emmons was on the firing line
from early morning until after dark.
The situation was closely watched, too, by the indefati
gable Coffin, by Rice, now Vice President in charge of En
gineering and Manufacturing, and by Eugene Griffin, Vice
President in charge of Commercial Operations. Griffin's de
partment was directly responsible for the inrush of new busi
ness. Of the salesmen at work under him, there was none
more zealous than the department chief. Griffin believed in
the electrical revolution, heart and soul. He was so full of his
subject that to meet him was to become immersed in an
atmosphere of confidence. Few prospective customers could
resist the contagion. Local leaders considering the organi
zation of an electric light and power company could enter
tain few doubts of the future after Griffin had enveloped
them with his enthusiasm. The result was more orders, busier
shops, a swifter pace.
Griffin went to Coffin one day, considerably perturbed.
"We're in a pretty fix!" he said. "The Lynn factory cannot
turn out more than forty motors a week and I have orders
for a hundred."
Coffin chuckled. "I wouldn't mourn over that, although
I appreciate your predicament and 111 see what we can do.
I'd feel a lot more distressed if the factory were able to turn
out a hundred motors and you had orders for only forty."
J. R. McKee, Manager of the Power and Mining Depart
ment, had told the sales committee recently that the possi
bility of electric motors for operating large mills was at
tracting more attention every day. Frequently he had im
pressive summaries to present of industries which had turned
to electric power, and he issued a weekly bulletin describing
the installations.
248 MEN AND VOLTS
A second textile mill in the South, at Pelzer, South Caro
lina, was about to undergo electrification. Even yet, the own
ers required courage to sign a contract for electric motors
rather than for a form of mechanical rope drive. In Charles
ton, where most of the capital stock for the Pelzer Mills was
subscribed, the news that the electric drive was going in
caused the stock to drop $25 a share. The mill hands pro
tested flatly, "The mill never will run with those little wires
to pull it." On the day the mill started operation, a kind
friend approached Captain Smythe, who was responsible for
the contract, and offered his condolences on the failure of
the electrical transmission system. "I've watched those wires
all day," he said, "and they haven't moved yet."
Twenty-five General Electric motors drove the spindles
in that mill in 1895, and now one textile mill after another
sent in orders. In one week of that year, McKee's bulletin
reports that motors were sold for use in mines, shoe factories,
yarn mills, tanneries, powder mills, watch factories, and even
for blowing church organs.
Meanwhile, the annual sales of the incandescent lamp had
reached the six million mark, despite the fact that the Edison
patent expired in the previous November. The directors, in
their annual report for that year, outlined their policy as
follows:
"Your company will chiefly rely upon the high quality of
the lamp manufactured by it and its facilities for manu
facturing at a low cost to maintain its commanding position
in the lamp business, irrespective of patent control. Lamp
prices have been greatly reduced. While the volume of this
important part of your business will without doubt be largely
increased in the future, the profit thereon will be less."
This amounted to an announcement that General Electric
intended to hold its own in competition for business by sheer
THE SKILLED WORKMAN APPEARS 249
efficiency of methods. Competition was quick to show itself.
The independent lamp manufacturers who had been forced
to discontinue their infringing lamps now swarmed into the
field.
Local light and power companies equipped by General
Electric in 1894 aggregated nearly 1,500. They still had finan
cial problems, and the parent company still accepted, to
some extent, negotiable paper in lieu of full cash payments,
especially in the form of bonds of the local companies. This
revived the need of an agency for handling the bonds as
they accumulated, and so there was organized in 1894 the
Electrical Securities Corporation. It bought from General
Electric the bonds of local companies which were not
readily marketable and issued against them its own col
lateral trust bonds.
Almost completely had the memory of the fearsome days
of 'ninety-three faded from the minds of men. The manager
of the Metropolitan Telephone Company in New York re
ported that more telephone messages were handled daily for
General Electric than for any two other concerns in the city.
About this time Coffin proposed to Griffin a trip to the
Pacific Coast. "But think of the expense," protested Griffin.
"I think it would be worth while," said Coffin, thought
fully. "I should like to show you what we are doing on the
coast, these transmission enterprises, the outlook in that
region."
And so a cross-continent trip, which causes so little con
cern to business today, was carefully weighed and pondered
by the leaders of a young industrial concern. Indeed, there
were events of vast significance taking place on the coast,
among the foothills of the lofty ranges where a giant's energy
awaited the harness of the pioneer.
Into the mountain hinterland of California went this new
250 MEN AND VOLTS
explorer, the electrical engineer, making his way into regions
where human habitation was scant or nonexistent. Miners
had already discovered gold in those heaved-up mountains.
But the new explorer sought treasure of a different sort,
though scarcely less valuable than the metal for which the
forty-niners struggled. It was treasure as old in the ranges
as gold, yet more difficult to extract white coal.
This treasure, too, had its boom, when the mining camp of
other days gave place to the bustling construction camp of
hydraulic engineers. Invasion of the mountain solitudes
went on without cessation. The initial project at Redlands
was scarcely in operation when the city of Sacramento sent
engineers to the falls of the American River, twenty-five
miles distant, to prospect for a waterpower site. In the power
house erected by the Folsom Falls, General Electric installed
four generators, each of 750 kilowatts capacity, producing
three-phase alternating current, to which the company had
now committed itself. Over the intervening miles a trans
mission line was built to Sacramento and energy was first
delivered in that city on July 14, 1895, at 11,000 volts. Elec
tric streetcars, a city-wide system of arc lights and incan
descent lights, and a variety of motors for stationary power
drew energy from the falls at Folsom.
The Sacramento News proclaimed jubilantly: "The Folsom
power is here! It came early yesterday morning, and a hun
dred guns awakened the town, proclaiming the glad news.
. . . The Sacramento plant is the most extensive yet put in
place anywhere. . . . No event ever occurred in Sacramento
that has been heralded to her greater advantage than the
splendid industrial feat of yesterday."
Thereupon one after another of those western white coal
centers yielded up its energy. Competition among the elec
trical companies was keen. General Electric, in the following
THE SKILLED WORKMAN APPEARS 251
year, built an 11,000-volt line from the Kern River fourteen
miles to Bakersfield; another extending fourteen miles from
the Big Cottonwood River to Salt Lake City to work at 10,-
000 volts; and a third from the Ogden River thirty-six miles
to Salt Lake City, at 15,000 volts. In 1897 a transmission
project of eighty-one miles and 33,000 volts was undertaken,
the longest commercial electric power transmission system
and the highest voltage yet attempted. It stretched from the
Santa Ana Canyon to Los Angeles and Pasadena.
Triumph indeed. Yet in the midst of it the Journal of
Electricity, under date of May 1897, noted that all was not
yet under full control. "Not to that trustworthy servant, the
transformer, may the present limitations of electric trans
mission be ascribed,'' it said, "the barrier is embodied in
the insulator alone. In addition to being a practically perfect
nonconductor, the insulator should be wind, rain, snow, sleet,
dust, and insect-proof. . . . Truly may it be said that un
limited reward awaits the inventor of a perfect high-tension
insulator."
Nevertheless, General Electric struggled along with the
insulators that were at hand and transmission and voltages
in California crept slowly upward. The fight for the business
grew intense. And those bold specialists, the SKC trio, shone
in one of the daring projects of the white coal region.
DEVELOPMENTS AT SCHENECTADY now shift our scene from
the far west to the city of Washington, where smart naval
uniforms color the streets and the corridors of the federal
buildings. In the office of the Bureau of Ordnance, United
States Navy, early in 1894, Captain W. T. Sampson, head of
the bureau was talking to Lieutenant Bradley A. Fiske and
an associate. Sampson suddenly inquired, "Do you think you
could turn gun turrets by electricity?"
252 MEN AND VOLTS
Lieutenant Fiske, already a successful inventor, had his
doubts. But the problem interested him so much that he
accepted the assignment, established headquarters in New
York, and began to consult with various electrical manufac
turers. He spent some time with J. W. Kellogg, Commercial
Manager of Marine Work for General Electric, and other
members of the staff. These men showed him a scheme of
motor application and control known as the Ward Leonard
system and built by General Electric under license from its
originator, E. Ward Leonard. Fiske decided to try the system
and experiments were begun in adapting it to gun turrets
on the cruiser Brooklyn, then under construction.
After two years Lieutenant Fiske finally worked out a plan
that made the whole scheme practical. He took out a cover
ing patent and sold it to General Electric.
Then came the task of convincing the ultra-conservatives
that electricity for turning turrets was superior to steam.
The naval constructors who were officially sent to Sche-
nectady to examine the apparatus sent in an unfavorable re
port. Lieutenant Fiske suggested that two of the Brooklyn's
turrets be equipped with steam and two with electric ma
chinery, so that the systems could be compared under iden
tical conditions.
The Bureau of Construction and the Bureau of Steam En
gineering opposed the proposal. General Electric then
offered to stand the entire cost of the installation should the
tests prove a failure. The question reached the desk of Sec
retary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert, who, although quite
impartial, was unversed in the technical phases involved.
Accordingly General Electric sent two of its executives,
S. Dana Greene and J. R. McKee, to take up the fight. Dana
Greene is said virtually to have lived in Washington for
months. McKee appealed in person to Secretary Herbert to
ELECTRICITY JOINS THE NAVY 253
permit the test to be made "so that this administration would
go into history as the one identified with inaugurating this
forward step."
Finally the Secretary was won over. "On his own orders,"
writes McKee, "and against the recommendations of the
Navy Department's bureaus" he ordered the four turrets
equipped.
The test was conducted toward the close of 1896, in the
presence of a board of officers. In Fiske's own words, "No
triumph could have been more complete. The forces of ultra-
conservatism were utterly routed, and a most important step
in the forward progress of the Navy thereby permitted. The
. . . system . . . was adopted by the Navy and was one of
the important reasons for the improvement in gunnery which
afterward resulted."
The board of officers reported of the test that: "The electric-
controlled turrets could be turned . . . and brought to rest
with the object previously selected between the cross hairs
of the sighting telescope with great facility, the turret having
a smooth and regular motion. While it was possible to arrive
at the same result with the steam-controlled turrets, it was
only done with considerable difficulty."
These were fifty-horsepower motors, and McKee calls their
adoption "the real beginning of the use of electrical apparatus
on naval vessels," although General Electric had, a year or
two previously, put seven-horsepower motors on a cruiser
and three battleships for operating ammunition hoists. Gen
eral Electric also installed the first electric motors for deck
winches on two battleships, as well as on two grain-carrying
vessels. But the turret equipments were functioning in ample
time to take their share of the glory that came to the Brooklyn,
as one of the fleet under command of former Captain
Sampson, in the battle of Santiago less than two years later.
29
The Steam Locomotive Challenged
A NEW DAY HAD COME for the traction motor. Its years of
trial and tribulation had vanished. Within five years of the
struggle at Richmond it had fulfilled aspirations that would
have dazed the staunchest railway men of a decade earlier.
The traction motor had leaped from the streetcar tracks of
the teeming cities to the railroad tracks of trunk-line systems,
and was challenging even the province of the steam loco
motive.
Before the consolidation of 1892, the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad was confronted by a problem which steam locomo
tion only aggravated. In Baltimore the road was building a
tunnel more than a mile long with an appreciable grade. A
considerable saving in running time of trains was effected
between New York and Washington, but the smoke and coal
gas of the locomotives in the confined space were unendur
able.
In their dilemma the railroad turned to the Thomson-
Houston Electric Company, asking if an electric locomotive
could be built for service in the tunnel. Knight and Potter
promptly replied in the affirmative. The railroad began
254
THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE CHALLENGED 255
negotiations for three such locomotives, which were eventu
ally contracted for by the new General Electric Company.
The engineers who had bargained to move heavy railroad
trains by electricity were not entirely actuated by over-
confidence. They had tried their hands at the electric locomo
tive of thirty tons which was exhibited at the World's Fair,
and had also designed the Cayadutta, which weighed thirty-
five tons and became a "yarder," or light-service locomotive.
But the big fellows for the Baltimore tunnel weighed ninety-
six tons, and their gearless motors, four to each locomotive,
were rated at 360 horsepower. They could make fifty miles
an hour by themselves, and could haul thirty freight cars at
fifteen miles an hour or ten passengers at thirty miles
including in each case the steam locomotive, which was left
coupled to the trains.
These big fellows operated with never a hitch or a failure.
Actual service began on August 4, 1895, and one "monster"
made a name for itself by hauling forty-four loaded freight
cars and three steam engines up the grade of the tunnel at a
steady speed of twelve miles an hour. "Not a sputter, spark,
or slip of wheel indicated the tremendous energy which was
developed by the locomotive," said one of McKee's bulletins.
Old railroad men, raised in an atmosphere of steam,
scarcely realized what this meant. It was the formal introduc
tion of a new locomotive power.
The division superintendent of the Baltimore and Ohio
could not believe the electric locomotive had a drawbar pull
equal to that of a steam locomotive. Potter suggested that he
apply any sort of test he desired, whereupon the superin
tendent rode on one of the electric locomotives to see what it
could do.
The rule had always been followed of accelerating gradu
ally the speed of the train in leaving Camden station, and the
256 MEN AND VOLTS
motorman was proceeding in that manner when the super
intendent asked him why he didn't "pull her wide open."
The motorman demurred. The superintendent told him to do
as he was told, and the controller was turned clear around to
full speed. A shout went up from the train crew. The sudden
surge of power had pulled the end out of a boxcar that was
loaded with oats. The track was knee-deep in loose grain. By
the time the mess was cleaned up the division superintendent
was satisfied as to the pulling power of the electric locomo
tive.
All this time the traction motor for streetcar operation was
by no means standing still. Toward the end of 1893 appeared
the G-E 800 motor, which incorporated most of the merits
and avoided most of the errors of the early motors which
General Electric had inherited.
One significant feature of this motor was the appearance
of the Eickemeyer method of winding. This consisted of
separate coils of copper bars, all alike, bent so that they could
be inserted in the slots of the armature core until the surface
of the core was a solid mass. This allowed for the removal
of any individual coil, in case it became defective, so that a
new one could replace it. The problem of insulation was also
simplified. The process of manufacture was both accelerated
and standardized because the coils could be made and the
insulating tape wound upon them by machine. Farewell at
last to the laborious hand-winding.
Motors at this period became more workmanlike in appear
ance. But they were still intricate. The G-E 800, for merely
insulating purposes, contained such a variety of substances
as Irish linen, oiled pressboard, oiled cotton, mica, asbestos,
hickory, Japan pressboard, canvas, and tape.
It was the G-E 800 that was placed upon the cars of the
Metropolitan Street Railway Company in New York when
THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE CHALLENGED 257
that road finally adopted the underground conduit for its
Lenox Avenue line in upper Manhattan. Determined to dis
cover what the best method of motive power might be, the
directors of the road offered a prize of $50,000 for a practical
and economical mode of traction. They were immediately
swamped with suggestions. Three thousand applicants sub
mitted ideas.
One inventor would have placed small windmills on the
roofs of the cars; another would have harnessed the tide at
Sandy Hook; a third wanted to hitch each car to a balloon!
The prize was never awarded. The directors, almost pros
trated by the multitude and variety of the proposals, decided
to save their money, which doubtless went in 1894 toward
paying the expense of the conduit electric system put in by
General Electric. The five-mile line, subject to construction
conditions peculiar to a great metropolis, cost more than
$100,000 per mile to build.
In Chicago, the demonstration at the World's Fair had won
over the Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railway to the
idea of electric instead of steam operation. General Electric
also equipped the Lake Street Elevated, and for this worked
out a new style of motor rated at 160 horsepower. It had a
box frame devised by E. D. Priest to solve the difficulty of
fitting motors of increasing size into the small space beneath
the cars.
In the same year, 1895, the New York, New Haven and
Hartford Railroad wanted electric equipment for a branch
line running to Nantasket Beach. The G-E 2000 motor, a
heavy-duty unit, went in, and traffic increased 300 per cent.
Fast-flying years! Old equipment disappearing as new
came in. Potter, succeeding Knight in 1895 as engineer of
General Electric's railway department, wanted to locate one
of the old Van Depoele cars, with the motor on the platform
258 MEN AND VOLTS
and a chain running to the axles, to have it preserved as a
relic. Not one of the old cars was to be found anywhere!
They had disappeared completely, even from the carbarns
and the scrap yards.
"Somebody once asked, Where do the pins go?' What I'd
like to know is, Where do the trolley cars go?' " said Potter as
he abandoned the search.
30
Campaigning for Candlepower
IN THE OLD DAYS electric lighting stations required a great
array of dynamos, for each dynamo supplied only about
fifty lamps. In the larger cities, the arc light generating sta
tions needed a battalion of dynamos. The Chicago Arc Light
and Power Company in 1893 had fifty-six dynamos, serving
2242 arc lamps, or about forty lamps apiece.
One of the rotating giants which the nineties ushered in
could equal in performance many of the old-time midgets.
The battalion gave way now to a corporal's guard, or even a
lone soldier. It was a time of replacement; equipments be
came obsolete rapidly; space was conserved.
The local companies were rapidly combining. Edison and
Thomson-Houston licensees were merging in each local com
munity f or two electric lighting companies in one town had
come to be as undesirable as two telephone companies. But
there was a delicate problem involved in these mergers: the
question as to which company in each town should preserve
its identity. It was natural that Charles A. Coffin wanted the
Thomson-Houston licensees to dominate the local consolida
tions. But he was too astute to adopt such a policy. He appre-
259
260 MEN AND VOLTS
elated that it was the incandescent lamp Edison's lamp
which guaranteed the electrical future. And how potent was
the name of Edison! From motives of justice, of sentiment,
and of commercial value, Coffin felt that it should be perpet
uated, so he championed the name of his former competitor.
Soon the entire country was dotted with utilities bearing the
name of Edison.
So the time came when one electrical company served a
single town, generating only alternating current. Yet for
street lighting purposes, arc lamps on series circuits were
essential. To change the original street-lighting systems to
multiple circuits, corresponding with the incandescent-lamp
circuits, meant a large investment in labor and in copper
wire. Special circuits would also be needed if the street lights
were to be turned on and off from the central station. Other
wise each lamp would have to be turned on and off indi
vidually, and the "limping lamplighters" would be recalled
to the streets. Independent operation, so vital to the incan
descent system, in the case of arc lamps was an actual
disadvantage.
Something new was needed, a regulating device to con
trol current in the circuit after it had left the generator, some
thing functionally like the transformer and the rotary
converter. And it was Professor Thomson's constant-current
transformer which met the situation. Here was another
contrivance for making electricity its own regulator with
greater than human precision.
Existing series circuits, on wires that had been put in years
ago, could now be connected to the secondary coils of the
constant-current transformers. The series circuits were kept at
constant current, though street lights were part of a city-
wide electric system of multiple circuits at constant voltage.
CAMPAIGNING FOR CANDLEPOWER 261
And the arc-light circuits could be enlarged whenever
growth demanded it.
The arc lamp itself was moving toward greater efficiency,
as was the incandescent. Until 1893 the arc, although pro
tected from the weather by a globe, had been exposed to the
air, and the carbon electrodes had been consumed so rapidly
that almost daily replacements were necessary. L. B. Marks,
an illuminating engineer of New York, devised an enclosed
arc lamp and sold his patent rights to General Electric in
that year. The electrodes lasted for days without trimming,
and the life of the lamp was ten times prolonged.
The volume of illumination, however, was not so great, and
some of the larger cities continued using the old-style open-
arc lamps. The new style lamps, however, were designed for
operation upon every existing type of circuit. Yearly General
Electric put out 100,000 arc lamps, and more than half of
them were of the enclosed type. It came eventually to be the
most widely used of all types, and was used for illumination
even in the larger stores.
While the arc lamp and the alternating current were get
ting acquainted with each other, the incandescent lamp con
tinued to thrive. Where the arc lamp was called for by the
thousands, the incandescent was turned out by the millions.
The hope of the Edison Lamp Works was for machines that
would replace the painstaking work of glass blowers.
Edison had already made a beginning, and others were at
work on new experiments. If bulbs could only be blown in
moulds! Once or twice it was tried. It could be done but
the stem still had to be sealed in by hand, and bulbs made in
moulds were not much of a gain if they must immediately go
through the uncertainties of hand operation. Then about
1895 two inventors of the Buckeye Incandescent Lamp
262 MEN AND VOLTS
Company of Cleveland, Spiller and Massey, brought out a
sealing-in machine, and Howell, at Harrison, began im
proving it. This machine sealed the glass stem and the glass
bulb together in an air-tight joint. Edison had worked out a
similar machine, which was unsatisfactory because the bulbs
were rotated in a horizontal position and repeatedly lost their
symmetry; the Spiller and Massey machine rotated the bulb
in a vertical position, insuring perfect symmetry. Almost at
the same time there came an improvement in the tubulating
machine, which pierced the top of the bulb and attached a
glass tube through which the air could be pumped from the
globe. A high vacuum could now be obtained more easily
and more quickly than before. Hence bulbs blown in a
mould, instead of free-blown, were again attempted, this time
with success beyond all previous experience.
The Edison Lamp Works could now supply yearly the
million lamps that had become the demand of the American
public. General Electric was producing almost half the num
ber itself while independent lamp companies were turning
out the remainder.
In the midst of this promotion of electric incandescence,
there appeared one man, D. McFarlan Moore, who took his
stand as the proponent of artificial illumination by chemical
gases. These gases became radiant when placed in a vacuum
and made to conduct electric currents. Moore had been with
Edison and later with General Electric until 1894, when he
obtained the financial backing to organize a company of his
own to experiment in the field of gaseous conduction. He re
marked to Edison that he hoped to produce an imitation of
daylight.
"What's the matter with my light?" Edison inquired.
"Too small, too red, and too hot," replied Moore.
Eventually Moore produced a lamp, tubular in form like
"Dad' VinaTs crew
takes time out for
lunch.
One of the motors
installed.
THE STEEL MILL MOTORS AT GARY
"THESE ARE PROUD MEN ARTISTS"
CAMPAIGNING FOR CANDLEPOWER 263
the mercury vapor lamp of Peter C. Hewitt, which imitated
daylight so closely that it found immediate use for color-
matching. But it was far from acceptable for universal light
ing, in the home or elsewhere, because of the high voltage
required to operate it. It was the incandescent lamp, small,
red, and hot as it was, which multiplied its radiance in
homes and business buildings the country over.
The early lamps had lasted as long as 3000 hours, giving
neither brilliant nor efficient illumination. After a few hun
dred hours, candlepower dropped. In 1893 the Edison Lamp
lasted for 1200 hours, but it burned at 80 per cent or more of
its rated candlepower for scarcely more than one-fifth of its
life. Yet the lamp consumed electric current during the
inefficient four-fifths of its life for which the customer paid.
He was plainly not receiving full value for his money. Illumi
nation cost him more per candlepower than if the lamp
lasted for a shorter period, retaining more of its efficiency
during the entire time.
By 1895 General Electric had produced lamps designed to
give better light for a shorter period. With a total life of 700
hours they gave at least 80 per cent of their rated power for
more than half their life. As the lamps of later years con
tinued to improve, the consumer profited by getting more
illumination for the same amount of money.
Perhaps the most important contribution to lamp manu
facture at that time was the use of red phosphorus vapor in
producing the vacuum. It was a process discovered by an
Italian engineer, Arturo Malignani. The news that lamps
were being exhausted without the use of mercury caused a
stir at Harrison. The factory heads sent for John W. Howell.
"We want this invention," they told him. "Go over there
and buy it for us. Catch the first boat."
Howell was about to be married, and the invitations were
264 MEN AND VOLTS
ready to be mailed. There was a hasty scratching out of dates
and writing in of earlier ones. It was a rapidly married couple
that caught an early boat for Italy. They were still out of
breatn when they found the inventor, Malignani, in a tiny
Alpine village. Howell bought the American rights to the in
vention, stopped in England on his way home to order a
special pump required by the new process, and returned to
Harrison triumphant. That was the end of the mercury-
exhaust process, and the sale of the discarded quicksilver
paid practically the entire cost of altering manufacturing
facilities for the phosphorus exhaust.
This was the most important change since the treated fila
ment. It reduced the time required to secure a vacuum from
half an hour to less than a minute; it created a far higher
vacuum; and of great importance, it removed the danger of
mercury poisoning.
Howell could not see a new apparatus without looking it
over for possible improvements, so that before long he hit
upon a weak point in the Malignani process. The lamp was
connected to the exhaust pump by a glass tube, which was
painted on the inside with the phosphorus. After the pumping
was completed the phosphorus was vaporized, and to insure
the vapor's passage into the bulb and not into the pump, the
connecting tube had to be closed. This was originally done by
a glass-blowing process, but Howell inserted a section of
rubber tubing which could be completely closed by a pinch-
cock pressed upon the rubber before the phosphorus was
Vaporized.
This eliminated one glass-blowing step, and permitted
more exact control of the vaporizing. Finally, Howell and
William R. Burrows devised an apparatus for performing the
complete exhaust process upon ten lamps at a time.
In 1894 the famed bamboo filament was replaced by the
SCIENCE AND LIGHT 265
squirted filament. Under this procedure cotton was dissolved
in zinc chloride, and the cellulose mass which resulted was
squirted through a small die into alcohol or water to harden
it. Then it was washed, dried, shaped, packed into crucibles,
and carbonized. This type of carbon filament was more uni
form and more homogenous in structure than the carbonized
bamboo. It required less labor and less material to produce.
It made longer filaments possible, and a more uniform distri
bution of the light was obtained by making the filament more
oval and steadying the middle loop with an anchor.
This was the efficient lamp of the middle and late nineties
the lamp which would produce economical illumination.
It was a product calculated to build good will. At the time it
appeared, the Edison central station companies, comprising
the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, led the
way in urging the policy of renewing customers' lamps as
soon as they grew dim.
Consideration of customer needs was one of the ideals
upon which General Electric built. It was a policy that
Thomson, Rice, and Coffin had woven into the fabric of the
Thomson-Houston Company and then transferred to General
Electric. Because of this policy, a field of service, as yet un
suspected, was brought into existence.
THERE WAS AN OLD-TIME "EXPERT" of the Thomson-Houston
Company named Walter D'Arcy Ryan, who was convinced
that electric lighting was being applied by careless methods.
No scientific study was made of lighting projects, and lights
were put in by guesswork. Inevitably, thought Ryan, that
sort of thing is costly. And to whom? To the users of lights
the customers of General Electric.
And so he conceived the idea of putting electrical illumina
tion upon a scientific basis. Careful studies of a customer's
266 MEN AND VOLTS
premises would form the basis of recommendations for scien
tific illumination. This would be done without consideration
for the business which General Electric would derive from
the installation.
It was a new proposition. Ryan went to E. W. Rice, Jr.,
Technical Superintendent of the Company. And there his
idea met with a friendly reception, for Rice authorized the
necessary appropriation, though largely as an experiment.
Thenceforward, customer needs received special study and
expert recommendation. The objective in every installation
was the correct volume of light from the most efficient equip
ment. As the practice extended, the laboratory grew. Custom
ers realized a saving in money. And General Electric was
proving again its principle of service.
In 1902 the laboratory, now officially designated the
Illuminating Engineering Laboratory, was transferred to
Schenectady, and Ryan received the title of Illuminating
Engineer. From this laboratory, in 1903, came a concentric
light diffuser, a type of reflector which produced evenly
distributed rays of light throughout the illuminated area.
New instruments were brought out for demonstrating what
the scientific analysis and measurement of lighting could be
made to accomplish the spectrophotometer, the luximeter,
the luminometer, and later a line of devices for studying the
effects of light on colored materials.
THE PREDICTION OF CALVIN A. RICHARDS, the old-time horse-
car man, was reaching fulfillment; electricity had grown from
youth to manhood and was fast becoming the "giant of the
future." Day and night without a lull, energy in such volume
as the great pioneers had never dreamed of issued from a
multitude of rotating monsters that whirred and hummed,
making and distributing the electric current that meant light,
INSULATING FOR HIGHER VOLTAGE 267
power, and heat over a spreading network of cables and wires.
But energy uncontrolled is not only useless but perilous.
It must be mastered after it is brought into existence. And
this mastery involved the problem of the electric switch. The
future of electric power depended upon the invention of
switches capable of controlling a titanic energy. If greater
switches could not be developed, the trend toward generating
stations of greater capacity would be halted.
In the midst of their early work with switchboards, Gen
eral Electric engineers perceived this problem drawing nearer
and taking shape.
In the electric switch two contact points are drawn apart,
and an arc is produced in the gap, growing longer and longer
as the gap lengthens, until it breaks and the circuit is inter
rupted. The procedure lasts but a fraction of a second. In
some of the tests that Rice and Hewlett conducted, the arc
leaped a dozen feet before it broke. They agreed that no one
would want to handle a switch that created such formidable
arcs. But there was one remedy possible mineral oil. If the
arc were produced beneath the surface, the oil would
smother it.
The oil switch succeeded. It became the "H" type, famous
for its perfect work and its high capacity. In the generating
station at Ninety-sixth Street, New York, these switches
proved a perfect complement to the big generators. Within a
few years the Manhattan Elevated, transformed from steam to
electric operation, installed these switches in its power house,
as did the Interboro road and later the New York Central.
This was the only type of switch that could handle properly
the volume of energy now speeding forth upon the circuits
of electric service lines. It was to go down on the books, not as
a switch, however, but as a circuit breaker.
Meanwhile a race of midgets was growing up to join the
268 MEN AND VOLTS
circuit breakers in their task of controlling the energy of the
rotating giants. For potent as they are, the relays are indeed a
race of midgets.
The relay is a collection of metallic parts without life or
consciousness, yet it is eternally on guard; devoid of human
faculties, it is yet a sentinel more dependable than humans.
Edward M. Hewlett, the premier designer of switches and
switchboards, fathered the relay. He both fathered and
nurtured it; and all the while urgent men were bringing new
switchboard problems to his office, and the five major de
partments with professional insistence dinned their needs in
his ears and consumed the bustling energies of his little staff.
Hewlett experimented with dashpots, with pendulums,
with clockwork. Finally he turned to air pressure for retard
ing the movement of the solenoid core. He undertook to
introduce an air cushion by means of a little sack of leather.
But he found that a special grade of leather was required, a
leather that was both dense and flexible.
He visited leather factories to discover the differences in
grades and to study samples. He finally settled upon a type
of kangaroo leather, and with this he originated the bellows
relay. In this the plunger rod, or solenoid core, in attempting
to rise under the magnetic influence of the solenoid, pushed
against the bellows; it could not complete its movement and
close the circuit contacts until the air had been pushed out of
the bellows, a matter of several seconds. By that time, if the
short circuit had been slight, the trouble would have passed;
the excessive current, magnetizing the solenoid, would have
ceased, and the plunger would have dropped back to its
original position.
Meanwhile, on the Pacific coast, the electrical engineer was
tussling with the great mountain ranges, planning a hydro
electric project among the rugged Sierras. The distance of
INSULATING FOR HIGHER VOLTAGE 269
transmission would be greater, and hence the voltage higher,
than any previous system. They would have to transmit at no
less than 40,000 volts. The organization of the Standard Elec
tric Company was begun, and through the self-confidence
and technical originality of John F. Kelly, the Stanley Elec
tric Manufacturing Company finally won the contract.
To those who said it couldn't be done, Kelly remarked that
it depended upon the size of the transmission cables. Two
generating stations were immediately begun, one at Colgate
on the North Yuka River 142 miles from Oakland, the other
at Electra (Blue Lakes) 149 miles from Oakland in the
opposite direction. Kelly went into the mountains to the site
of the Colgate powerhouse, lying far north in the Sacramento
Valley. He rode along a precarious mountain trail that
climbed and wound through defiles and skirted sheer cliffs
the road over which all equipment and every item of supplies
was laboriously carted to make that power-house a reality.
It was thirty-five miles from the nearest settlement, but an
eight hour trip.
On the Yuka River, winding through a great gorge in the
wooded mountainside, Kelly and his men put in their cum
brous electrical machines. They stretched transmission lines
upon poles that were perched on the shoulders of the moun
tains, and fixed their insulators upon crossarms that projected
into dizzy space.
The insulators were a problem in themselves. They had
been made at first either of glass or of porcelain, but later only
of porcelain. Their function was to keep the high-tension cur
rent from leaping off the transmission lines and through the
supporting poles. Mechanical requirements demanded that
the insulators should be small, strong, and of simple con
struction; electrical requirements demanded that they be
extremely large, complicated, and built of porcelain, a sub-
270 MEN AND VOLTS
stance particularly fragile. They had of course to be non
conducting, and their surfaces had to be kept dry and clean.
Yet they were perched upon a succession of poles deep in the
recesses of the hills, out of sight and care of men.
Nonetheless the line from Colgate crept toward the distant
city; and to meet it there crept up from the south a twin line
from Blue Lakes. At last they met at Oakland, 152 miles from
Colgate and 147 miles from Blue Lakes. The former line was
that of the Bay Counties Electric Company, the latter was
built for the Standard Electric Company.
Blue Lakes and Stockton, fifty miles apart, were connected
in 1897 and operation begun, three years before that span of
the system crept on to Oakland. The Bay Counties Company
in 1899 began delivering electricity at 40,000 volts as far as
Sacramento, seventy-six miles from the powerhouse, thereby
reinforcing Sacramento's service from the Folsom plant
which General Electric had equipped a few years before.
General Electric engineers were constructing an eighty-
mile line to supply Los Angeles at 33,000 volts, and they too
experienced difficulties with the paradoxical demands of the
porcelain insulators. But all activities in their company were
overshadowed by events in the East which had suddenly
come to a climax. It was a situation again involving patents,
the immense volume of which was now underlying the
whole electric service systems of America.
EDISON ONCE SAID that a patent is an excuse for a fight. Yet
the United States Patent Office has been one of the sources
from which has sprung the greatness of America. When the
Japanese government sent a special commissioner to Wash
ington in 1899 to study the American patent law, he was
asked why the Japanese desired a patent system. He replied
that Japan had been striving to emulate the acknowledged
THE PATENT AGREEMENT 271
great nations of the world, among them the United States.
Then he added:
"We said: What is it that makes the United States such a
great nation?' We investigated and found that it was patents;
so we will have patents."
Back of this naive explanation there is much truth. The
assurance of definite legal protection as a reward for con
tributing something new and useful to society has encouraged
innumerable inventors. Yet, stimulating progress as it un
questionably does, the patent system has also come close at
times to threatening it another paradox.
In the twenty years since 1876, there had been issued
thousands of patents covering the adaptation of electrical
energy to the needs of man. Keen minds thought of the same
ideas, made the same discoveries. Many controversies were
fought out in the patent office; others went through the
courts.
Companies could not offer perfect electrical systems unless
they held patents covering all their equipment. As rival com
panies frequently each held patents vital to competitors'
systems, neither could offer the perfect system with legal
right and safety. True, both could "muddle through" until
the patents expired. But letters patent in the United States
are granted for a term of seventeen years, and it was a dismal
prospect to think of suspending progress for such a period.
New patents came out faster than old ones expired. Litiga
tion swelled, and executives mopped harassed brows. It was
a situation which had tormented Charles A. Coffin as Presi
dent of Thomson-Houston and which precipitated the
mergers finally resulting in the General Electric Company.
But in 1896 the ramifications were wider, and threatened
with a more sinister aspect the public weal. For electrical
systems were large, prosperous, and indispensable, with mil-
272 MEN AND VOLTS
lions of dollars invested in them and millions of people de
pendent upon them for a necessity of modern life.
Inextricably enmeshed in the patent deadlock were the
two largest electrical manufacturers in the United States
General Electric and the Westinghouse Electric & Manufac
turing Company. Competitors for years in every type of
electrical enterprise, each held a multitude of patents, many
of them deadlocking in their effect upon the rival manufac
turer, many of them infringed, either deliberately or uncon
sciously, by the other company. Westinghouse held the
patents of Sawyer-Man, Maxim, Weston, Tesla, Stanley, and
many others; General Electric held those of Thomson, Brush,
Edison, Sprague, Van De Poele, Bradley, and others. And
the customers of both were doomed to share the resulting
enormous burden.
Coffin did not propose consolidation now. In the advanced
and more intricate form of the industry, consolidation did
not seem practicable.
Instead, a working agreement was proposed, providing, in
essence, that each of the two companies should license the
other to manufacture under its patents. The agreement was
signed on March 31, 1896, when a Board of Patent Control,
representing both companies, was set up with headquarters
in New York, a central clearinghouse for handling licensing
procedures.
This agreement insured freedom of action in the legal re
lations of the signatories for a period of fifteen years. Instead
of lessening commercial competition, it stimulated it, for
both companies were now free to manufacture and sell in
competition with each other all essential equipment required
by their customers. The merit of each company's product
governed the amount of trade and the range of prices which
it could obtain and neither of them controlled the market.
[ PART SEVEN ]
The Development of Steam Turbines,
Start of Industrial Research and
of Commercial and
Financial Expansion
31
Courage and Grime
IN HIS QUIET EXECUTIVE OFFICE in New York the Quaker presi
dent of General Electric was reviewing the year's events. It
was nearing the close of 1896, and Coffin was preparing his
annual report to the stockholders.
A memorandum lay before him: in all more than 9,000
generating machines sold their total capacity representing
400,000 horsepower. That would contribute a pretty volume
of illumination to the continent. Six thousand railway motors
marketed, and 8,000 horsepower in stationary motors. In
what new way was electricity next to work? Coffin thought
of what his lieutenant in all things technical, E. W. Rice, Jr.,
had told him. There was a man trying to interest the Com
pany in a new form of steam drive inner wheels with curved
blades, to be whirled at high speeds by the force of steam.
It was a new form of turbine, distinctly different from the
Parsons turbine already in use in England.
The new year was still young when a tall young man,
quick in movement, entered Rice's office in Schenectady. He
announced himself as Charles G. Curtis, of New York, and in
his travelling bag he brought the plans and the description
275
276 MEN AND VOLTS
of his steam turbine, for which he had unsuccessfully sought
a market in the city.
The men to whom Curtis talked were open-minded. They
were interested when he told them he proposed to build a
new kind of wheel with a succession of concave steel blades,
technically known as buckets, around its circumference; and
to revolve this wheel by the force of steam striking against
the blades.
Rice had the imagination to believe that it could be done.
He analyzed, appraised, examined drawings. And at last he
told Curtis that General Electric would make an agreement
with him. He was to have the best facilities of the Schenec-
tady Works to carry on the experiments necessary to make
the turbine practical, in return for which General Electric
was to be allowed to purchase the patent rights in case the
turbine proved a commercial success.
In the factory yard a pit was excavated, in which was
placed a small, crude model of a turbine. The revolving parts
were metal discs to the rims of which were riveted the
buckets. There was a boiler, and from it the steam passed into
a steam chest. It was then shot against the blades of the
wheels from nozzles.
Gingerly the shop crew worked over this modest affair,
which was to revolve at such high speed that the more fearful
believed it would fly apart. Curtis was assisted in the work
chiefly by John Kruesi, now Consulting Mechanical Engi
neer. He had been assigned by Rice to report upon the prog
ress of the experiments, making his own recommendations.
There were trying days when the revolving discs gave
trouble. Their dimensions had to be exact to a hair, and this
called for shop precision of a high order. Curtis made test
after test, with the wheels dangerously near the casing of the
turbine.
COURAGE AND GRIME 277
Problems sprang up one after another. When after two
years of experimenting, Curtis had given several demonstra
tions, Kruesi sent in his final report to Rice, and gave an ad
verse verdict! He recommended that the tests be abandoned.
Engineering heads conferred in considerable consterna
tion. The tests, aside from the period of time consumed, had
meant a large financial expenditure. Rice turned in his di
lemma to a man who knew nothing of the turbine experi
ments, who was disinterested and reliable in judgment. Wil
liam LeRoy Emmet, Engineer of the Lighting Department,
had distinguished himself by his handling of the problems
of alternating current. Rice asked Emmet to investigate
Curtis' turbine and study the results of the tests.
Emmet conceded that the tests did not show a performance
comparable with the ability of reciprocating engines, but he
saw something in the turbine that made him think that it
required further experimenting to bring out unsuspected
possibilities. If turbines could be made to work efficiently,
he reasoned, their mechanical simplicity and economy of
manufacture would prove of vast importance. Emmet rec
ommended that two machines be built for commercial usage,
one of 500 kilowatts capacity and the other of 1500.
Rice called him in for consultation. "Would you take
charge of the design and manufacture of the trial turbines?"
he asked. "If you would, 111 authorize their production."
Emmet, having had no experience with turbine principles,
said that he would. Within twenty-four hours he was down
in the shops, immersed in the tremendous question of the
future of the new turbine.
What Emmet saw in Curtis' steam turbine was the prin
ciple, in embryo, of the great steam turbines of today; wheels
revolving upon a common shaft and jets of steam blowing
with terrific force against their blades. There were the noz-
278 MEN AND VOLTS
zles from which the steam, starting from the steam chest
under high pressure, was expanded to a lower pressure, to
acquire velocity before it was applied to the blades of the
moving wheels. There were guides for the steam, channels
which received the jets and passed them on so that they
struck the next wheel from exactly the same direction as their
impact upon the preceding wheel.
It is a tempestuous journey that the steam experiences
inside that immense iron jacket, squat and black, which en
closes the vitals of the modern steam turbine. Superheated
to a high temperature and acted upon by tremendous pres
sure, it crowds its way into the steam chest, surging irre
sistibly toward any available outlet. Through valves into the
nozzles it flings itself, is immediately expanded to a lower
pressure, and hurls its energy at tremendous speed in some
turbines more than sixteen miles a minute against the first
revolving wheel, escaping instantly between the blades into
the first set of stationary buckets. There it changes swiftly
to its original angle of impact, strikes the next revolving
wheel, and shoots into the succeeding stationary buckets. At
the end of the first stage it is caught in a second set of nozzles,
which expand it to still lower pressure, giving it renewed
velocity for the increased diameters of the next wheel. In
the far end of the turbine, at reduced pressure, it is condensed
in a vacuum chamber.
Emmet felt that Curtis' first turbines should be redesigned
in order to perform efficient work. He investigated and ex
perimented. Presently he made changes in detail. He studied
especially the arrangement of the buckets and the proportion
of bucket rows to the number of stages. Here was the man
who had redesigned and reconstructed some of the early
Sprague railway motors until they gave such service as simi-
"AS METICULOUSLY ACCURATE AS A FINE WATCH"
Despite their size, huge turbines must be built and assembled with
unbelievably close accuracy.
"THEY HAVE A KEEN SENSE OF THE ROMANCE AND
ADVENTURE OF WORK"
This motor, built by workmen at the Schenectady plant, was at the
time of its construction the largest electric motor in the world. It de
velops 22,500 horsepower.
"THAT VAST TABERNACLE OF BRICK AND STEEL"
Building 60 at Schenectady. The size can be judged from the figures of
workmen in middle foreground.
COURAGE AND GRIME 279
lar motors on other roads could never produce. He had found
again an opportunity to exert his peculiar genius.
In 1900 two turbines had been jointly designed by Curtis
and Emmet. The smaller turbine had a capacity of 500 kilo
watts and a speed of 1800 revolutions per minute. Curtis
designed the buckets and the nozzles; Emmet designed the
general mechanical construction and the arrangement of
parts; Emmet, in conjunction with H. G. Reist, designed the
generator which the turbine was to drive.
Shop process was slow and laborious, as the shop men for
the most part knew nothing about turbines. The only ex
perienced men were a crew of thirty-six mechanics, all of
whom had been wrestling with Curtis' first small units for
three years or more, and now formed the nucleus of a turbine-
shop organization.
Within a year the first Curtis-Emmet turbine was complete
and ready for testing under service conditions.
It came up to every expectation. A few months later the
1500-kilowatt unit was well advanced. Emmet and Curtis
next designed a vertical 5000 KW turbine, and offered it to
Samuel Insull who was now president of the Commonwealth
Edison Company of Chicago. He was building a new generat
ing station on Fiske Street in Chicago.
Rice had his hands full to win the Board of Directors to an
undertaking so beset with difficulties. But he did it in the
end. And all the while Emmet was busy with engineering
data, which he finally took to Chicago to lay before Insull.
Assured by Emmet that the turbine was possible, Insull
staked his business reputation and designed his new station
for it.
That was in 1901. The Fiske Street Station was to begin
operating in the fall of 1903. Emmet, confident and optimis-
280 MEN AND VOLTS
tic, hastened back to Schenectady, and the executive offices
hummed with the news he brought.
Bill Madigan was directing the activities of Building 10.
Again and again Emmet came to him with turbine parts to
be machined. And Madigan, watching the turbines develop,
discovered points about them that appealed to him as a con
noisseur of machines.
The year 1903 dawned, and with it came anxiety and ap
prehension for General Electric. Chicago began to ask when
the first factory test of the big turbine would be made In-
sull and his engineers wanted to be present. A tentative
promise was given. It had to be postponed, then postponed
again.
A whisper went around, especially among the makers of
reciprocating engines, that General Electric was having trou
ble with the turbine. Perhaps their engineers had been a
little too cocksure.
Then Coffin, who understood the selling power of good
will, wrote to Rice that the turbine must be built on time!
Rice called in Emmons, the "little man" who was giving the
Schenectady works an esprit de corps to be proud of.
A few hours later Emmons had assembled all the factory
superintendents in the plant. He put to them one question,
"Who, among our general foremen, is one hundred per cent
qualified to complete the building of that turbine on time?"
A ballot was taken. Only one name on the list had one
hundred per cent marked after it by every man in the meet
ing. The name was Madigan's.
The next day it was early in February, 1903 Emmons
sent for Bill Madigan, and when the friendly mannered fore
man appeared, Emmons instructed his secretary to admit no
visitors. Madigan felt the tenseness in the air before a word
was said.
COURAGE AND GRIME 281
"Bill," said Emmons, "do you want to make a change?"
"Which way?" said Madigan promptly. "Up or down?"
"Up, if you can swing the job. The story is this, we're in
hot water over that Chicago turbine. We've promised to have
steam in her by March, and she's nowhere near ready. The
company's reputation depends on keeping that promise.
We've picked you to swing it. Think it over and give me
your answer."
"I don't need to think it over," Madigan replied. "I've been
watching the turbine job, and I'd like to tackle it."
The following Monday the new foremen of Building 20,
where the big turbine lay almost finished but unassembled,
began laying out his work. Early as it was, Emmons was there
before him. All the resources of the plant were placed behind
this pleasant-spoken, quick-moving master mechanic.
The parts of the turbine were scattered all over the shop,
and scarcely another man in the plant knew how to assemble
them into a finished machine. Two wheels were to be ma
chined over again because of flaws. Everyone who looked at
those wheels shook his head and said, "Six weeks at least."
Madigan said nothing, but as he studied the job his fighting
spirit rose to the challenge.
Like a general he marshalled his men, organizing their
different operations. He kept the work going without pause.
Repeatedly he stepped in and worked with his own hands.
Everything he did was planned ahead.
Emmons came down to the turbine shop day after day.
"When will you steam her, Bill?" he asked.
"March 7th," was the reply.
"You're too optimistic," said Emmons. Those to whom he
repeated this promise said, "Madigan's crazy!"
Nevertheless word was sent to Chicago that the turbine
would receive its factory test on March 7, and Insull made
282 MEN AND VOLTS
his plans accordingly. By that time the turbine builders were
working at all hours in Shop 20.
March 1 arrived. Rice came down and asked when the
turbine would be steamed. Madigan, grimy with dirt and
grease, replied, "On March 5!" His eyes were red from lack
of sleep, but his head was as clear as ever, his smile as reas
suring. The big turbine was almost assembled, a mammoth
towering four times as high as a man. A few more days of
intensive, unflagging work and on March 4, three days ahead
of his first promise, Madigan told the test men to let in steam.
The turbine performed excellently for President Insull at
the official test of March 7th. The good name of General
Electric had been saved!
The turbine-generator which Samuel Insull ordered from
General Electric required only one-tenth of the space and
weighed one-eighth as much as the reciprocating engines it
replaced. But Emmet's problems were not yet settled. The
unit in the Chicago powerhouse had still to be installed. For
months things kept going wrong. Construction men had to
stay there and watch the turbine as it ran. They fairly lived
in the generating station. Whenever the turbine ran well,
General Electric stock seemed to rise; when it ran poorly, the
stock sagged.
But at the end of three months no more unfavorable re
ports were received. The turbine ran steadily day and night,
month after month. And Emmet busied himself with new
experiments and new designs, for a clamor was going up
from central station executives for turbines of their own.
None were ever demanded that Madigan couldn't build,
though he remarked years later that he never enjoyed any
thing so much as that first "scrap with the turbines."
Other turbines were already on the market but not yet in
as large sizes. The DeLaval, and the Parsons, in the hands of
COURAGE AND GRIME 283
Westinghouse, were from the first great competitors of the
Curtis turbine.
As the General Electric shops hummed in the effort to
supply the turbine demand, its engineers improved both
turbine and generator year after year, eventually reverting
to the horizontal type, until the machines grew in efficiency
beyond the rosiest dream. But their biggest selling point, in
a period of rapid expansion, was economy in space. The
capacity of plants could be expanded without adding a
square inch to the buildings already in existence. More kilo
watts without laying a brick! And the cost of a turbine-
generator unit was one-third that for a reciprocating engine
and generator.
Curtis' relations with General Electric continued to be
active, although the purchase of his patents had been con
cluded. Under the contract finally entered into he received
$1,500,000 for his patent rights in the invention. The contract
permitted him to develop on his own initiative turbines for
marine applications in all cases where the mode of propulsion
was other than electrical. But it left General Electric free to
put the turbines on ships if they were electrically run. The
possibility of propelling a ship by electricity was something
that no one as yet took seriously. But Rice believed in it,
and he saw to it that the clause went into the contract. Most
electrical scientists, in 1900, dismissed the idea with the re
mark that to drive an ocean liner by electricity, the generat
ing plant would have to be so large that it would sink the
ship! Rice was looking fifteen years ahead in inserting that
clause, which was one day to play a leading role in the des
tiny of the Company.
For the time being General Electric was busy supplying
the light and power companies with turbines. In 1909 the
original unit at Chicago and a duplicate unit subsequently
284 MEN AND VOLTS
installed gave place to two larger sets. These were rated at
12,000 kilowatts, more than twice the capacity of the old
units. Yet there was so little difference in their dimensions
that the new machines were placed upon the original founda
tions and supplied with steam by the original boilers.
Six swift years had passed. None of those who had borne
a hand in the turbulent production of the first Chicago unit
was likely to forget the experience. Hence it was proposed
that this first large turbine should be taken back to Schenec-
tady, the place of its birth, and set up as a perpetual monu
ment to an industrial victory. There the old pioneer stands
today, on the main thoroughfare of the General Electric
Works, just outside an enormous building where its own
titanic successors, now far more powerful, are carefully as
sembled and shipped. Madigan himself was there until his
retirement.
So was launched the turbine era. Meanwhile, other events
were at work shaping the career of the turbine's guardian
Company.
Ronald McDonald, the eccentric genius of the Fort Wayne
Electric Corporation, died in 1898, whereupon the following
year General Electric purchased it.
Four years after this, in 1903, General Electric purchased
the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company at Pittsfield.
The Stanley Company had brought out its inductor alterna
tor, and its transformers had reached a point of great effi
ciency. General Electric could not offer to its customers
complete electrical systems without this progressive concern.
In 1900 the Siemens and Halske Company also sold its busi
ness to General Electric.
32
Magic Comes to Manhattan
THOSE WERE EXCITING DAYS for General Electric's commer
cial men. Particularly exciting, perhaps, for the selling ex
perts whom Coffin had taken into his organization from other
lines, such men as John R. McKee, the former boot and shoe
wholesaler of Indianapolis, William J. Clark, the erstwhile
coal dealer and postmaster of Birmingham, Connecticut,
and many another. Both these men had vindicated Coffin's
judgment by rising to high departmental posts; McKee be
came manager of the Power and Mining Department, and
Clark of the Railway Department.
McKee always valued his breaking-in days with the old
Thomson-Houston Company, grubbing in the coal mines
with young fellows fresh from college, trying to make prac
tical the Van De Poele electric mine-digger. Now he was
pushing the electrical idea for coal and metal mines for all
he was worth, and motors for almost every use under the
sun.
"We are biting into the mining business," he said to Coffin
in the summer of 1895, and produced the latest issue of his
sales bulletin to verify the statement. The superintendent of
285
286 MEN AND VOLTS
the Berwind- White Coal Mining Company, of Osceola Mills,
Pennsylvania, announced in that publication that he had a
mine "turning out over 11,000 tons of bituminous coal per
month, and not a mule about the place."
The Eureka Colliery never had a mule from the day it
opened. A rough track, a generator, and a two-ton, ground-
hugging electric locomotive did the pulling. The locomotive
was like a flat box on wheels. It was small indeed for a loco
motive ten feet long and five feet wide, and so low that
the overhead conductor was less than thirty-six inches above
the rail. It was dubbed the "turtle-back" because of its slop
ing, rounded top, and it had the pulling power of many
mules.
A few weeks later McKee was describing a power plant at
Scott Haven from which electrical energy was supplied to
several mines. "A central station in mining work," he re
marked to his colleagues of the sales committee. But McKee
had little time for waving the feathers in his cap. Sales op
portunities poured in upon his staff.
In those stirring, strenuous days many an epic was related
at the meetings of the sales committee. There was the mis
sionary motor at Middletown, Ohio, which was given only
"tolerance room" in a bicycle factory by the skeptical own
ers; but it was soon being "tolerated" to such an extent that
the owners ordered eight others like it.
There was many a tale of being marooned overnight in
the sort of hotels that make men dream of home. W. J. Han-
ley, who was ranging the region south of the Great Lakes
with an energy that was to turn him one day into a district
manager, had one such experience when a window broke
and the snow of a blizzard whirled in over his bed all night.
Later in the same winter in a temperature fifteen below zero
he had sold an electrical outfit to a snowbound miller. He
MAGIC COMES TO MANHATTAN 287
made a dash to catch a freight train in an open cutter with
part of his pajamas wrapped around his head to keep his ears
from freezing. He caught the freight, and clambered over
the rocking cars in pitch darkness to ride on the locomotive,
which carried him to his station.
McKee's salesmen of the Power and Mining Department
and those of S. Dana Greene, of the Lighting Department,
thought themselves thoroughly conversant with modern
electrical machines. Then Coffin announced the patent agree
ment of 1896 with Westinghouse, which permitted General
Electric to handle the Tesla type of polyphase induction
motor. Again the commercial personnel studied charts and
digested test reports between sales, until they were able to
present the virtues of this new type of motor as whole
heartedly as salesmen should.
The motor sales went well over twelve million dollars in
1895, and reached seventeen million dollars in 1899. A yearly
increase in total orders of twenty per cent was not uncom
mon. The Supply Department, under Jesse R. Lovejoy, re
ported an annual increase running from 20 to 24 per cent,
and incandescent lamp sales were swelling yearly by leaps
varying from 23 to 25 per cent. Total orders in 1900 stood
above twenty-six million dollars.
At Lynn, where doubts had once been expressed that the
business would occupy an entire three-story building, the
buildings were now numbered by the score. A new plant
had arisen upon the flats along the Saugus River. Begun in
1892, halted by the panic of 1893, resumed in the middle
nineties, the future River Works was outstripping even the
original factory on Western Avenue, where the Thomson-
Houston Company had struggled in the optimistic eighties.
The inroads made upon the conservative railroad business
were slower in taking shape, despite the electric locomotives
288 MEN AND VOLTS
of the Baltimore and Ohio. Then in 1898 came an oppor
tunity. Clark and his men were soon beaming over the rail
way outlook as were McKee's power salesmen over the sales
of motors. They had a customer in the Hoboken Shore Road,
which operated a two-mile freight terminal line from Wee-
hawken to Hoboken, where the docks of the North German
Lloyd Steamship Company were located. To handle this
haulage a stout two-truck locomotive of 540 horsepower
capacity had been built, with an expected speed of eight
miles an hour under load.
This installation, though not large, had great missionary
value. It was close to New York, and when its trial trip took
place railroad officials from every road that served the me
tropolis were watching closely as it pulled its load of nearly
300 tons.
From the center of Manhattan Island there once arose in
pre-electrical days a pall of sooty smoke that rolled up in
cessantly. Its lower depths were shot through with white,
fanlike billows of wind-blown steam. At night lurid shafts
of firelight pierced the ascending vapors; and infernos of
flame could be seen down in the darkness of the pit.
Fifteen blocks through the heart of the metropolis and
thirty or forty acres of high-priced real estate were occupied
by this blanketed area. It seemed one of the inevitable bur
dens of modern metropolitan life, a grimly exacted penalty.
To this spot there came every twenty-four hours, loudly
puffing and panting, seven hundred steam locomotives and
30,000 persons riding in the trains they hauled. The marvel
lous steam toilers could be seen moving up and down that
vortex with easy effort and murky breath, hundreds of lusty
locomotives, each one adding its hissing voice to the deafen
ing chorus, as if exulting in the superhuman power with
which human brains had endowed them.
MAGIC COMES TO MANHATTAN 289
Such was the passenger yard of the Grand Central Ter
minal at Forty-second Street as the nineteenth century
closed. Stretching northward was its one outlet into the
north, the Park Avenue tunnel, where passengers and crews
endured the nuisances and dangers of smoke in the narrow
tube.
These conditions had existed for years, and on the Man
hattan Elevated Railway snorting little steam locomotives
were pulling the crowded "L" trains. Each of them consumed
its quota of bituminous coal and gave back in return not only
useful hauling power but low-trailing clouds of smoke. For
years attempts had been made to replace the little steam
locomotives with electric motors. Public campaigns favoring
the change extended back into the eighties. But in twenty
years no day had dawned when the smoke had not filled the
lungs of patrons.
If the passenger yard of the Grand Central Terminal was a
smoking pit, the Manhattan Elevated was a smoke-belching
serpent twining the length of the island metropolis. Thus it
remained when Sprague, last of the hopeful demonstrators,
withdrew his electric motors in defeat. After the merger of
1889 which added the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor
Company to the Edison General Electric, Sprague struck
out again for himself with an idea that had germinated in his
mind some years before. The Sprague stationary motors were
winning friends in Massachusetts through the agency of
George F. Steele and the old New England Electric Com
pany. One day Steele heard of a new type of motor which
had given a startling demonstration of speed in lifting an
elevator. He talked with its designer, a young Boston me
chanic, Charles E. Pratt, and notified Sprague, who became
interested at once in Pratt's accomplishment. Sprague and
Pratt finally decided to join forces, and early in the nineties
290 MEN AND VOLTS
the Sprague Electric Elevator Company was organized.
Sprague understood perfectly what electricity could do
in the operation of elevators, from the days when his station
ary motor had run scores of belt-driven elevators. But, in
vading a domain already in the possession of the hydraulic
elevator companies, he met with intense opposition. Working
steadily against it, he obtained his first promising contract
in 1892. The Postal Telegraph Building in New York pur
chased six Sprague-Pratt passenger elevators. But in so doing
they demanded a cast-iron guarantee that in case of failure
of the electrical method the Sprague Company would install
any hydraulic system the customer might select.
These hydraulic systems never had a chance. Sprague ran
four of the electric elevators at a speed of 325 feet per minute
with a "live load" of 2500 pounds, and the other two at a
speed of 400 feet per minute with a load of 1800 pounds. So
came into existence the modern high-speed electric elevator,
driven by directly connected motors, with a control system
expressly adapted to such work. From the status of pioneer,
Sprague rose to that of leader in the field. T. Comerford
Martin spoke of him years later as "the father of electric
transportation, horizontal and vertical."
Sprague continued to experiment with the motors in the
Postal Telegraph Building. He connected the individual
control circuits to a master control switch so as to operate all
the elevators simultaneously. They responded, but their
movement was far from synchronous. For some time he pon
dered the experiment. There was something about it that
haunted him. Then came the swift inspiration that trains of
cars could be operated by the inter-control, master-switch
plan which he had tried with the elevators.
It was the golden key to a hundred problems of traction.
Sprague visualized the application clearly. He was able to
MAGIC COMES TO MANHATTAN 291 t
design that system almost at a single sitting. It became the
multiple-unit method of train control a method that proved
to be the final step in the practicability of electric trains on
elevated roads, in subways, and even on electrified main
railroad lines. No other schemes of train operation ap
proached it in simplicity, flexibility, and effectiveness.
In its perfected form, multiple-unit control permitted as
sembling into trains, with control from any point in the train,
any number of cars each with its own motors and controllers.
The electrical units were connected with each other and
with master controllers by a "train line" which produced
unison in the motive power provided by each car. The num
ber and sequence of the cars was immaterial; they could be
operated in any combination.
What feats were not made possible quick control, rapid
acceleration, fast train schedule, short intervals between
trains, and easy adaptation of train lengths to fluctuations of
traffic! It was the solution of operating problems in congested
city areas, with their recurring rush hours and expanding
populations.
Sprague thought at once of the Manhattan Elevated Rail
way. A year later, in 1896, and again in 1897, he sent letters
to the officials of the road describing his multiple-unit idea
and offering to demonstrate it with their trains at his own
financial risk. When nothing resulted from these proposals,
Sprague went back to his elevators.
Two years went by. Then out of a clear sky Leslie Carter,
President of the South Side Elevated Railway of Chicago,
known as the "alley L," wrote to Sprague asking if he would
serve as consulting engineer in the electrification of that
road. -ri s
Sprague was in the midst of an ambitious elevator project;
and he was on crutches as well. During his convalescence
. 292 MEN AND VOLTS
after a bad fall, John McKay, the largest stockholder of his
company, had suggested that Sprague go to London to secure
a tempting contract which involved half a million dollars
a proposed elevator installation for the Central London Tube
Railway.
It was the largest installation yet attempted. There were
to be forty-nine elevator cars. Sprague assembled data and
prepared drawings, planning to sail the last of March. It was
then that he heard from Leslie Carter, and the engineers of
the Chicago road called upon him with the plans for its
electrification.
This was the opportunity Sprague had been waiting for.
He explained his idea of multiple-unit control to the engi
neers and to William J. Clark, manager of General Electric's
Railway Department, who accompanied them.
Sprague delayed his sailing for a month. His bid for the
electrification contract he submitted purely as an individual,
with no company back of him, and in competition with Gen
eral Electric, Westinghouse, and the Walker Company.
Sprague not only stood his ground with these organized con
cerns, but entered into a lively contention to prove to Carter
that an eighteen-mile schedule, as proposed by one of his
competitors, was unsound engineering, and that his own rec
ommendation of fifteen miles an hour should be adopted. He
and Carter spent several hours one day in April talking by
telegraph over an open wire, each standing at the elbow of
an operator, totally oblivious of the swelling telegraph tolls.
The day before Sprague was to sail for Europe he received
word that he had been awarded the contract, one of the
conditions being that he put up a $100,000 bond as a guaran
tee of performance. Sprague wired that he would furnish the
bond upon his return from London.
So he departed on April 29, 1897, facing a tremendous
MAGIC COMES TO MANHATTAN 293
task to be carried through in a conservative country, and
leaving behind him a situation that bristled with problems.
In London Sprague felt as if he were trying to straddle the
Atlantic, with one foot in England and the other in the
United States. He must work fast with his London prospect,
yet he had arrived in the midst of the Whitsuntide holidays.
He must protect his interest in the execution of the Chicago
contract, yet all he could do was to cable instructions and
rely upon the judgment of his assistant, McKay, who was
to sign the contract under power of attorney.
It did not ease his mind that one of the stipulations in this
contract was the guarantee of a demonstration of multiple-
unit control by July 15th. It was then the first of May.
Multiple-unit control existed only on paper, and he had no
idea how long he would be detained in London.
One encouraging thing happened during those first two
weeks with the arrival of William J. Clark, sent by General
Electric to get the sub-contract for the 240 electric motors to
be installed on the South Side Elevated. After Clark got his
contract, Sprague obtained through him the use of General
Electric's experimental railway track at Schenectady.
Sprague had assumed the obligation of providing the track,
the railway furnishing the cars.
Meanwhile things were dragging in London. Sprague had
a full-size controller equipment and a typical elevator car
safety mechanism set up in the basement of the Cecil Hotel
for demonstrations, and had submitted his bid for the con
tract. But he could not get the Central London Tube Rail
way to come to a decision. He guaranteed that the cost of
operating the elevators would not exceed one pound per
thousand single trips of 67 feet rise, regardless of the size of
the cars. But still they hesitated.
Time was passing and he had to get back to the United
294 MEN AND VOLTS
States. In a last effort to clinch the matter, he offered to pro
ceed with the contract staking all his prospects in the London
elevator project unreservedly upon the performance of trial
elevators in one shaft, Sir Benjamin Baker, the railway's en
gineer, to be the judge. Upon this basis he was awarded the
contract.
Sprague sailed for New York on June 16th, landing three
weeks before the date on which he was required to demon
strate multiple-unit control. He found that some beginning
had been made, guided by what meager instructions he had
been able to send by letter and cable. But a colossal task
remained, and no one but a man with driving willpower, un
sparing of himself, could hope to swing it.
Sprague did not spare himself; and he did not hesitate to
spend money. He worked day and night, and on July 15 he
was in Schenectady with multiple-unit control installed upon
two cars of the South Side Elevated Railway. He operated
those two cars himself the following day, and saw his idea
admirably vindicated.
Within a year after the tests at Schenectady, the South
Side road was fully equipped and multiple-unit control was
in service on its first installation. Almost at the same time,
Edward H. Johnson sought another business alliance with
his former associate, and early in 1899 the Sprague Electric
Elevator Company merged with the Interior Conduit and
Insulation Company, which Johnson had organized, to form
the Sprague Electric Company.
Fresh from his success on the Chicago line, Sprague turned
again to the New York situation. He had long advocated
before the Rapid Transit Commission an electric under
ground transportation system for the city. Now he renewed
his campaign. He also wrote repeatedly to the officials of
the Manhattan Elevated, and published a number of news-
TRIUMVIRATE OF SCIENCE
Dr. Whitney, Dr. Coolidge, and Dr. Langmuir, of the General Electric
Research Laboratory.
CAMPUS OF "THE UNIVERSITY OF LIGHT"
The General Electric plant at Nela Park, Cleveland, Ohio.
"AMERICA'S LARGEST ELECTRICAL WORKSHOP"
Airplane view of the Schenectady Works
MAGIC COMES TO MANHATTAN 295
paper interviews describing the virtues of multiple-unit con
trol. It seemed to be effort wasted. There was no interest
from 1897 to 1900.
In another quarter, however, the importance of Sprague's
system was more fully appreciated. Electric train control was
an issue with the General Electric engineers. They were
working on various ideas, and believed they had found the
most reliable method in a contactor form of the series-parallel
control system, which embodied the work of Elihu Thomson,
William B. Potter, and Frank E. Case. After seeing Sprague's
tests of 1897, they considered the application of their con
tactor type of apparatus to Sprague's multiple-unit system.
When the Manhattan Elevated finally began planning
electrification in 1900, negotiations had been begun by Coffin
for the acquiring of Sprague's multiple-unit patent. These
were completed in 1903, and General Electric acquired the
Sprague Company; the contract for the electrification of the
Manhattan Elevated had not yet been closed. The question
of what the road should pay for the equipment resulted in a
deadlock, and the commercial men could do no more. They
perceived that a master hand was needed, a final, diplomatic,
understanding word. When the situation was presented to
Coffin, he went alone to the office of the Manhattan Elevated
Railway to speak the word that no one else could speak. He
brought back with him one of the largest contracts in months,
representing more than a million dollars and involving the
initial installation of nearly 1700 motors.
Electric service on the road began on December 20, 1900,
and the first ticket for passage on an electric train in New
York was sold at 11 o'clock that morning to a woman at the
92nd Street Station.
Meanwhile the situation at the Grand Central Terminal
was approaching a climax. As trains fought their way through
296 MEN AND VOLTS
the smoke of the tunnel, the firemen in the locomotives were
obliged to lie on the floor of the cabs and peer beneath the
swirling vapors to read the signals and guide the engineers.
Sentiment was so strongly awakened that the city authorities
adopted an ordinance permanently banning the operation
of trains into the city by steam power. Thereupon the New
York Central appointed an electrical commission to under
take a study of electric power. And the commission discov
ered that electrification would mean a saving of hundreds
of thousands of dollars every year!
A project was launched for making over the great terminal
station at a cost of some forty million dollars. The station was
to accommodate 200,000 passengers a day instead of 30,000;
the great passenger yard would handle 3000 trains a day
instead of 700.
And what was to become of the smoking pit, with its dark
vapor-cloud? It was to be concealed from sight beneath the
city. Above it, forty acres of real estate would be created in
the heart of the city that was hungry for more space.
By 1908 the program was under way. General Electric
locomotives hauled trains through the northward tunnel in
clear, clean air, and for thirty miles to Croton, and twenty-
five to White Plains. Originally there were thirty of these
clean, quiet, but no less powerful locomotives. Designed by
Asa F. Batchelder, the motor armatures were mounted gear-
less upon the axles and the field magnets embodied in the
mechanical structure of the locomotive. This line, built in
the Schenectady shops, was introduced by historic old
"6000." Each unit weighed ninety-four tons complete and
had four driving motors. They were the first gearless loco
motives of General Electric make since those designed for
the Baltimore and Ohio Tunnel, but were more sturdy and
simple in form. Pulling with 2800 horsepower, they were as
MAGIC COMES TO MANHATTAN 297
powerful as the steam monsters they replaced. By means of
the multiple-unit system two of them could be coupled to
gether as a single unit of double power, and as the Electrical
World put it, could "dally lightly with the biggest trains the
Central system has ever known."
They drew their power from steam turbine-generators in
a distant powerhouse. Eight turbine-generators, 60,000 horse
power all told, supplied the energy. And it was there, where
they were not a menace, that the smoky vapors now rolled
skyward.
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company soon followed
the Manhattan Elevated in determining upon electrification.
General Electric designed a new type of motor expressly for
use on this road and sent two trial units to appear in the
competitive tests. After they had been delivered, it was dis
covered that a certain change in the internal design of the
motor would greatly increase its efficiency. To conceal from
the competitors what was in the wind, one of the two motors
already installed on an Interborough car was changed over
night. When the comparative trials took place, this motor
out-performed any of the others, and General Electric was
awarded half of the entire motor order in addition to the
whole order for control equipment.
33
A Venture Into Research
THERE HAD BEEN A PROBLEM in the back of Rice's mind since
the expiration of the Edison incandescent lamp patent in
1894 how to increase the lamp's efficiency. One day toward
the fall of 1900 the door of Rice's office opened to Charles P.
Steinmetz, now becoming famous as a mathematical engi
neer, and with him, Albert G. Davis, manager of the Com
pany's Patent Department.
"Mr. Steinmetz and I," said Davis, "believe it would be
an excellent idea to create a laboratory where scientific
investigations might go forward on the incandescent lamp
and other problems. We should like to recommend such a
step for your serious consideration.
"To improve electric lighting is our foremost thought,"
he continued, while Steinmetz, leaning in characteristic pose
on a corner of Rice's desk, nodded assent. "I personally feel,
and Mr. Steinmetz endorses my views, that the electric light
has a future more brilliant than its past. We should not like
to assert that the carbon filament lamp is the best lamp we
can have. There may be a better type of electrode for arc
lamps than the carbon electrode. These things cannot be
determined properly without research."
298
THE BIRTH OF NELA 299
Research! It was what Rice himself had been thinking of,
Yet hardly another executive in the country in those days
was considering such a step.
The three entered into an analytical discussion of the ques
tion. They all agreed that the proposed laboratory at Sche-
nectady should be entirely separate from the factory and the
sales branches, a place where all talk of sales should be out
of order.
Dr. Willis R. Whitney, of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, was finally engaged for the post. In order to
start working at once, Whitney agreed to take advantage of
a laboratory which Steinmetz had established for his own
use in an old barn that stood in the rear of the rooming house
occupied by Ernst J. Berg, Eskil Berg, and himself on Lib
erty Street. There in 1901 Whitney came for three days a
week to work on preliminary problems, usually with assist
ance from Steinmetz. The entire staff consisted of Whitney
and a young assistant, J. T. H. Dempster. But that little
barn was the cradle of General Electric's Research Labora
tory.
COFFIN REALIZED AS FEW OTHERS DID the role of the incandes
cent lamp as the herald of the electrical idea, the first con
tact which many thousands of people had with the electrical
way of doing things. If it made a good impression, electric
service in general would benefit by the resultant good will.
So Coffin's policy of helping the independent companies to
improve their product, either with or without amalgamation,
was pre-eminently sound.
Among the independents there was one man who held
the key to the problem, Franklin S. Terry, proprietor of the
Sunbeam Incandescent Lamp Company of Chicago. This
unpretentious company was established just about the time
300 MEN AND VOLTS
of the great lawsuit over Edison's lamp. Terry had found
himself restricted by the infringement actions, but after the
patent expired in 1894 he had slowly built his business anew,
watching with wary eye the progress of his big competitor.
Shortly before 1900 Terry began talking consolidation with
some of the other independents. One evening in 1901 he
sat next to B. G. Tremaine at a jobbers' dinner in Chicago.
"I tell you, Tremaine, we've simply got to combine!" he
exclaimed. "If we don't we'll never get anywhere and Gen
eral Electric will get everywhere."
"What have they been doing to you now?" said Tremaine.
"Taking business away from us," snapped Terry. "We had
a big prospect in sight and submitted samples of our lamps.
So did the Edison Lamp Works. Then they proposed to the
prospect that he test their lamps and ours. Even provided
the equipment for the testing. Of course they won. Why?
The old story a better lamp. We can't stand that sort of
thing."
Slowly, as they talked, the virtues of consolidation as
sumed clearer outlines to both of them and a plan suggested
itself a plan for merging the independents as actual com
petitors of General Electric and at the same time obtaining
from General Electric adequate financing to assure success
in operation. It was a bold plan.
But General Electric was prepared to accept the proposi
tion. They knew that Terry and Tremaine's interest would
stimulate their activities, and they were confident that these
men could be relied upon to do a good piece of work. It was
not the first time that General Electric had acquired control
of an enterprise and vested full executive management in
the men already operating it. It was men always men that
Coffin sought, the driving force behind all enterprise, the
dynamic source of all progress and all success.
THE BIRTH OF NELA 301
Let Terry and Tremaine have full play! If they developed
new ideas, excellent. There was no doubt that General Elec
tric would share in these, just as the National Association
would be allowed to share in new ideas emanating from the
Lamp Works at Harrison.
And so, before 1901 drew to a close, the National Electric
Lamp Association was created, without a General Electric
man in it. By 1904 the National Electric Lamp Association
was in full operation. In all essential respects it was an active
competitor of the Edison Lamp Works of General Electric.
In the Cleveland factory of the Association on 45th Street
had been organized such service departments as cost, sales,
and advertising analysis, credit systems, production methods,
and engineering and scientific research. Each of the affiliated
companies was termed a "lamp division." They were fully
autonomous and so nearly independent that, although au
thority centered in Cleveland, it was seldom apparent. Expert
aid, such as they could never have afforded by themselves,
was quickly available when needed.
As time went on, it was repeatedly demonstrated that
leadership in the manufacture of incandescent lamps was
not to be wrested from the veterans at Harrison. Notable
improvements still came, for the most part, from the Edison
Works.
Amazing and brilliant work was being accomplished, be
tween 1900 and 1910 by William R. Burrows, once a
Thomson-Houston apprentice, and John W. Howell, the
veteran Edison lamp engineer. Burrows had devised a
machine which accomplished the double weld process auto
matically and made use of a smaller size of platinum wire than
an operator could hold in his fingers. The first reduction in
the costly amount of platinum used in the lamp came with the
invention of the double weld process.
302 MEN AND VOLTS
Platinum was used originally because it is the only metal
which expands and contracts at the same rate as glass, so
that during the cooling of the stem seal, containing platinum
wires embedded in the glass, the airtight joint was not im
paired. Around 1912 research under Howell's direction de
veloped dumet wire, which consists of a core of nickel-iron
alloy within a thin shell of copper. Dumet wire shrinks at the
same rate as glass, and by its use platinum is avoided.
So platinum had gone the way of the bamboo filament. But
no one was satisfied yet with what had been done to this tiny
globe of glass.
Burrows set to work to devise an automatic filament-
cementing machine and an automatic exhaust machine in
which the air was pumped out of the bulbs and the exhaust
tube sealed off from the bulb at the rate of several thousand
lamps a day lamps far superior to any that had been pro
duced by hand methods of exhausting. A similar machine
was developed about the same time at Cleveland.
Already bulbs were blown in moulds instead of by hand.
But now came the remarkable bulb-blowing machine, known
as the Westlake machine. It was devised by August Kadow
of the Libbey Glass Company, and purchased by General
Electric in 1917. Nothing like the automatic glass blower had
been seen before. It did what generations of hand blowers
had never believed possible it produced symmetrical,
moulded bulbs of glass automatically.
Lower factory costs meant lower selling prices. The Na
tional Electric Lamp Association, because it was part of
General Electric, was able to share in these cost-reducing
innovations. The effect of the trend in "co-operative compe
tition'* between the two establishments made itself apparent
in the greater number of lamps annually purchased.
34
Steinmetz and the Arc Light
STEINMETZ HAD THE CREED of a searcher. He was never tired
of laboratory work. That was where happiness lay for Stein
metz. He lost himself for long hours, for half a night, in his
private laboratory in Schenectady, and what he did there he
never alluded to as "work."
When he joined with Davis in recommending the experi
mental laboratory which Whitney was beginning, Steinmetz
endorsed Davis' views of the need of applied electrical
science. Already there was the carbon-filament lamp (incan
descent), the carbon-electrode lamp (arc), and the carbon
brush of the direct-current motor and generator. Electric
light and electric power had really passed through what
might be called the "carbon era."
Was carbon the ultimate medium for all these products?
Steinmetz would not be satisfied to say that it was. And so he
bent his scrutiny upon the arc lamp. The arc lamp had not
changed in essential character since the evening in 1808
when Sir Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution produced
the first electric arc, with the aid of a battery of 2000 voltaic
cells. Two electrodes of carbon were used on that night, and
303
304 MEN AND VOLTS
had been ever since. Changes were all concerned with the
manner of producing the current that passed through the
electrodes, the mode of connecting the lamps to the circuit,
and the method of regulating the length of the arc by mag
netic mechanism. These were the contributions of Brush,
Thomson, Wood, and the rest. Davy had contributed the
light source; the others had contributed the various means
of utilizing that light source for practical illumination.
At night, absorbed in the enthralling search, Steinmetz
was to be found in his laboratory. By day he pursued his
mathematical engineering and his consultation work at his
office at the General Electric plant. People passing the new
Steinmetz dwelling on Wendell Avenue, unfinished in 1900,
could see shining from the windows of a long, low structure
in the rear electric lights of an intense bluish- white radiance.
More and more frequently as the weeks slipped into the year
1901 were those lights seen. They were an illuminated gauge
of the progress the black-bearded little man was making in
his search for something that would supplant Sir Humphry
Davy's arc-lamp electrode.
Toward the end of 1900 all his experiments centered upon
a type of electrode composed of magnetite an oxide of iron
mixed with a proportion of titanium. The resulting light
was far more brilliant than that produced by the carbon
electrodes. But only long investigation could determine the
quantities of magnetite and titanium that would work best
together. Both substances had drawbacks. They must be
combined in the one ratio in a thousand which would suc
ceed in allowing their advantages to outweigh their objec
tionable points.
To assist him Steinmetz called upon the new General
Electric laboratory which now, after its first few months of
existence, was located in a small wooden building at the
STEINMETZ AND THE ARC LIGHT 305
General Electric Works, designated then as Building 10.
There and at the Steinmetz laboratory on Wendell Avenue
the study of the magnetite-titanium electrode went on, until
its brilliant future was at length assured.
The new lamp had peculiarities of its own. The arc instead
of springing forth pointed at both ends and bulging in the
middle, as did the arc of the carbon electrodes, became tri
angular, spreading in both directions from the tip of the
upper electrode and coming to a point at the tip of the lower.
In the second place, the illumination originated in the arc
itself, whereas in the carbon lamp the illumination was caused
by the incandescent tip of the lower electrode, heated white-
hot by the arc.
These were advantages that caused Steinmetz and Whitney
to watch their laboratory lamps with keenest attention, and
to consider it only a minor episode when they discovered
that after the current had once been turned off they could
not reproduce the arcl
They saw at once that when the current ceased to flow,
the upper electrode dropped against the lower, as in the case
of the carbon lamp, and owing to the melted magnetite both
stuck together, so that when the current was again turned on
the control mechanism could not pull them apart. Current
flowed through the two electrodes without encountering the
break in the circuit on which the arc depends. Magnetite has
a lower melting point than carbon, so that this difficulty was
not encountered with the carbon lamp.
Steinmetz soon had another disciple in the person of
C. A. B. Halvorson, one of the most active engineers at the
River Works at Lynn, where arc lamps and their auxiliary
equipment were manufactured. So active a disciple had he
become, as the problem of the magnetite arc lamp came to a
focus, that it was soon apparent that he might do for
306 MEN AND VOLTS
Steinmetz's discovery what Wood and Brush and Thomson
did for Sir Humphry Davy's put it into practical working
form.
Halvorson succeeded in designing a control mechanism
which would keep the two electrodes apart when the current
was off, and would automatically move them into the correct
relation to form the arc when the current came on again.
Then the melted magnetite caused more trouble. Globules
of molten iron, instantly solidifying, dropped from the upper
electrode and smashed through the glass globe of the lamp.
Again and again it happened. Globe after globe was
broken, and at the end of each day the janitor was swamped
with the job of sweeping up glass fragments. Hundreds of
globes were broken before it was reluctantly admitted that
magnetite could not be used.
After more experimenting, Halvorson tried pure copper for
the upper electrode, retaining the magnetite-titanium com
bination for the lower. Here was the great solution. The
difficulties of melted magnetite were eliminated, and the
brilliance of the arc retained, despite the fact that only one
electrode was active. The copper was permanent to an un
usual degree, requiring renewal only about once in three
years. This electrode, however, had to be encased in a steel
shell to prevent undue oxidation.
A fresh difficulty now arose from fumes and vapors given
off by the magnetite under the heat of the arc. The vapor,
thick and brownish, settled on the globe, obscuring the arc.
A number of expedients were tried, but Halvorson finally
placed inside the lamp a smoke outlet or chimney constructed
of wrought-iron pipe. This drew the vapor into the outer air,
and a small cap with lateral openings allowed it to escape
without being blown back into the chimney by the wind.
At length the new lamp was ready for quantity manu-
STEINMETZ AND THE ARC LIGHT 307
facture, and ready to face manufacturing problems, now that
problems in design had been met and defeated. The magnet
ite electrode consisted of a tube into which the magnetite
and titanium, in powder form, were forced under pressure.
The two kinds of powder had to be uniformly distributed
throughout the tube, and it was impossible for anyone to do
this with such speed as to allow quantity production.
Again Halvorson attacked the problem, while the work of
preparing the new lamp for the market was suspended. He
was completely baffled, until one day, walking along the
shore, he noticed how closely the sand was packed by the
action of the waves. A solution came to him in a flash. He
got back to his office as rapidly as possible. There he worked
out his scheme for subjecting the electrode tubes to a constant
gentle bumping as the pressure was applied. The uniform
distribution of the powder was assured, and the whole
process could be performed by a machine.
Early in 1903 most of the new lamp's advocates had given
it up in despair. Someone suggested that a batch of fifty of
the lamps should be manufactured and presented to Dr.
Steinmetz, and that the undertaking should then be con
sidered closed. The fifty lamps were sent over to Schenectady,
and Halvorson went along to install them. About half of the
lamps were put up on poles around Steinmetz* new house
and along the adjacent streets. Steinmetz was delighted. He
had no inkling of the skepticism at Lynn or of the virtual
rejection of his arc lamp in that quarter. He believed in the
lamp, never doubting that its day of practical utility was
close at hand. As he and Halvorson stood in the picturesque
grounds surrounding Steinmetz's home and watched those
lamps flash their blue-white brilliance, they knew that this
was the arc lamp of the future. It still had its imperfections
but it would not fail!
308 MEN AND VOLTS
Yet this ceremony, planned as the funeral of a tremendous
project, proved to be a celebration of its success. Halvorson
was able to obtain operating data from the installation that
indicated readjustments and refinements in the lamps. The
Lynn men were bowled over by the news that the magnetite
lamp was a practical success and was to go on the market
forthwith!
Out of an odd, almost Bohemian environment came the
magnetite electrode. No workshop in America, perhaps in
all the world, had quite the bizarre atmosphere of Steinmetz's
laboratory during those years when the new century was
coming in, and with it the gleaming, blue-white lamps.
In that environment the study of all the problems of com
mercial introduction and operation of those lamps went
steadily forward. Research and science were mingled with
the informal housekeeping of a bachelor menage. There
were ordinarily two persons in the establishment, Steinmetz
and his general assistant, J. LeRoy Hayden. They lived and
worked in the laboratory while the new house was being
built, for Steinmetz refused to leave his beloved paradise.
Hayden had come up from the General Electric works to
take charge of the power plant adjoining the laboratory,
where a Brush arc-light dynamo generated direct current for
the twenty-five magnetite lamps of the outdoor exhibit.
Steinmetz offered him quarters in the laboratory to save the
long trip back to his room in downtown Schenectady. Hayden
was only too glad to accept, little supposing that it was the
beginning of a working combination that was to last twenty
years, or that he was to become Steinmetz's most intimate
friend. He moved his personal effects into the laboratory,
sleeping in the room next to Steinmetz's on the second floor,
and eating the generous meals that Steinmetz cooked on a
little gas stove.
STEINMETZ AND THE ARC LIGHT 309
It was a necessary evil, the business of eating, but Stein,
metz took the burden upon himself, and he cooked not as a
chef but as a chemist. He was partial to all shades of yellow.
Eggs were consequently a staple of diet, varied, when he
could get his mind off his favorite color, by beefsteak and
boiled potatoes.
The two ate unceremoniously, did their chores on a co
operative basis, and hurried to the test room and the glowing
bulb, while day vanished and the hours of the night marched
on. Neither thought of sleep until late and yielded to it only
with regret.
Halvorson and others of the engineering group frequently
visited Steinmetz who offered them the hospitality of his
laboratory. They sat in faded, threadbare parlor chairs or on
a horsehair lounge that stood amid a maze of laboratory
apparatus, as talk drifted to the magnetite lamp.
"But it works only on direct-current circuits," one salesman
complained in dismay, for there were not many direct-current
circuits in existence.
"That only means," said Steinmetz, in his characteristic
way, "that we must have some way of changing current from
alternating to direct. In our laboratory Dr. Weintraub is
experimenting now with a tube in which an electric current
is changed from alternating to direct by means of mercury
vapor."
Dr. Ezechiel Weintraub, who had discovered that mercury
vapor will permit the passage of an electric current in one
direction only, was a physicist in the General Electric Re
search Laboratory. He made the discovery in a mercury-arc
lamp of fair illuminating properties but cursed by a ghastly
greenish tint.
Peter Cooper Hewitt, son of a former mayor of New York,
was following the same line of experiments in Newark. He,
310 MEN AND VOLTS
too, had invented a mercury-arc lamp of brilliant, greenish
light, which he was attempting to market in long tubes. He,
too, brought out a mercury-vapor rectifier. Inevitably the
claims of the two inventors clashed in the United States
Patent Office. To clear up the situation, General Electric
made an offer to purchase Hewitt's concern. Accepting the
offer, the Cooper Hewitt Electric Company thereby joined
General Electric, and the latter marketed Hewitt's tubular
mercury lamp, which developed a special field of usefulness
in photographic studios.
In the meantime Steinmetz had adapted Weintraub's
mercury-arc rectifier for commercial work in connection with
the magnetite lamp. After several changes in the design of
the tube, he substituted this convenient device for the bulky
and costly rotating machines which had hitherto performed
the converting function.
In Jackson, Michigan, magnetite lamps first went into
commercial use in 1904. The interest of electric light men all
over the country was focused upon that city. The new lights
were given the trade name of "luminous arc lamps," and
their merits were so apparent that scores of orders material
ized.
Then Boston demanded a street light of even greater bril
liance than the luminous arc lamp as yet supplied. General
Electric engineers set to work to raise the capacity of the
lamp from 300 to 500 watts, and to increase the proportion of
titanium in the electrode. It was no simple task. Day and
night for almost three months Halvorson and his assistants
worked with an isolated lamp in the outskirts of Boston.
Then they installed twenty-five lamps on Huntington Avenue
with a success which amazed the Boston engineers. Four
thousand of these lamps eventually supplied the entire area
of Boston proper.
EDWIN W. RICE, JR.
President of General Electric from 1913 to 1922.
THE MACHINE THAT MADE RADIO HISTORY
Dr. E. F. W. Alexanderson and his high-frequency alternator.
STEINMETZ AND THE ARC LIGHT 311
In 1902-03 General Electric built searchlights with lenses
thirty-six, forty-eight, and sixty inches in diameter. Most of
these were ordered by the Army and the Navy, which were
engaged in extensive maneuvers to test the coast defences on
Long Island Sound and Casco Bay. The naval craft were
attempting, theoretically, to get past the coastal fortifications
by night. Searchlights were set to work to hunt down the
"enemy." The first 60-inch light was placed in Fort Wright,
on Long Island Sound, and a battery of 36-inch lights was set
out in other forts around New London. Unwaveringly the
powerful beams "protected" New York from the attack. Not a
vessel escaped detection.
One 80-inch monster was built by General Electric in 1904
and sent to the St. Louis Exposition the only one of its size
ever built. The handling of this great projector was a con
struction job in itself. A stationary steam engine, rigged to a
block and tackle, was required to swing it up the side of a
building to its resting place. It was not the sort of thing that
anyone would expect to get lost yet that is what happened.
General Electric never knew what became of it after the
exposition ended. A rumor drifted in some years later that
the big light was sold to the Russian government when the
Russo-Japanese war opened, and that it joined in the defence
of Port Arthur on the coast of Siberia.
These multifarious developments were of necessity the
work of a highly specialized personnel. Technical problems
were most frequently mastered by technical men, but not
always. Now and then an idea emanated from the shops.
Such was the case when, in preparing for a railway motor
test, Peter J. Mulvey, foreman of the test, contributed a no
table improvement to the carbon brush.
A dozen years had passed since the carbon brush was
applied to the infant street-railway motor, in which time it
312 MEN AND VOLTS
had stood the burden well. But the increasing capacities of
traction motors proved greater than the brush in its original
form could handle. In the electrification of the Manhattan
Elevated in 1901, the motors were rated at 153 horsepower,
and the carbon brushes sparked alarmingly when current
was applied. The engineers tried to lubricate the brushes by
dipping them in oil, but the sparking continued. The problem
became a thorn in the side of "Pete" Mulvey, then spending
his tenth year in the plant.
The boys who worked for Mulvey on the railway motor
test college graduates fresh from the campus were great
admirers of his sagacity as foreman, his knowledge of electric
motors, and his open-handed manner. They found him not
only fair in his dealings, but a jolly fellow in a crowd and one
who appreciated a joke. They were delighted when the news
swept their department late in 1901 that Pete had solved the
problem of lubricating the carbon brush that Van De Poele
had invented a few years earlier.
Various accounts tell how he turned the trick. The version
most generally related, even by Mulvey himself, attained in
time the dignity of tradition. The story went that Pete had
become so annoyed one morning over the obstinacy of the
carbon brush that he flung it the whole length of the shop
and saw it vanish in a bucket of oil. Repenting of his im
pulsive conduct he rescued the brush, took it home that night,
dried it out by baking it in the kitchen stove, and discovered
the next day that it worked with complete freedom from
sparking.
What Mulvey actually did was a trifle different, though he
achieved the same results. Experimenting on his own account,
he immersed brushes in oil, then subjected them to repeated
bakings, with an interval of time between each baking. That
was the secret of the lubricated brush. The lubrication was
STEINMETZ AND THE ARC LIGHT 313
so thoroughly baked in that the brush would transmit a
heavy current without danger to the commutator from spark
ing. Later the Research Laboratory devised a self-lubricating
brush, and reduced the costs of manufacture.
An entire shop at the Schenectady Works was now devoted
to carbon products, including brushes, and 2,000,000 pieces
were manufactured there annually. The period of tremendous
expansion in the shops was then at its height. And John
Miller, the weather-beaten millwright who so dearly loved
his machines, was encountering tight situations in equipping
the spacious new shop buildings. A big building, the present
Building 16, was completed in 1899 and into it went a huge
sixty-foot boring mill. To handle this mass of metal, a steel
casing twelve feet in diameter had first to be sunk thirty-five
feet in the ground to contain the operating mechanism and
the spindle shaft on which the bed of the boring mill was to
revolve.
35
Brains and Brawn
THE RESEARCH LABORATORY was thriving in its new home in
Schenectady, having graduated from the one-story shed-like
structure to Building 19. In its deep cellar Whitney and his
few assistants had carefully collected their stock of chemicals
and mechanical appliances in the spring of 1901. That was a
high-water year for the impetuous Mohawk, which over
flowed its banks and poured into the cellar of Building 19,
setting afloat all the supplies of the laboratory. The place was
converted into a lake clinking with bottles and jars afloat.
Before another spring the laboratory had been moved, and
in 1904 was lodged in Building 6. Whitney's staff now con
sisted of three chemists drawn from the Massachusetts Insti
tute of Technology. Various enterprises were afoot and more
men were being required. Whitney's own work resulted, be
fore the end of 1904, in the development of a new type of
electric resistance furnace.
In subjecting various articles to the heat of the furnace,
Whitney was amazed at the effect which the heat had upon
carbon filaments. Analyzing and testing the filaments inside
incandescent lamps after this high-temperature treatment,
314
BRAINS AND BRAWN 315
he realized that the very nature of the carbon was changed.
It now behaved in a way characteristic of metallic sub
stances.
These metallized carbon filaments were a new step in the
line of Edison's original objective, which was to utilize a
high-resistance filament. When the new lamp was finally
ready for commercial usage, it consumed only 2.5 watts per
candlepower and yielded nearly 300 candles per horsepower.
It represented an increase over its predecessor of twenty-five
per cent in candlepower for the same volume of energy.
This new type of lamp, known by the trade name of "Gem,"
was the final achievement of the long carbon period in
incandescent lighting. It was recognized as the greatest single
improvement of the entire span of development and was in
itself a justification of all the efforts expended in the research
institution.
Two years of study and experiment were required before
the manufacture of the new filaments was possible com
mercially. They were more expensive to produce than the
old-style filament. But in 1907 the sales of "Gem" lamps
approached four million, and in 1909 they leaped to ten and
a half million, outdistancing for the first time the unmetal-
lized-filament lamp.
Yet the carbon period in incandescent illumination was
fated to pass. Even as Whitney was making ready to turn his
lamp over to the factory, a newcomer was being heralded
from abroad.
In Germany, under the encouragement of the Siemens and
Halske Company, Dr. Werner von Bolton had been experi
menting with the hard, brittle metal tantalum, which he had
purified until he was able to render it ductile, or pliable, so
that it could be drawn out into a flexible wire. Incandescent
lamps with filaments made of tantalum wire were of even
316 MEN AND VOLTS
greater efficiency than those with the metallized filament.
There was a fresh stir in electric light circles. General
Electric obtained a license to manufacture the lamp in
America, and it was commercially introduced before the close
of 1906. The tantalum lamp consumed only two watts per
candlepower and yielded 370 candles per horsepower, which
was about twenty per cent better than the metallized carbon
lamp.
But the tantalum lamp had a great drawback; it was con
fined almost entirely to direct-current circuits. When con
nected to alternating-current circuits, its life was curtailed
because of the crystallizing of the tantalum. Nevertheless,
sales rose as high as twenty-seven million a year by 1913.
Invention is like lightning. It strikes none can tell where
or when. Nor does it always require the man of broad tech
nical schooling to work its will. While Whitney in his labora
tory was firmly fixing the principle of research in General
Electric's program, at the opposite end of the works brawny
John Miller, the millwright, was turning things upside down
to contribute an unheard-of idea to the development of
mechanical processes.
Direct-current motors as they came into extensive use gave
rise to many months of searching for noiseless gears and
pinions. The strain upon gear teeth, meshing together with
great force one moment, stopping entirely the next, caused
them to wear out rapidly and unevenly. Most of the gear teeth
in the thousands of motors that were driving machinery
underwent a constant banging action. In the days of belts
and shafting, such shocks were absorbed by the belting, but
those days had passed. And the noise of the gears was
nerve-racking. *
Miller spent some time experimenting with many kinds
of gears. He tried bronze, but it was too soft to last. He tried
BRAINS AND BRAWN 317
hard steel, but it made such an uproar that it was out of the
question. He tried rawhide, but it did not stand the strain.
The same was true of leather. He tried copper, laminated
iron, wood, compressed paper; all in vain.
"The gear we want is a gear that will wear smooth," he
told himself, watching the punch and shear. "These teeth
are wearing unevenly, some places giving out faster than
others. What we want is a gear that wears evenly, all over
its surface, so that it continues to mesh perfectly even while
wearing."
A few days later a thought occurred to him while he was
gazing at a shiny spot on his coat sleeve.
"Worn smooth!" he exclaimed.
With sudden inspiration he secured some buffing wheels
from one of the shops, wheels made of cloth sewed together
in layers and used for polishing the finished parts of ma
chines. He took these to his own shop, pressed them together
between clamps, cut out gear teeth and mounted the cloth
gear upon the hack saw. Then he started the saw going and
watched it closely.
Two months slipped by. The cloth gear seemed to be
standing the test. It was silent in operation. And it was
wearing smooth and shiny like Miller's coat sleeve. It was
getting hard as well, so that one could scarcely tell it from
metal. Convinced that he was on the right track, Miller took
the gear to John Riddell, the mechanical superintendent of
the plant.
"There's a gear made out of cloth," he announced with
pride.
"Out of cloth?" exclaimed Riddell. "I'm afraid you're
going crazy!"
Miller took him down to the shop and let him watch the
construction of another cloth gear. Riddell became half
318 MEN AND VOLTS
convinced. He notified the Patent Department, but he took
precautions to make light of the story and even drew a
humorous sketch representing General Electric scouts forag
ing among neighboring clothes lines for raw material for the
"lingerie pinion."
But the cloth pinion was no joke; the Patent Department,
the engineers, and even Riddell himself, were soon taking it
seriously. Miller soon had a cloth gear and a cloth pinion on
the punch and shear, where they worked both silently and
successfully for three years. The best previous gear on that
machine had given out in a week.
So it was that General Electric manufactured and mar
keted cloth gears. The first step in preparing the original
type involved placing cotton cloth under enormous pressure,
and from this it was termed Fabroil. A later adaptation,
known as Textolite, made its own place in the world in the
timing mechanism of automobile engines.
Again hard times came "a-knockin' at de door," and Ameri
can business and industry were forced to stop and listen. It
was the financial stringency of 1907. But this time General
Electric did not suffer. Though its sales were curtailed, its
supply of available cash was abundant. It was better off than
scores of contemporaries, large and small.
What gave it such a financial advantage at a time of crisis
was the financial genius of a man who had an extraordinary
capacity for appraising the trend of business developments.
During the first six months of 1907, when orders received
by General Electric increased twenty-two per cent over those
of the corresponding period of the preceding year, General
Electric issued bonds to a total of nearly thirteen million dol
lars. The interest rate was five per cent. It was the first ex
tensive financing the company had undertaken in more than
ten years. Again and again the annual report had, contained
THE GARY JOB 319
such paragraphs as these: "During the past year the company
has not borrowed money or incurred obligations." General
Electric had lived within its income.
But as the second half of 1907 set in, there appeared the
stringency which Coffin had sensed. From August 1, 1907 to
January 31, 1908, General Electric's orders declined twenty-
three per cent over the corresponding period of the preced
ing year. Business was dull, work slackened, markets wavered
or went to pieces. Money became scarce and rates rose alarm
ingly. Business houses on every side were paying ten or
twelve per cent for what cash they could borrow and the
supply of cash was limited.
Through it all General Electric sailed on an even keel.
Although its factories were compelled to slow up, as the tide
of orders ebbed to a slender stream, its executives were un
disturbed about meeting payrolls or financing current obliga
tions. Indeed, Coffin was able to help some of his large
public-utility customers, loaning them thousands of dollars
from the funds accumulated by his issue of bonds. And that
stored up in turn a fund of future good will which gave
General Electric salesmen a golden advantage year after year
when the skies had cleared.
LATE IN 1907 a construction foreman left the Chicago office
of General Electric and jolted over rough, sandy roads to the
wild southern shore of Lake Michigan, where a steel com
pany was fashioning a new community. The foreman was O.
B. Vinal, experienced as a mechanic, capable in handling
men, brusque yet kindly in manner. He could mix with any
crowd, live under any conditions. He had the pioneer spirit.
The town smacked of the early gold-rush days in California
or the oil-boom period in western Pennsylvania. A single
street of swirling sand, churned ankle-deep by traffic; a strag-
320 MEN AND VOLTS
gly line of shacks that were lodging houses; brawny, sun-
browned fellows of the construction gangs and erecting
crews, who formed nine-tenths of the population; a constant
rattle of explosive language as man and beast toiled daily
through the sand dunes or shivered in the gales; and sand
fleas everywhere, burrowing and biting, day and night that
was Gary, Indiana, when Vinal and his men first arrived in
November 1907.
The great steel mill was under construction while the big
motors were going in. The salamander stoves, scattered about
in those drafty interiors, flung their warmth hardly beyond an
arm's length against the cutting winds.
The men of the General Electric crew bunked two in a
room in the one substantial hotel, where all united in a cease
less warfare against the fleas!
"Dad" Vinal was boss of the cuisine, general manager of
the hotel, fatherly preceptor to his sixty huskies, and general
construction foreman on the motor-assembly work. By one
means or another he kept up morale through months of grind
in a backwoods environment.
Slowly the huge motors were machined to precision meas
urements and their ponderous parts fitted together. They
were bulky driving units, those motors, towering nearly thirty
feet above the mill floor. And they had never been com
pletely assembled before, even in the factory.
The great flywheels were shipped in sections which the
construction crew had to machine, mount, and bolt in place;
the face of the rotors had to be pared down, so that the air
gap would be two-tenths of an inch across; and four hundred
tons of sheer weight for each complete unit had to be lifted
into place. All this with the knowledge that the motors were
to be tested, for the first time, while steel men from all the
districts looked on.
THE GARY JOB 321
Time pressed, and the sand fleas stuck as relentlessly to
their task as did the men to theirs. Questioning letters came
from Schenectady, and Vinal wrote back reassurances,
though himself not altogether reassured. It was an exhaust
ing life but no one was idle, and excitement added its spice.
What the construction men did not know though the en
gineers at Schenectady did was the skepticism among steel-
mill operators over the mammoth motors. There had been
but a few instances of steel-mill electric drives, all on a com
paratively small scale, and there were none in which the steel
mill was entirely and continuously run by electric motors.
Hence the predictions up to the day of operation that the
motors would never deliver the required power. Back in
Schenectady the young designing engineer, Howard Max
well, held no doubts, for he had designed these motors to de
liver as much as 20,000 horsepower in case of need.
On the day of the test, January 17, 1909, Vinal looked a
good deal calmer than he felt. Steel men by the score had
gathered, and competitors of General Electric, not to men
tion General Electric's own engineers, led by E. W. Rice,
Jr. Vinal moved the handle of the pole-changing switch
which regulated the speed of the steel mill, a speed that was
double that of any previous mill. Hewlett had designed that
mechanism which controlled current at 4000 volts, and had
heard the critics predict its failure.
There was a precipitate backward movement among the
crowd as the motors started a tremendous droning song. The
steel mill was in operation! Vinal and his crew withdrew and
left the big motors to themselves.
[ PART EIGHT ]
Spectacular Applications and
Discoveries, Continued Expansion,
Birth of Radio, Major Achievements
Marking the End of the
Pioneer Period
36
The Romance of Work
IN THE EARLY YEARS of the new century, an epochal struggle
was developing. It dealt with transmission. How could cur
rent be transmitted without undue loss? Unless this question
were solved, transmission distances would be forever limited.
The thing that held them back was nothing other than the
insulators on the poles. Queer-looking tyrants they were, imi
tations of "a lady with an umbrella and a variety of petti
coats." Some of them by 1902 stood as high as a table, were
as plump as a barrel, and weighed nearly sixty pounds. They
were constructed of fragile porcelain, difficult to transport,
to erect, and to replace without breakage. Yet these delicate,
unwieldy objects, weighty as they were, had to be mounted
upright upon the crosspieces of every transmission pole, held
in place by long vertical pins, and there support the swinging
cables attached to their topmost points in spans varying from
400 to 500 feet between poles. To go beyond 70,000 volts,
they would have to be too enormous either to manufacture
or to handle.
What tales the linemen could relate of getting these insu
lators up intact. How difficult the task of replacing one that
325
326 MEN AND VOLTS
had been smashed. They made wonderful targets for thought
less youngsters and sharp-shooting cowboys. And replace
ments had to be made immediately to avoid interruption in
current, no matter how the gales might howl. Insulators
were then selling at $3.50 apiece, and systems of size re
quired from 5000 to 20,000 of them.
Harold W. Buck, electrical engineer of the Niagara Falls
Power Company, who had started with General Electric,
was reflecting in 1905, as was every other transmission engi
neer, upon the things that could be done if electricity could
be transmitted at more than 70,000 volts. At that moment he
had a project in mind that hinged upon the possibility of
transmitting at 100,000 volts.
He had asked the switch engineers of General Electric if
they could construct oil switches for controlling energy at
such a voltage, and they had quickly answered "Yes." But
no one could guarantee him a practical insulator; his plans
were halted there.
Buck pictured his dilemma to Hewlett, General Electric's
veteran switchboard engineer. It was an appeal for help. And
Hewlett was not the man to dismiss a challenge. Together
they discussed problems and sketched ideas.
Buck suggested insulators made of hickory sticks and im
pregnated rope, inserted in the transmission lines between
the dead ends of the cable. Hewlett suggested distributing
the insulation over a series of units. Then he asked why
cables could not be attached to insulators that were sus
pended downward instead of mounted upright, and why
there could not be a unit type that could be made up into
strings as desired.
Hewlett returned to Schenectady and Buck to Niagara,
and both began to experiment. Out of this there came the
suspension type of insulator, Hewlett's conception; and its
t
ELECTRICITY OPERATES THE PANAMA CANAL
The development of control equipment for the Canal was one of the
most important achievements of the early part of this century.
ELECTRICITY CONQUERS THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS
A transcontinental passenger train on the Chicago, Milwaukee 6- St.
Paul being pulled bij an electric locomotive.
THE ROMANCE OF WORK 327
complement, the strain insulator, which was Buck's. They ob
tained a joint patent in 1907.
Broad, flat discs of corrugated porcelain were suspended
from each crossarm in strings one beneath the other, like
Chinese gongs, the bottommost disc supporting the trans
mission cable; this was the suspension type. A severing of
the cable, the insertion of a section of nonconducting ma
terial uniting the severed ends yet itself attached to the cross-
arm of the pole, and a swinging loop of electrical conductor
hung from one dead end of the cable to the other to furnish
a path for the high-voltage current; this was the strain insu
lator.
Between them they carried the day. The nonconducting
function of the insulator, distributed between those several
discs, could be increased as the line voltage was raised by
adding more discs. The strain insulator, which was mounted
only on certain of the poles or towers, took up at regular
intervals the mechanical strains which were imposed upon
the transmission cables.
Steel towers were replacing the less substantial wooden
poles. Since they were more expensive, they were placed
farther apart, and the spans swinging between them were
lengthened to seven, eight, and nine hundred feet. The
cables themselves grew in less than twenty years from the
thickness of one's little finger to the size of a shovel handle.
But the two new insulators sustained those weights with both
mechanical and electrical success.
One of Hewlett's engineer friends asked him as time went
on, "J ust where is the limit in all this?" To which Hewlett re
plied, "I don't know, it's not in our department." And so it
appeared. From 70,000 to 110,000 volts in one leap meant ex
panding two and a half times the area which an electrical
system could serve.
328 MEN AND VOLTS
FROM THE PEN of Chester T. Crowell came a description of
a visit to Schenectady. In telling of his impression of the
great turbine shop, he said:
"An enormous door rolled back on little wheels . . . My
first impression was that we confronted miles and miles of
roofed space. Sunlight, filtering through windows placed
fifty or sixty feet above ground, showed that far away in the
distance there was a rear wall. One saw it through a haze
not of smoke or steam, but just distance . . .
"The mechanism of a steam turbine is as meticulously ac
curate as that of a fine watch, but the delicate measurements
are applied to pieces of metal so large that a dozen men work
ing on them look like ants. These are proud men artists.
Watch their sensitive fingers caress that steel eggshell. Watch
them measure distances as they signal to the ponderous
crane. What pride shines in those faces as ten tons or more
of machinery silently meets the floor, every corner in place.
"These are not horny-handed laborers . . . their features
are keen and sensitive; brawn is not a premium here , . .
They are working on what will eventually be one of the
world's great power plants; they are working under the direc
tion of engineers and scientists whose acquaintance is an
honor . . .
"I watched it (the central shaft) turning slowly round and
round, while a man wearing glasses appeared to be polishing
it ... Coming nearer I observed that this man was working
with several queer implements.
" Tm trimming this to measurement/ he explained. A rib
bon of steel thinner than paper was curling up from one of
his implements.
" 'What do they allow you on this?'
" 'One-thousandth under; nothing over/ was the reply.
THE ROMANCE OF WORK 329
"At the point where he was working the shaft was about
three feet in diameter. I was told it weighed fifty-five tons.
He was trimming it to the precise measurement named in
the specification and the margin allowed him for human
error was one-thousandth of an inch!
"That man remains indelibly in my memory as a figure of
romance. He and his sharp eyes and steady nerves, calmly
facing that margin of one-thousandth of an inch! . . .
"That man is an artist. Of the men I saw working in that
cathedral of manufacture, none impressed me as a shy, mod
est creature. Make no mistake, they have a keen sense of the
romance and adventure of work."
Going from the busy shops to a quiet little workshop in
one of the laboratory buildings, we find picturesque old
Julien Tournier, who had joined Edison's little group as an
instrument worker in 1882. He had become an interesting
"old-timer" at the Schenectady plant; a slight, white-haired,
white-bearded figure, with a touch of French vivacity in his
speech, he was always surrounded by an orderly confusion
of tools and materials.
When Gerrit A. Beneker, the painter of men, visited Schen
ectady searching for types of industrial workers, he painted
Tournier, and called his portrait "The Inventor." And when,
a few years later, old Julien Tournier died, General Electric's
current advertising space in a well-known technical journal
consisted of a reproduction of Beneker's portrait of Tournier,
and under it these words:
"In the life program of Julien Charles Tournier, public
recognition played no part.
"He began as an instrument maker in Edison's laboratory.
His forty-five years of service to electricity were completed
in the same work ... He invented and contributed improve
ments to switches, sockets, fuse-plugs, and attachment-plugs.
330 MEN AND VOLTS
He might have retired, had he so chosen, and lived in com
fort; but his love of electricity was his life, and he was con
tent.
"We publish his picture as a tribute to him, and because he
typified the thousands of men and women who have dedi
cated their lives to electrical development. The world will
never know their names. They have no craving to be known.
But their devotion is quite beyond the interest of men in
ordinary business. Within the ranks of the General Electric
Company are many such men. Their spirit is the best as
surance that electricity will year by year find more and better
ways to serve."
IN 1907, TWO FIREBOATS launched upon the Chicago River
by the city of Chicago, the Graeme Stewart and the Joseph
Medill, were the first vessels in America to be propelled ef
fectively by electrical energy. General Electric had not for
gotten its contract with Charles G. Curtis which permitted
it to use steam turbines with electric generators for driving
the propeller of a ship. The Manitowoc Dry Dock Company,
builders of the two fireboats, awarded to General Electric
the contract for the electrical equipment of the craft. A. A.
Babcock, the builders' engineer, worked with General Elec-
tric's marine engineers, particularly W. L. R. Emmet, John
H. Clark, and Maxwell W. Day, over the engineering eco
nomics and operating efficiencies of so grouping the ma
chinery that one 660-horsepower Curtis steam turbine drove
both the electric generator and the water pumps.
In this same year the alternating-current transformer was
helped over a hurdle. The transformer in its smaller sizes,
which distributed electrical energy for local neighborhoods,
had developed disconcerting electrical losses, whose only
apparent remedy involved too great an expense to make
THE ROMANCE OF WORK 331
their use practicable. When the prospect looked particularly
dark, there came a ray of light from England. Sir Robert
Hadfield, scientist, had discovered an alloy of steel and
silicon, and General Electric, under a patent license, at once
undertook to produce it in quantity. W. S. Moody, Chief
Transformer Engineer, experimented until at last he suc
ceeded in rolling the new steel in large tonnages. The di
lemma of the small transformer was solved.
It was also in 1907 that Rice and Ord, vice presidents, rec
ommended to the directors the purchase of seven hundred
acres of land at Erie, Pennsylvania, whereon to build a new
plant when times were brighter. Confident that times would
be brighter, they sought to shift manufacturing toward the
geographical center of population. The plan was amply justi
fied; that land became the site of the Erie Works of today,
the center of its electric transportation activities.
SHORTLY BEFORE 1900 a glass tube, 186 feet in length, had
been placed one day in the foyer at Madison Square Garden.
As night drew on this tube glowed with a brilliant white
radiance. The illumination extended to all parts of the foyer.
It was the first of Moore's practical gaseous lamps. Its effec
tiveness attracted great attention, and the test established
the fact that it was more economical of electric current than
the incandescent light. Within a few years a number of radi
ant tubes had appeared in Manhattan.
Such events were not to be ignored by General Electric,
manufacturers of the lamp with the carbon filament, which
Moore had once told Edison was "too small, too red, and too
hot." Was that lamp to be supplanted after twenty-five years
by a luminous gas?
It was possible, despite the fact that the Moore tube was
cumbersome. It had to be installed by expert workmen, ex-
332 MEN AND VOLTS
hausted of its air upon the premises, and its replacement
when it got out of order was a troublesome procedure.
Hence, although Coffin and Rice negotiated for Moore's
patent rights, they also implored Whitney to add an able
man to his staff to study the elements which had promise of
yielding better filaments. Whitney immediately recom
mended Dr. William D. Coolidge, of the faculty of the Mas
sachusetts Institute of Technology, who had been doing
original work in physical chemistry.
So Coolidge, in Boston, received a surprising offer from
Whitney. But it was an offer that proved satisfactory, and
early in 1905 Coolidge became a General Electric researcher.
Just as these preparations were being made, scientific
men were stirred by news of a great discovery in Europe.
An incandescent electric lamp had been developed which
contained a filament made of the most intractable of sub
stances, the metal known as tungsten.
37
The Taming of Tungsten
TUNGSTEN WAS INTRACTABLE, more brittle than dry bone,
more fragile than an eggshell. Yet in 1904 men fashioned it
into slender, hairlike filaments for incandescent lamps.
Two laboratory workers in a far land brought forth these
filaments of tungsten. They had no funds with which to fi
nance their work, but they summoned to their task patience
and sustained, intelligent endeavor.
In 1902 Dr. Alexander Just, a laboratory assistant in the
Technical High School in Vienna, began experimenting in
his spare time to develop a new form of filament for incandes
cent lamps. He did not think at first of tungsten but tried a
number of other substances. He associated with himself a col
league, Franz Hanaman, and they studied tungsten between
them, experimenting for two years.
Both were men of small financial means. They paid their
laboratory expenses from their humble salaries. Dr. Just's
income was $55 a month. And they had set themselves a
mountainous task.
Tungsten existed only as a gray-black powder of fine hard
particles, or as a rough, half -fused mass. Except as an alloy
333
334 MEN AND VOLTS
in tungsten steel, it had never had any commercial value. In
itself it had never been shaped into any useful form. Yet the
two impoverished Austrians believed they could put this un
workable, brittle, and hitherto useless metal into incandes
cent lamps as thin, looped filaments.
Realizing that they could not work tungsten as ordinary
metals are worked, Just and Hanaman tried various chemi
cal treating methods, usually at high temperatures. At length
they hit upon two ways of producing filaments of pure
tungsten. The most satisfactory process of the two was that
in which the tungsten was sintered together. The tungsten
powder was first mixed with a solution of sugar and gum
arabic. The thick paste resulting was squirted under high
pressure through a diamond die. As it issued from the die,
it was caught upon pieces of cardboard in loops. It was then
treated so that the sugar and gum arabic were turned into
carbon, which was removed by a further treating process,
leaving pure tungsten.
In the final treating, which required a very high tempera
ture, the tungsten, upon being freed from the carbon, under
went a curious evolution. The tiny particles became sintered,
or drawn together, in a form resembling dovetailing; and so
tungsten filaments of coherent mass, but of extreme fra
gility, were made.
At that moment was born the tungsten era in incandescent
illumination, though to all intents and purposes it seemed
doomed to strangulation at birth. For Just and Hanaman
lacked the funds to commercialize their invention. They
even lacked the funds with which to obtain a patent. In
1904 they managed to borrow $60, which enabled them to
apply for British and French patents. They applied for an
American patent the following year. But they lacked the
further funds needed to place their invention on the market.
THE TAMING OF TUNGSTEN 335
By that time two other European inventors, Dr. Werner
von Bolton and Dr. Hanz Kuzel, in Germany, had made
counter claims.
In the spring of 1906 Coffin and Rice dispatched two
scouts to investigate, Dr. Whitney and John W. Howell.
They went first to Berlin, and there by chance picked up the
trail.
They were walking along the street one evening when
they observed some unusually brilliant electric lamps shin
ing in a store window. The shopkeeper was dazed by the
rapidity of their questions. "Ach so, from the Auergeselschaft
came those lamps." The Americans hastened to the plant and
there heard the story of von Bolton's tungsten lamps.
Tests proved the lamps far better than any Whitney and
Howell had seen. They made a bid at once for the American
rights. There the plant officials told them of KuzeFs work,
and also that of Just and Hanaman. Whitney and Howell
went straightway to Augsburg, Budapest, and Vienna to see
the other inventors and in each case to open patent negotia
tions. They recognized the possibility of a patent conflict.
There were three inventors. But who had priority? It was
impossible at that moment to determine.
General Electric paid $400,000 to Just and Hanaman alone,
and it expended a total of $1,500,000 before it acquired the
rights to all three patents, thus assuring the tungsten-lamp
market in America, regardless of the patent outcome.
The tungsten-filament lamp was commercially introduced
by General Electric in 1907. Millions of the lamps were
sold yearly despite the fragile filament, because they were
one hundred per cent more efficient than the tantalum lamps.
The tungsten filament reduced the consumption of electric
energy from two watts to one per candlepower. The tantalum
lamp had yielded 370 candles per horsepower; the tungsten
336 MEN AND VOLTS
lamp yielded 746. It was the greatest forward step made in
incandescent electric lamps.
A long leap, indeed, from Edison's first carbon lamps, con
suming seven or eight watts per candlepower and yielding
but 100 candles per horsepower. Yet something else as
wonderful was about to happen. Coolidge, at Schenectady,
had proposed that tungsten could be rendered ductile!
It was a bold adventure, along a trail many had ignored
altogether. For tungsten, of all elements, seemed destined to
remain untamed. It's brittleness was traditional in the scien
tific world. But in the face of tradition, Coolidge set to
work. To decisive assertions that it could never be done,
Coolidge said simply, "Let's try!"
Experiments carried him through six years, demanding
more patience than would seem humanly possible. They im
posed a drudgery that would kill the spirit of anyone lacking
the true inventive temper. And it cost Coolidge a degree of
mental concentration that lined his face for life.
In that expanding workshop where Whitney, the direct
ing genius, made the rounds of the laboratory rooms each
day with the exuberant query, "Good morning! Having good
fun today?" Coolidge began wrestling with that most in
tractable of metals. Preoccupied from morning to night, from
month to month, he worked grimly to make it ductile and
pliable as wire.
Seldom was there such an unyielding subject. It permitted
of being bent when heated to a very high temperature, but
was as brittle as ever when it cooled. Yet Coolidge dis
covered that at certain temperatures he could hammer the
metal and elongate it, something no one had ever before ac
complished. It was enough to save him from discouragement,
and it started him working in a new direction.
Coolidge now hovered incessantly around heat-treating
THE TAMING OF TUNGSTEN 337
bottles and electric resistance furnaces, perspiring through
hot summer days in the dusty laboratory workroom. He
pressed tungsten in heated rolling mills used by jewellers.
He pressed it between hot slabs of tungsten steel. He tried
drawing it through heated dies whose diameter was no
greater than a thousandth of an inch. With larger dies the
tungsten rod invariably broke.
And then late in the fall of 1908, Coolidge first held ductile
tungsten in his hands! For the pressed tungsten filament,
drawn through one heated die after another, each slightly
smaller than the last, and itself heated and reheated, had
lost its brittleness. It could be bent without breaking, even
when cold!
Verifying his experiments, Coolidge found that tungsten
behaved in a manner that was the exact opposite of all other
metals. The longer it was worked at high temperatures the
more ductile it became; whereas other metals under this proc
ess lose their ductility and turn brittle. Peering through his
microscope he found that ductile tungsten was fibrous in
structure, while non-ductile tungsten was crystalline which
is also the reverse of all other metals.
But Coolidge's work was by no means finished. It was one
thing to transform tungsten laboriously in the laboratory;
it was quite another to work with large quantities of the
metal on a commercial basis in the factory. It looked as if
commercial production of ductile tungsten was not to be at
tained. For two years more Coolidge kept at it, his hopes
almost smothered.
He could not produce the right kind of tungsten slug for
the hot-drawing process. For commercial use, a larger slug
was needed than the tiny one of pressed tungsten used in
his experiment. He pressed the tungsten powder in a mold.
When the pressed slugs were finally obtained, they were so
338 MEN AND VOLTS
fragile that they could not be lifted, and a heat-treating proc
ess was developed to give them mechanical strength.
Then the slugs would shrink under the heat, break in two
or pull away from the clamps.
They were so brittle, both hot and cold, that nothing could
be done with them.
Coolidge, still unbeaten, turned to swaging machines. At
last he was able to hot-swage the slug as it came, sintered
into a coherent mass, from the treating bottle, to a diameter
of an eighth of an inch. The hot-swaging process won the
day. The slug could now be worked into smaller and smaller
diameters. Shortly before it reached the die-drawing di
ameter of 25 one-thousandths of an inch, the tungsten be
came ductile. It had become a slender gossamer wire, with
all the properties of wire and only one-sixth the diameter
of a human hair!
Small and marvellously strong. The more ductile it be
came the stronger it grew. When its diameter was measur
able by thousandths of an inch, it attained a tensile strength
of 590,000 pounds to the square inch.
So Coolidge converted an obstinate metal, more brittle
than eggshells, into a pliable wire smaller than a hair and
stronger than any other substance known to man. It was a
transformation as extraordinary as if one were to take flour
and by some magic turn it into a wire stouter than a steel
cable.
Ductile tungsten, in recognition of the man who tamed it,
is often referred to as Coolidge metal or Coolidge wire. It
meant physical stability for the tungsten lamp. And it meant
a revolution, almost an upheaval, at the Edison Lamp Works.
Only four years before, the manufacture of the sintered fila
ment had begun, and now, in 1911, every bit of equipment
for producing sintered filaments was scrapped.
THE TAMING OF TUNGSTEN 339
Scores of new machines were disposed of in the junk mar
ket without being unpacked. Half a million dollars was sacri
ficed in replacing the old equipment with new. Another half
million dollars was sacrificed in the stock of unsold sintered-
filament lamps, for which there was no longer a market.
The public benefited, in reduced lamp prices, as well as in
the greater efficiency of the lamp. In 1914 the volume of
electric illumination utilized by the American people repre
sented a saving of $200,000,000 a year over what its cost
would have been with the metallized carbon-filament lamp.
And the cost of light as a commodity was dropping while the
costs of other commodities were going up.
38
The Fire of Prosecution
IN 1911 GENERAL ELECTRIC was brought into court. It was
the chief of thirty-four defendants in a suit instituted on
March 3, 1911, by the United States government, through
Attorney General Wickersham, "against what is alleged to
be one of the most powerful and complete monopolies in the
country."
The arraignment of the "electrical trust," and a recital of
the attendant allegations, was part of the news of the day.
The formal charge was a violation of the Sherman anti-trust
law in the marketing of incandescent lamps. And there was a
long recital of practices which the government believed to
be in restraint of trade.
The attitude of the government in submitting these charges
can perhaps be best understood by a brief examination of
its views in the matter. The interest of General Electric in
the National Electric Lamp Association was disclosed, with
the intimation that competition between the different com
panies of the Association, both with each other and with
General Electric, was artificial rather than genuine. The
government in its bill of complaint pointed to the practice
340
THE FIRE OF PROSECUTION 341
of requiring wholesale houses and dealers to maintain the
price of lamps as fixed by General Electric, and to the patent
agreement with the Westinghouse Company, which expired
that year.
At first General Electric's counsel planned to make formal
answer to the complaint. Indeed, such an answer was drawn,
printed, and filed. It admitted the facts embodied in the prac
tices cited, but denied that those practices constituted a viola
tion of the law and particularly denied any intent to commit
such violation. It pointed out that the National Association
with its service units was fully able to compete with the
Edison Lamp Works in research and experiments in all
branches of lamp manufacturing, and that the stifling of
competition was what they wished to avoid by financing this
Association, whose management was entirely in the hands of
the minority stockholders.
The bill of complaint stated that General Electric was pro
longing its patent monopoly of incandescent lamps after the
patents had expired. This seems to have referred especially
to the carbon-filament lamp. General Electric replied that al
though the patents on the lamp had run out, those governing
the methods of its manufacture were still in force. Every ma
chine used in the process of manufacture was patented;
most of them were essential to volume manufacture, and the
processes could still be infringed upon.
The government's petition went on to charge that General
Electric had bought patents and patent rights until it had a
monopoly of every succeeding type of incandescent lamp
that had ever appeared. This, it contended, prevented the
different types the carbon, the metallized, the tantalum and
the tungsten from competing with each other. The defence
replied that the different types of lamps could not in any way
be considered competitive, since each constituted an im-
342 MEN AND VOLTS
provement and was designed to replace the preceding one.
After filing its answer to the government's charges, Gen
eral Electric determined that instead of going on trial and
contesting the charges, endeavoring to justify its practices
before the court, it would ask permission to withdraw its
answer and indicate its willingness to submit to a decree. It
had never had any intention of engaging in illegal practices
and was therefore willing to have the government pass judg
ment without pleading its case. It stipulated that it would
not appeal from the Court's decision. The defendent affirmed
its "desire and intention ... to comply with each and all
the provisions of the Statutes of the United States . . . and
not to operate under or make or carry on any such contracts
or practices as are condemned by said Act of Congress as
now construed by the Court."
Judge John M. Killits, in the Circuit Court, northern dis
trict of Ohio, permitted this procedure and issued his decree
on October 12, 1911. In brief, he found that most of the
practices described in the government's petition were acts
in restraint of trade, as embraced within the meaning of the
law, particularly the method of marketing the incandescent
lamp.
He ordered the dissolution of the National Electric Lamp
Association, ordered General Electric to do business only in
its own name, to refrain from fixing the prices at which in
candescent lamps might be resold to the public, and to re
frain from bringing pressure to bear in order to market types
of lamps lacking any legitimate demand.
The decree raised a new problem. How could General
Electric legally continue to market its incandescent lamps to
the general public without risking arbitrary price manipula
tion by retail dealers? In the belief of General Electric only
one basis existed for raising or lowering lamp prices. That
THOMAS A. EDISON AT THE AGE OF 79
EL1HU THOMSON IN LATER LIFE
THE FIRE OF PROSECUTION 343
basis was the rise or fall of costs in other words, a legitimate
economic basis. Artificial price changes by local dealers, ac
cording to this theory, would introduce complications result
ing in an unfriendly reaction by the public toward the in
candescent lamp.
To meet this situation the officials of the Company worked
out the present agency plan of selling lamps by which local
dealers became agents under contract of General Electric.
Stocks of lamps were not sold to them outright but taken on
consignment, the company retaining ownership in the lamps
while they were in the agents' hands, and relinquishing own
ership only when the agent sold the lamps. Thus the sale by
an agent to a consumer was a first sale rather than a resale,
as formerly, and General Electric could therefore legally con
trol the price of its product to the consumer.
The company submitted this plan to the Attorney General
at Washington, who declined to pass upon its legality. But
feeling sure of its ground, General Electric put the plan into
effect in 1912.
This practice was not passed upon by a court of law until
1926. The government again brought suit against both Gen
eral Electric and Westinghouse, charging that the agency
plan was only an evasion of the decree of 1911 and "intended
to carry out the same evil result." The case went, on appeal,
to the United States Supreme Court, which held that the
agency system as practiced by General Electric was a per
fectly legal method of selling a product, and that the thou
sands of dealers holding contracts as lamp agents were in
effect in the same status as employes of the company and
entitled to make first sales.
Meanwhile a radical readjustment in the National Electric
Lamp Association was going on. Even before the Court's
decree of 1911 was issued, General Electric had exercised
344 MEN AND VOLTS
its option of purchasing the remaining stock in the Associa
tion, and became sole owner.
About this time the Cleveland headquarters were moved
to Nela Park, just outside of Cleveland, so pronounced in
natural beauty, so impressive in man's handiwork, that it
became known as one of the most remarkable institutions
possessed by American industry.
The name "Nela" was coined from the initials of the
National Electric Lamp Association, and so became a memo
rial to that organization which was dissolved by order of the
Court, as were all its component companies. They were
merged into General Electric; the factory at Cleveland be
came the National Lamp Works of General Electric; the
other individual factories became simply additional plants.
Terry and Tremaine had dreamed of Nela Park long before
they set to work, in 1910, to bring the dream to pass. Terry
had said to his colleagues: "Let us create a center like the
well-known institutions of the fine arts to stimulate morale
and encourage individuality, and at the same time to make
us better known before the public." The spot they finally
selected was isolated amid the charm of forest and landscape.
There, in 1910, they erected a group of buildings harmonious
in architecture, marked by a dominant simplicity. Twelve
buildings were arranged in the form of an extensive quad
rangle, and have often been called "the university of light."
So emerged Nela Park, self-contained and self -maintained,
yet consciously linked with the successors of Thomson and
of Edison.
39
The Eternal "Why?"
IN TAMING TUNGSTEN, Coolidge had revealed an "unknown
land" where scores of mysterious roads stretched away to
a beckoning horizon. Both he and Whitney felt their pulses
quicken as they surveyed the prospect that lay before them.
They needed new explorers. The call went out to the
world of technical men, and from institutions far and near
recruits flocked to the town beside the Mohawk.
By 1912 the research personnel numbered nearly two hun
dred. One of the new arrivals was young Irving Langmuir,
who came in 1909 from Stevens Institute of Technology,
once presided over by Dr. Morton, one of Edison's severest
critics. The new recruit came with a fine academic record, a
prolonged period of training and an inquisitive mind. He
was one of the "why" men who are ever prying into the
secrets of the world's mysterious phenomena. Such men
never outgrow the habit formed in childhood of continually
seeking answers to their questions.
Langmuir's curiosity fitted exactly into Whitney's plan.
There were a great many "whys" to be asked about the in
candescent lamp. Why did the lamp bulbs sometimes show
345
346 MEN AND VOLTS
a blackening on their inside surfaces, which interfered with
illumination? Why did current flow inside the bulb, between
the legs of the filament, in what was known as the Edison
Effect? Such questions were to Langmuir as scent is to the
hound.
There were opinions and theories enough about the black
ening of the bulb. It was commonly believed that minute
traces of gases remained inside the bulb, and that these
gases, striking the hot filament, caused it to disintegrate im
perceptibly, and that the particles of tungsten from the dis
integrating filament were deposited on the surface of the
bulb, causing it to blacken.
Langmuir was not content with theories. He established
the fact that there were gases in the supposed vacuum, and
then he determined just what those gases were. Their quan
tities were so small that he had to invent special instruments
of the utmost sensitiveness.
He found that there were five gases in the bulb, water
vapor, hydrocarbon vapors, carbon monoxide, carbon diox
ide, and hydrogen; but that the only gas which acted on the
filament in such a manner as to blacken the bulb was water
vapor. The next step was to eliminate the criminal. He tried
to do this by producing a vacuum higher than any previously
known; from a millionth of an atmosphere he raised the
vacuum to less than a billionth. And he resorted to endless
precautions to keep out water vapor.
But still the blackening went on. Why? He could think of
only one other possibility the evaporation of the tungsten
in the filament.
A succession of experiments proved that the tungsten fila
ment did lose weight; and that blackening came from its
evaporation. The water vapor merely facilitated the process;
STEINMETZ DEMONSTRATES HIS MAN-MADE LIGHTNING
A FLAMING ARC CRACKLES AT PITTSFIELD
Visitors on the balcony of the High Voltage Laboratory watch elec
tricity put through its more spectacular tricks.
THE ETERNAL "WHY?" 347
the other gases, some more than others, retarded or even
nullified it by reducing the rate of evaporation.
There might be one gas, thought Langmuir, which would
so reduce the rate of evaporation as to increase the efficiency
of the lamp. With the first experiments a new situation arose.
He succeeded in retarding the evaporation of the tungsten,
but the dissipation of heat from the filament through gas
conduction was found to be considerable. Some gases cooled
the filament so greatly that the amount of electrical energy
required to maintain the proper temperature of the filament
rendered them commercially impractical.
Langmuir now faced the problem of what combination of
inert gas and tungsten filament would reduce the evapora
tion of the tungsten and overcome the dissipation of heat
through the gas. It meant a study of the laws governing heat
losses through convection, a subject which had hardly been
touched upon.
This stage of the investigation yielded surprising informa
tion. Langmuir discovered that filaments of relatively large
diameter do not suffer as large a heat loss in proportion as
do smaller filaments, a fact contrary to expectations. The
explanation was curious. Langmuir found that the filament,
when heated in any inert gas, became surrounded by a film
of hot gas. This film had a thickness independent of the dia
meter of the filament. If the filament was doubled in size,
the film became only slightly thicker and the rate of heat
dissipation did not become doubly greater. It was obvious
that filaments of larger diameter would be more efficient in
gases. This, unfortunately, meant a larger quantity of raw
material in the filament.
Langmuir continued his experiments until he had satisfied
himself that argon was the most desirable inert gas for the
348 MEN AND VOLTS
lamp bulb. He also found that the gas should be introduced
at atmospheric pressure, rather than in a high vacuum. But
the lamps he made for testing contained filaments that were
relatively large, and consumed from two to six thousand
watts.
One step was needed to make this the light of lights. Was
it impossible to use a filament of small diameter? Anyone
else would have said yes. But Langmuir discovered that a
coiled filament of small diameter gave all the advantages of
one of larger diameter.
Patiently he sought to discover how large a coil was de
sirable, how far apart the turns should be, and what would
be the effect on the gas film. The outcome was an incandes
cent lamp which was twice as efficient as the ordinary
vacuum tungsten lamp.
What did this mean? A one hundred per cent advance at
a single stride! The new lamp required one-half of one watt
per candle, and gave 1492 candles per horsepower. It was
fourteen times as efficient as the first carbon lamps. Above all
it meant that incandescent lamps of large capacity would be
able to compete with the arc lamp, even with the magnetite
arc! It was a marvelous illustration of what can come to pass
when a trained investigator with the gift of asking questions
starts to answer that enormous little word "Why?" In 1913
the first commercial gas-filled incandescent lamps made their
appearance and became instantly popular.
THE YEAR 1913 saw a number of changes in the executive
organization of General Electric. Charles A. Coffin, the mas
ter builder of General Electric's destiny, announced that he
wished to relinquish his position as President and become
Chairman of the Board. He had reached the age of sixty-nine.
For twenty-one years he had been president of General Elec-
RADIO AND X-RAYS 349
trie. During those years he had combined in his own person
the positions of President of the company and Chairman of
the Board, so that his action in 1913 meant virtually a division
of his responsibilities. It did not deprive the General Electric
Company of his counsel, nor did it decrease his keen super
vision over its affairs.
E. W. Rice, Jr., was made the new General Electric Presi
dent. It was just thirty years since Rice had gone to Lynn as
Professor Thomson's assistant after earning his salt by clean
ing castings and whitewashing walls at New Britain. Now
he was the head of a great technical and industrial institu
tion.
He entered upon his term of office under far more favora
ble auspices than Coffin had done, twenty-one years before.
It was no longer a time of stormy financial skies and of hostile
criticism. No one was attacking General Electric's methods
on the ground that there could not be enough business in
electrical manufacturing to pay dividends on so much capital.
Yet technical problems there were in ever-greater numbers,
and these Rice was supremely qualified to handle. Great as
had been the accomplishments of the past, still greater and
more amazing things were wrapped in the silence of the
future.
Soon after the turn of the century, a tall, stalwart recruit,
noticeably Scandinavian of feature, boarded a train bound
for Schenectady. He had left Sweden a year or two earlier
and his English was still halting. It was 1902, years before
Coolidge or Langmuir had joined the research laboratory, or
Hewlett had strung porcelain "dinner plates" together and
called them insulators.
This recruit eagerly watched the buildings on the river
flats glide into view from the train window. In his eyes there
was a look of curiosity and expectancy. But what he was
350 MEN AND VOLTS
searching for, and how successful he would be in finding it,
time alone would reveal.
For the next year or two no one heard of Ernst F. W.
Alexanderson, who was bending diligently over a drafting
board, then studying the construction of railway motors. His
soul was there among the armatures and field coils, the
watts and torques. The world was going to hear from him.
The thing that first drew attention to his talents was the
Alexanderson single-phase railway motor of 1904. Not long
after, when he asked for a chance at another problem, he was
assigned to the new field of radio.
Radio in those days was just plain "wireless." Embryonic,
immature, firing the enthusiasm of the few, its future was
ignored by the many. But the young engineer from Sweden
had kept abreast of radio work from those days in 1896 and
1897 when Marconi proved to an astonished world that mes
sages could be transmitted without wires.
Since that time General Electric had worked on radio de
velopment. It had designed and manufactured efficient spark
sets working at the low frequency of five hundred cycles.
This meant that the alternating current which set free those
mysterious radio waves pulsated five hundred times per sec
ond. The great need of the moment was for a generator to
produce alternating current of high frequency. Professor
Reginald A. Fessenden had attempted to build such a gen
erator, and finally he took his problem to General Electric.
The person to attack the proposition with determination was
young Alexanderson.
For two years he devoted himself to it. For two years he
was a target for many a sly shot loaded with that overworked
word "impossible." But like the rest of his breed, he was in
vulnerable. At the end of two years, the critics were con
verted. The first models of his high frequency alternator
RADIO AND X-RAYS 351
would generate two kilowatts of alternating current at 60,-
000 cycles. Soon they reached 100,000 cycles. Inconceivable
that anything in the material universe could pulsate so many
times in a single second.
An alternator invented in England had a frequency of
120,000 cycles, but its output was only a fraction of a watt.
Alexanderson produced an alternator of 200,000 watts. In
it, precision was combined with the most delicate adjust
ments. The alternator when ready for the market was a pon
derous affair, including a huge rotating disc that weighed
tons and an array of supplementary parts which maintained
exact operating regulation.
The immense rotating disc revolved in strong magnetic
fields, and its periphery travelled 700 miles an hour; in four
hours it could have rolled across the Atlantic. There were
fearful moments in the laboratory when the first models
were brought up to speed, and furtive glances toward the
door. Yet for all its speed, that huge disc was not permitted
to vary from its position by so much as the three-hundredth
part of an inch. And the speed was kept constant, to the
smallest fraction of a revolution.
This first achievement of the young Swedish inventor
suggested so many possibilities that he forsook other fields
of electrical endeavor. In 1906 the first installations of his
pioneer achievement were made; two units were sent to the
laboratory of John Hays Hammond, Jr., at Gloucester, and
one to the American Marconi Company at New Brunswick.
No one could deny that Alexanderson had metamorphosed
radio. The old spark set and arc generators could transmit
only short distances; the new alternator created electro
magnetic waves that leapt the oceans. The 200-kilowatt alter
nator, completed in 1918, was to become the foundation of
the first great trans-oceanic radio system.
352 MEN AND VOLTS
Alexanderson aspired to a complete radio transmitting
system, just as Edison had once aspired to a complete electric
lighting system. Soon he worked out a magnetic device for
controlling the energy generated by the alternator under the
impulse of the dots and dashes of a telegraph key or the
sound of the human voice. He tested this magnetic modu
lator, as he called it, for radio telephony, but the electrical
impulse coming from the microphone was so weak that the
modulator would not operate. Some means of amplifying
the impulse must be found.
Alexanderson turned to the Research Laboratory. Dr.
Whitney once remarked that "research needs more aviators,"
that is, aviators in spirit. Langmuir, in the laboratory, had
been "cultivating a flying spirit/' And in so doing he had
produced a new type of vacuum tube.
He had made this discovery in following the trail of the
blackened bulbs. In solving the problem of the gases in the
bulb he had invented an exhaust pump which produced a
higher vacuum than ever before achieved. Formerly one
molecule of air in a hundred thousand left in the bulb was
thought to be a high vacuum. But Langmuir's mercury con
densation pump left only one molecule in ten billion. His
work with the vacuum led to another of those stimulating
"Whys?" For Langmuir noted that with a certain vacuum
the Edison Effect occurred, while above that range it could
not be observed.
Langmuir was the latest of a brilliant succession to investi
gate the Edison Effect. Edison himself was the first to notice
the strange blue glow within the bulb, and he proved it to
be caused by the passage of current between the legs of the
filament. That was thirty years earlier. Fourteen years later,
in 1897, Sir Joseph Thomson, foremost scientist of his day,
discovered the reason for that phenomenon when he dis-
RADIO AND X-RAYS 353
covered the electron, the unit of electricity. He studied par
ticularly the electron in a vacuum, and proved that when the
filament of an incandescent lamp becomes hot it throws out
electrons, constituting negative electricity, and that these
electrons are attracted by a wire or metallic plate connected
to the positive side of the supply circuit.
Langmuir went to work at once to design a vacuum tube
based on his discovery. It could work at 250 volts, whereas
the old audion tube was limited to 30 volts. It could handle
watts and even kilowatts, while the previous tubes were con
fined to small fractions of a watt. It could amplify the impulse
of a microphone to any volume for radiation as electromag
netic waves from an antenna; and thus it provided the ampli
fier for which Alexanderson was looking.
Edison's discovery of thirty years before resulted in a new
art, a new industry. Through it were assured practical radio
telephony and radiobroadcasting. As Dr. Whitney once said,
"In the advance of civilization it is new knowledge which
paves the way and the pavement is eternal."
Through the ages electrons had pursued their course
through the world without once being detected. Into that
invisible electronic world, which science now believes is
identical with the material world, Langmuir was the first to
enter and make those "big little things" do his bidding. He
harnessed them for as long as mankind endures.
When two of Langmuir's fellows in General Electric be
came aware of what he had done, they applied his electronic
discovery to further practical ends. One of these was Alex
anderson; the other was Coolidge, the tamer of tungsten.
It was Langmuir's radiotron, the first of the high-vacuum,
high-voltage tubes, which rendered Alexanderson's magnetic
modulator efficient, and so permitted proper control of the
energy produced by the high-frequency alternator. Alex-
354 MEN AND VOLTS
anderson could now offer an efficient, long-distance, high-
power transmitting unit. And his work from 1913-1916 was
closely watched by Marconi.
Alexanderson sought to develop equipment for commercial
companies. He studied the existing apparatus of commercial
stations, particularly the adaptation of apparatus to his new
unit, the alternator. The antenna, as Alexanderson himself
once said, "corresponds to the hull of a rocking boat, with
which we produce waves in the water." If the hull is heavy,
greater energy is necessary to rock it because of its resistance.
And Alexanderson found that the radio antennae of com
mercial stations possessed unduly high resistance, so that
they wasted power which might otherwise have produced
radio waves.
Alexanderson eliminated the waste by grounding the an
tenna at equal intervals producing the effect of several an
tennae connected in parallel, each tuned to the same wave
length. Resistance was so reduced that 200 kilowatts of en
ergy had the same effect as 1200 kilowatts upon the former
type of antenna. This was his multiple-tuned antenna, dem
onstrated at Schenectady in February, 1916.
Both radio telegraphy and radio telephony were now prac
tically possible. Alexanderson immediately designed a duplex
radio telephone system, and on November 24, 1916, occurred
one of the earliest demonstrations of two-way wireless te
lephony, when men at the General Electric plant at Pitts-
field talked to men at the Schenectady plant.
The Marconi wireless station at New Brunswick, however,
brought the Alexanderson system to fame. It was to become
one of the most notable radio stations in America during the
Great War.
But before that time came, one of the most significant
happenings among General Electric men was the application
208,000 HORSEPOWER
A three-unit General Electric turbine-generator set installed in a cen
tral station.
Itf
t
EVOLUTION OF THE INCANDESCENT LAMP
Edison's first lamp, carbon-filament lamp, tantalum-filament lamp,
drawn-tungsten filament lamp with tip, gas-filled lamp with tip, vac
uum lamp without tip, gas-filled lamp without tip, inside-frosted lamp.
RADIO AND X-RAYS 355
by Coolidge of Langmuir's electronic research to Roentgen-
ray work.
General Electric had manufactured X-ray equipment since
Professor Wilhelm K. Roentgen, in 1895, discovered a new
ray whose properties were so little known at the time as to
warrant the title "X"-ray. Professor Thomson at Lynn had
studied the phenomenon and designed the apparatus, which
went by his name. They were the Thomson inductorium, a
form of induction coil, and the Thomson Roentgen-ray trans
former. The latter supplied alternating current to the tube,
which contained three electrodes, two of aluminum and one
of platinum.
No radical change in these tubes took place for fifteen
years. Then Coolidge, fresh from ductilizing tungsten and
equipped with the new knowledge of electronic behavior,
began to study tungsten as an X-ray electrode, or "target,"
in place of platinum. X-rays of greater power were produced,
as high voltages were employed.
Day after day Coolidge entered a lead-lined booth with a
window of leaded glass through which he watched the ac
tion of his tubes. Lead offers an impassable barrier to the
X-ray and hence constitutes a safe screen for the research
worker. Outside the room was a danger zone, filled with
powerful electrical emanations from the tube which was
under test. But the worker in his tower was able safely to
take notes of every change in the conditions governing the
tube.
Finally in 1913 Coolidge brought out a tube that operated
at 100,000 volts or higher; a tube in which the X-rays were
created by a bombardment of electrons from the tungsten
electrode; a tube which could be kept in operation for hours
and whose intense rays were capable of a high degree of
penetration.
356 MEN AND VOLTS
YET RESEARCH WAS ONLY ONE of many departments of ac
tivity. Even as Coolidge was fashioning a new tool in thera
peutics, a group of men in Hewlett's office in the Switch
board Engineering Department was talking over a control
system for the mighty locks of the Panama Canal.
Here was a task fit for electricity to make available to
commerce this enormous ditch, itself one of the great engi
neering feats of human history. It was a task involving the
movement of gates weighing four hundred tons, the largest
more than seven hundred; the filling and emptying of locks
a thousand feet long, three hundred feet wide; and the con
trol of operating mechanisms scattered over fifty miles, the
largest single group extending for more than a mile.
These problems were further complicated by the tropical
climate. Metal parts must be made noncorroding, coils must
be made moistureproof. Maximum reliability was impera
tive, because the Panama Canal was far removed from manu
facturing centers and weeks must pass before repair parts
arrived.
Edward Schildhauer, engineer of the Isthmian Canal
Commission, had asked every electrical manufacturer in
America to submit a bid. The rejoicing in General Electric
offices over winning the contract, however, was brief; coats
were taken off and sleeves rolled up, for intensive days of
planning lay ahead.
No nation in the world could have asked for a more per
fect test of the electrical giant at work, for if electricity could
operate the Panama Canal, surely it could do anything under
the sun!
It did operate the Canal and is still doing it. Five hun
dred motors, rating from seven horsepower up to seventy,
THE PANAMA CANAL 357
are on duty at the great locks, and more than five hundred
others are at work at the dams, the spillways, and elsewhere
along the canal a total of over a thousand electric motors,
with a combined capacity of nearly 30,000 horsepower.
And the motors were the easier half of the problem. The
real task was the control system. It must be centralized at
one spot for each of the locks; it must be an exact duplicate
in miniature of the locks themselves, their gates, their valves,
their fender chains. Everything that happened at those big
locks must be repeated simultaneously on the control boards.
The operators must have before them a complete record of
the movement of those ponderous parts, a perfect gauge of
the rise and fall of the water, accurate to one-tenth of one per
cent.
Nothing short of infallibility was demanded. Errors by
the operators, endangering lives and property on board ves
sels passing through, must be made impossible.
For previous canals there had been a large force of opera
tors scattered along the canal-way, each charged with one
control operation. Safety from error increased as the number
of human beings increased. But control for each lock cen
tered in one man's hands, and that man had to proceed with
out error this was a staggering demand.
Edward M. Hewlett, designer of switches and controls,
went tc work over the requirements quietly. Upon Hewlett's
assertion that he could make this system work, the control
contract for the Panama Canal was awarded to General Elec
tric. Now he had to live up to his promise.
First Hewlett consulted with the engineer of a concern
that made interlocking railroad switch devices, to obtain a
bid on that part of the work.
"You people don't know anything about interlocking de-
358 MEN AND VOLTS
vices 1" exclaimed the engineer. "We know the interlocking
business; you don't. You're suggesting something that can't
be done at the price you require."
"Not at all," Hewlett replied with some spirit. "We were
building interlocking apparatus when you were in short
trousers, and what's more, we're in the business of doing
things that can't be done!"
There followed weeks of reading, designing, experiment
ing. Within six months Hewlett had a working model of the
indicating system and the interlocking system as well the
system that was accepted and operated when the canal was
opened on August 15, 1914. It has been working there ever
since. A system of many parts, it was yet not fundamentally
complicated. It was made up of vertical and horizontal bars,
two and a quarter miles of them, whose movements were
governed by mechanical stops.
There was keen ingenuity in the way the movements of
those bars were planned. And in the interlocking principle
which ran through an intricate network of those lug-stopped
rods, governing dozens of control operations, permitting
only one sequence of action in the order of turning the con
trol handles upon control boards as long as sixty-four feet.
This was Hewlett's selsyn system.
PARTICIPATING LUSTILY in the work of the world, rubbing
shoulders daily with cosmopolitan interests, a buyer and a
seller in many markets, General Electric like other groups of
humans came in for its share of controversy. Situations were
continually arising which could be cleared up only by the
rulings of the law courts.
On one such occasion, counsel for General Electric met its
match. General Electric was in litigation with Stone and
Webster of Boston, counsel for whom was Tyler and Young,
GERARD SWOFE
President of General Electric from 1922 to 1940.
OWEN D. YOUNG
Chairman of the Board of General Electric from 1922 to 1940.
NEW FACES AND OPPORTUNITIES 359
and the case was handled in court by the junior member of
the firm, Owen D. Young.
He was a comparative stranger in Boston, although his
associates remembered vaguely that he had been born and
raised a farmer's boy in northern New York. And they knew
that Charles H. Tyler had given him a start upon his gradua
tion from the law school of Boston University. Within ten
years Tyler had admitted him to partnership.
The General Electric lawyers did not rate Young as a
formidable opponent. He sat slouched in his chair, "his long
legs lost in the shadows of the table." But when he towered
before the court on those long legs, his slouch gone, head
erect, they came to recognize not only his physical domi
nance, but his penetrating discernment and the clear-cut
effectiveness of his arguments. When the trial was over,
Owen D. Young was a name to be mentioned with respect
among General Electric people. It reached the discriminating
ears of Charles A. Coffin; and for a year or two Coffin watched
him at a distance, noting the working of that keen mind,
meditating upon the personality that had gotten the better of
General Electric lawyers.
Coffin thought again of this display of talent and character
when, in April, 1912, they brought him the news of the tragic
death of Hinsdill Parsons, the brilliant lawyer who had been
Vice President and General Counsel of General Electric for
eleven years. During this time Young had made himself
well known in and around Boston. He had, in fact, ably
handled private law business for at least one of the Directors
of General Electric.
So, one day, Coffin telephoned to Young and asked him to
call. And he offered the young lawyer the position of General
Counsel of the corporation.
Young accepted. Some years later he confided to one of
360 MEN AND VOLTS
his colleagues part of what lay back of that acceptance. On
Young's frequent trips from Boston to his boyhood home in
New York State, his train passed close to the General Electric
plant in Schenectady. Often, as he passed, he noticed the
busy stir and activity. He sensed the feel of constructive
effort, of building something useful. And sometimes, tired
with the eternal bickering of the law courts and the litigation
over affairs past and done with, he looked longingly at the
Schenectady plant and wished that he could have a part in
some such work, doing something truly constructive, helping
to build something of lasting value. So, although Coffin's
offer came as a surprise to Young, the idea was neither new
nor unwelcome.
So came to General Electric this "tall rangy man of
Lincolnesque height," Coffin's eventual successor as Chair
man of the Board. He had come to help it grow and to grow
with it.
Indeed, the growth of General Electric was so well-
balanced and so healthy that it was continually able to
measure up when new opportunities arose for yoking elec
tricity. That was one reason why its salesmen and its engi
neers had just convinced a group of electric power prospects
in the northwest that electric motors could run their trunk-
line railroad.
The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad extended
far west of Milwaukee and St. Paul, climbed the great
continental divide, penetrated the Rockies, wound upward
among the Sierras, gathered its energies to cross the Cascade
range, and halted only on the shores of the blue Pacific, at
the northwest metropolis of Seattle. It passed through moun
tains that were exhilarating to passengers, but trying upon
the capacities of its steam locomotives, particularly in the
northwest winters.
NEW FACES AND OPPORTUNITIES 361
Now electricity was to be given a chance. The inheritance
of all the early traction pioneers was embodied in the electric
motors that set out to conquer the Rockies. It was December,
1915, when the first electric locomotives took up their task
on the St. Paul road. Nothing like them had been seen in that
region before. The forty-two freight locomotives, weighing
280 tons each, were as massive as the stoutest steam hauler on
the road. Each was able, through its twelve gearless motors,
to haul a freight train weighing 2500 tons over steep grades
at fifteen miles per hour. In 1920 electric passenger locomo
tives that weighed 260 tons apiece and were able to haul
twelve cars weighing a total of 960 tons at twenty-five miles
an hour, joined in the work. On 400 miles of mountain
trackage these giant electric locomotives hauled their load
with ease. One of the grades on the route extended for
twenty-one miles at a rise of two per cent, but the electric
giants mastered it easily.
The new locomotives worked on the principle of regenera
tive braking, which put a new item of economy in the budget.
On the mountain divisions conditions for this type of braking
were ideal. The gearless motors, the shafts of whose armatures
were the axles of the wheels, after mounting those long
grades, automatically reversed their action on the "down"
side. Their rotation was no longer produced by the electrical
impulse but by gravity. Instead of converting the electrical
energy of the supply line into mechanical energy, they con
verted the mechanical energy created by the train's motion
on the downgrade into electrical energy. And the process
slowed up, or braked, the momentum of the heavy cars.
Electricity produced by those generator motors constituting
a saving of about twelve per cent in total power consumption,
flowed back into the electrical transmission system, speeding
over the distribution network as a contribution to the motive-
362 MEN AND VOLTS
power required by electric locomotives elsewhere on the
line. A perfect operating economy electricity helping to
pay its own bills.
FROM THE BEGINNING automatic action had been important
in electrical devices. Automatic action regulated arc lamps,
kept current constant in dynamos, became the essence of the
relay, the electric meter, the transformer.
When Alex Dow, President of the Detroit Edison Com
pany, took one of his problems to General Electric engineers,
they were interested at once. Dow wanted to apply the
automatic idea in such a way that he could extend his lines to
the outskirts of Detroit, where new homes were springing
up though population was sparse.
The ordinary substation in such a district, with its pay
roll, would be too costly in proportion to the possible busi
ness. What Dow wanted was a station that could be con
trolled from a distance, through automatic action. That was
what the engineers designed for him. In less than a year's
time this remotely controlled substation was at work in
Detroit. It was situated on Rowena Street and controlled from
the generating station on Elizabeth Street, a mile away. It
distributed electrical energy up to 500 kilowatts; and except
for an occasional inspector, no human set foot within its
walls.
Two years later the completely automatic substation ap
peared. An engineer in General Electric's Chicago office,
Edward Taylor, designed the first of this type, which began
to operate at Union, Illinois, in December 1914. It was magic
both in its working and in its effect upon operating costs.
Here were machines which began working when they were
needed, and stopped working when they were not.
Picture an electric car on that road running far out from
NEW FACES AND OPPORTUNITIES 363
the main generating station, farther than direct current can
be transmitted economically. Presently it draws near the
automatic substation. At a certain point its approach actuates
relays. Instantly the synchronous converters, by which alter
nating current is converted into direct, go into action.
In swift sequences, handled entirely by automatic control,
the converters are connected through transformers to a
33,000-volt supply line, then to a 600-volt trolley line and the
speeding car draws the motive power it needs. When its
power is supplied from the next substation, the current in the
trolley wire at the first substation drops below a certain
point, causing the automatic control to shut down the con
verters until the next car approaches.
In less than ten years the total installed capacity of
equipment of this type reached half a million kilowatts. On
interurban lines especially, the cars take their power from
several automatic stations in succession. The automatic gen
erating station was to grow out of this at a later period.
Almost as marvelous was the growth of the electric genera
tor itself. In 1902 people spoke of generators that fed 7500
kilowatts of electricity into transmission lines as "mammoth."
In 1914, 20,000 kilowatts were generated by one General
Electric unit. What do such capacities mean to practical folk?
They mean that whereas in 1904 one generating machine
could supply enough electric current to light 100,000 lamps,
in 1914 it could supply 1,700,000! Only twenty-five years
before, a dynamo supplying 150 incandescent lamps was
thought to be wonderful. Capacities had increased eleven
thousand times in a quarter century!
40
Conservatism Routed
I HAVE TONIGHT seen the greatest revelation of beauty that
was ever seen on the earth," exclaimed Edwin Markham, the
poet, one February evening in 1915.
"I may say this, meaning it literally," he added, "and with
full regard for all that is known of ancient art and architec
ture, and all that the modern world has heretofore seen of
glory and grandeur. I have seen beauty that will give the
world new standards of art and a Joy in loveliness never
before reached. This is what I have seen the courts and
buildings of the Panama-Pacific Exposition illuminated at
night/'
The illumination which so inspired the poet was largely the
work of Walter D'Arcy Ryan, director of General Electric's
Illuminating Engineering Laboratory.
Ryan had tackled illuminating jobs of this magnitude be
fore. In 1907 he had supervised the lighting of Niagara Falls
a feat that required the installation of batteries of
projectors giving a combined illumination equivalent to
1,115,000,000 candles. It, too, had been a huge success. The
throng that gathered on the opening night was so large that
364
CONSERVATISM ROUTED 365
the suspension bridge swayed perceptibly and traffic had to
be halted. The roar of the cataract came through the dark
ness, the cataract that could not be seen. Then without warn
ing the Falls leaped out of the night, a vast, shimmering mist
of plunging water, gleaming in the concentrated light. The
thousands of spectators stood in awe and silence.
But Ryan encountered new difficulties when, in San
Francisco, he presented his plans before the architects, de
signers, and color artists who were involved in preparation
for the Exposition. His proposals seemed so fantastic that
there was scarcely a detail which was not opposed. For
Ryan's theory was founded upon the idea that to run strings
of incandescent lamps along the edges of buildings so that
they would be outlined by dots of light, was crude and
archaic. His plan was twofold: first he proposed to throw a
flood of light upon the fagades of the buildings; and second,
he proposed a scheme for depth, or "shadow" lighting.
A terraced tower, four hundred feet or more from a square
base with broad archways, dominated the wide array of
picturesque Spanish mission buildings. Ryan's idea for light
ing this tower was even more fantastic. He wanted something
lively and prismatic. Immediately he thought of imitation
cut-glass jewels played upon by powerful searchlights. He
instituted a search which finally uncovered a type of jewel
made in imitation of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emer
alds; and the glass was so cut as to possess a high index of
refraction.
Many cunning hands had worked over those gems. Native
workmen among the hills of Austria had kept the craft in
their families for generations, treating the original uncut
pieces by heat and glass-blowing methods of which they
alone knew the secret. In 1913 there came from distant
America an order for no less than 130,000 jewels!
366 MEN AND VOLTS
The Austrian craftsmen gasped, but in time the order was
filled. Ryan called the jewels "Novagems."
His laboratory workshop, crowded with color paintings of
the buildings as they would appear when illuminated, color
charts, and booths for demonstrating special illumination
effects aroused the greatest curiosity. Some of the other
specialists felt that Ryan was usurping the functions belong
ing to others. Upon returning from one of his trips East,
Ryan found that his critics had burst into open condemna
tion of his plans. Someone had tried a few of his jewels upon
the tower and found that they cast shadows. The architects'
commission wanted to throw all the jewels bodily into San
Francisco Bay.
Ryan promptly demonstrated by means of photographs
that, when properly mounted, the jewels would not cast
shadows, while incandescent lamps, strung up and down the
tower would. Then he was told that his idea of placing
heraldic banners along the avenues to add color in the day
time and to screen floodlight units at night would cheapen
the exposition into a mere Coney Island spectacle because
the banners would flap. Ryan replied that he intended to
hang fifty-pound weighted tassels from each banner so that
no ordinary breeze would disturb them.
Another outcry went up when he disclosed his plan for a
steam scintillator to be played upon by a great battery of
electric searchlights. He had arranged with the Southern
Pacific Railroad to have a steam locomotive, painted a rich
cream color, backed upon a pier on the waterside front of the
exposition. Shell pits were dug and forty-eight big search
lights were placed in position, their total capacity equalling
2,600,000,000 candles. Surely "this man Ryan" was running
wild! The architects' commission started a movement to have
the locomotive removed.
CONSERVATISM ROUTED 367
But Ryan would not be stampeded. He stoutly defended
his "fireless fireworks." The locomotive and the steam scintil-
lator remained.
But exposition officials were secretly as fearful as the
architects and designers. They hoped that Ryan was right,
while they quietly consulted a local illuminating expert and
had an alternate plan worked out down to the last detail,
ready to be rushed into the gap should the Ryan plan fail
upon trial. This alternate plan was based upon strings of
incandescent lamps.
At last came the night for the trial exhibition, the night
of February 15, 1915, three weeks before the date of the
official opening. Upon one of the wide avenues the official
party gathered. Dusk slowly began to fall. A silvery shaft
leaped into the darkening sky.
Then, in a burst of glory, a scene of romantic beauty un
folded, as palaces and halls stood out richly down long
thoroughfares of light. Radiance glowed from every window,
as if the interiors were brightly lighted. Deep rose tints
bathed the recesses in archways and columned porticoes,
where forbidding shadows usually gathered. It was a city of
light.
In the center rose the iridescent Tower of Jewels. And
every pool and lagoon caught and reflected the glimmering
tower and the fairy palaces. A 20th Century Aladdin had
rubbed his lamp.
The international jury of awards of the Exposition did
something never before dreamed of. It adjudged the illumina
tion of the Exposition to be a "decorative art."
TURNING TO A FAR DIFFERENT FIELD of the electrical arts, the
vear 1915 also saw the battleship New Mexico launched.
Back in 1909 Emmet had felt that the turbine-electric drive
368 MEN AND VOLTS
could be designed for sea craft. Units of 14,000 kilowatts
were already a reality. He turned to the United States Navy,
knowing that there he would find vessels large enough to
receive maximum benefit from the turbine-electric drive, as
well as financial resources sufficient to undertake so large an
installation.
But the Navy was not interested in turbine-generators and
electric motors for its vessels. Steam propulsion had been the
traditional method for so many years, and too many naval
men had been bred in the sacred belief that there could be no
substitute. No one in the Navy Department at Washington
took Emmet seriously. Three colliers were at that time being
equipped, and preparations for installing other types of pro
pulsion went forward without interruption. The Cyclops was
launched, with a marine engine to propel her. A little later
the Neptune followed, equipped with a geared turbine as her
driving unit. Then Emmet, pleading fair play and an equal
chance with his competitors, won a reluctant consent to the
installation of a turbine-generator upon the Jupiter.
Naval officials did not for a minute believe the Jupiter
could be propelled efficiently by electric motors. They even
had the vessel designed so that the mode of propulsion could
be altered to the marine-engine type when the anticipated
breakdown of the electric drive occurred.
In this wise was the Jupiter built at the Mare Island Navy
Yard at San Francisco, and put in commission in 1913. Her
commanding officer was Commander C. S. Kernpff, and her
chief engineer Lieutenant S. M. Robinson. Aside from Lieu
tenant Robinson, only one man on board, the chief electri
cian, had any conception of the nature of the electrical equip
ment. The apparatus was handled by enlisted men who had
to be instructed from the ground up in their work.
But machinists' mates within a week's time learned how to
ELECTRICITY GOES TO SEA 369
operate the electrical apparatus, and Commander KernpfFs
report was an enthusiastic endorsement of the new method of
propelling naval craft.
The report caused a stir in naval circles at Washington.
The officers of the Jupiter were immediately replaced by
others to check their sanity in expressing such enthusiasm.
The new officers turned in an equally hearty endorsement.
But naval officials at Washington were not easily satisfied
and accordingly they detailed two officers to serve on the
Jupiter as inspecting officers, whose sole duty was to observe
and report on the electrical equipment. Their report was even
more complimentary than its predecessors.
With that, criticism temporarily subsided. Emmet, follow
ing up the advantage he had gained, recommended that
turbine-generators and electric motors be provided for the
battleship New Mexico, now under construction. The pro
posal immediately raised an outcry. It seemed that the new
radicals would stop short of nothing. It was all very well to
turn turrets, operate deck winches, revolve capstans, or
hoist ammunition by electricity. And all very well to propel a
vessel no larger than the Jupiter. But a battleship! It couldn't
be done. It would require generators too large for the ship.
Emmet, undaunted, drew up a definite proposal on behalf
of General Electric and submitted it to the Navy Department,
but without avail. Then he interviewed the Secretary of the
Navy, Josephus C. Daniels, and persuaded him to allow
estimates to be prepared showing the cost of equipping the
New Mexico for electric drive as compared with the cost of
installing steam-propulsion machinery.
Emmet took his figures to the industrial engineer of the
Brooklyn Navy Yard, who had been ordered to draw up the
estimates. This was Admiral George E. Burd, who was fair-
minded and had a passion for facts. Admiral Burd's estimate
370 MEN AND VOLTS
swayed the issue, for it stated that turbine-generators and
electric motors on the New Mexico would cost a quarter of a
million dollars less than either the geared turbine or the
marine engine.
Emmet appeared at a conference in Secretary Daniels'
office and spoke at length, drawing on his ten years' experi
ence in designing and installing Curtis steam turbines and
generators. His figures had been tested and verified, and he
pointed out considerations which others had lost sight of. In
the end, Secretary Daniels gave him the contract.
In 1915 the New Mexico was launched, a powerful floating
fighting machine of 32,000 tons. She burned oil for fuel, and
her dozen big tanks had a capacity of a million gallons. She
required only nine boilers, while other battleships of her
weight had twelve. Steam pressure on the boilers ran to 280
pounds, which meant that turbine pressures had risen 105
pounds since the Chicago turbine of 1903.
As for electrical equipment, its aggregate weight was about
600 tons. There were two main generators, each rated at
15,500 horsepower, and they supplied four propulsion motors,
each with a 7000-horsepower capacity. The generators were
each driven by a Curtis steam turbine, so that only two tur
bines were necessary, while the battleship Pennsylvania, with
the geared-turbine drive, required ten.
At ten knots the New Mexico consumed about twenty-five
per cent less fuel than the best turbine-driven ship that pre
ceded her. And she was an all-electric ship. Electric motors
operated the steering gear, boat cranes, winches, capstan,
refrigerating system, laundering machines, water pumps, oil
pumps; they raised anchors, revolved the turrets, hoisted am
munition, compressed air, turned the fans and blowers; they
supplied the machine shop, carpenter shop, printing shop,
and kitchen; and electricity heated the air, cooked toast,
ELECTRICITY GOES TO SEA 371
boiled coffee, supplied telephone systems, operated the bat
tery of searchlights, illuminated the entire ship. It was a
veritable electric home, in which 1100 men found the tasks
of Me amazingly simplified.
It was a triumph indeed. Yet electrical engineers admitted
that the original prejudice of the Navy was no more than
natural. E. W. Rice, Jr., President of General Electric, spoke
later of the success to a group of Navy men.
"That electrical gear," he said, "should by any possibility
prove to be more generally efficient seems a paradox . . .
It is due, we believe, to the fact that in the electric drive an
open air space is substituted for the teeth of the mechanical
gear. Although we remove the teeth, we are able to transmit
tremendous power without any mechanical connection . . .
The electrical method substitutes an indestructible, infinitely
elastic air space for the teeth of the mechanical gear, and
obviously the air space cannot be bent, or broken, requires
no lubrication, and contains nothing to rub or to get out of
order."
41
A Period Ends
CLOUDS OVER EUROPE brought sudden problems to the
United States as April 1917 came in. In her youthful strength
America was marching into the vortex of a titanic human
struggle that flamed destructively across a continent.
America was separated from the scene of conflict and
from all her allies by three thousand miles of ocean. She must
talk continually to those allies, to her military and naval
leaders, though an ocean intervened and though the enemy
attacked the underwater cables.
There was but one way to do it radio. Every army and
naval radio station in the country was instantly keyed up for
service. Yet few of them were equipped to span the ocean.
Transoceanic radio communication was still embryonic. But
now it was imperative.
In this dilemma one station alone stepped into the gap.
The American Marconi Company, affiliated with the British
Marconi Company, agreed to give a practical trial of the
Alexanderson alternator at its large transmitting center
at New Brunswick. Alexanderson had developed his 200-
kilowatt alternator, and a complete unit of this size was
372
A PERIOD ENDS 373
rented to the Marconi Company, replacing the old 50-
kilowatt unit at the Marconi station. In January 1918 this be
came for the time being a United States naval radio trans
mitting station, operated by naval personnel.
War continued through the spring and summer of 1918.
The New Brunswick station bridged the ocean daily in the
transaction of government war business. But soon the opera
tors at receiving stations both in America and Europe found
themselves in a new predicament, created by the activities
of the enemy.
The large German transmitting station at Nauen was "jam
ming the air," that is, it was sending out interfering waves
for the purpose of choking incoming messages on the receiv
ing antennae of the American and allied stations, thus pre
venting communication. The scheme succeeded often enough
to make things disconcerting.
Radio engineers of the allied nations set to work to over
come this interference. Alexanderson soon developed his
barrage receiver, which was a unidirectional system so ef
ficient that it could eliminate the signals of a high-powered
sending station operating close by. One unit of this device
was sealed in the diplomatic mail of the United States gov
ernment and sent to France. Another was installed in the
United States government receiving station at Bar Harbor,
Maine.
Meanwhile the station at New Brunswick had been bom
barding Germany and her allies with a new sort of missile
radio messages and bulletins relating to the war prepara
tions which America was making. The constant arrival of
American troops in France, the launching of ship after ship,
the raising of billions for waging war all this was poured
upon the air for assimilation by German stations. It was an
offensive against morale, a psychological attack.
374 MEN AND VOLTS
Late in October, 1918, the last great German offensive had
been stopped. The attackers of heroic Verdun had again
been checked, and the American divisions were steadily
hammering back German lines which had been thought im
pregnable. The tide was slowly, surely turning. At that mo
ment there leaped upon the air, to be picked up alike by
Nauen and the allied stations, a set of call-letters from the
American station at New Brunswick.
"POZ . . . POZ . . . POZ ... de ... NFF" buzzed the
receivers. POZ was the call for the German station at Nauen,
and NFF was the station at New Brunswick. The two had
not been on speaking terms for a long time.
The Nauen operator replied a moment later: "Your signals
are fine, old man."
Whereupon the "old man" in New Brunswick dispatched
in English the first of President Wilson's statements to the
German people, carrying the ultimatum that the allies would
conduct no negotiations for an armistice or for peace with
the German government as then constituted. In other words,
Kaiser Wilhelm would have to step down.
"Thereafter," says the New York Post, "Washington was
in constant communication with Berlin. President Wilson's
memorable 'fourteen points' were broadcast to Germany
from New Brunswick. Wireless was making history at a
faster pace than all the engines of destruction. Innumerable
electrical impulses, flashing back and forth across the At
lantic, were settling the war. It might have taken a month
longer to negotiate the armistice if it had not been for those
radio exchanges."
The war ended, but radio went on. As Alexanderson said,
"It was the war which brought radio into its own. Before the
war it had been interesting. With the advent of the war it be
came vital." Its demonstrated usefulness was only beginning.
CHARLES A. COFFIN AT THE AGE OF 80
About 11 years after his retirement as President of General Electric.
THE HOME OF G-E RESEARCH
The buildings that house the Research Laboratory, at Schenectady.
A PERIOD ENDS 375
For a few months after the armistice was signed the most
significant events in American radio centered around the
transmitting station at New Brunswick and its peculiarly ef
fective radio generator, the Alexanderson alternator.
Efforts to obtain customers for the high-frequency alter
nator had been made by General Electric before America
entered the war. The government was first approached, but
was already committed to the Poulsen arc. At the close of
the war General Electric recommenced its efforts to sell
equipment to the Marconi Company. Formerly the terms had
not been agreed upon. The Marconi Company insisted upon
an agreement by which it would obtain a monopoly on the
Alexanderson alternator. Under this agreement they placed
an order amounting to $5,000,000.
General Electric felt no hesitancy now in entering this ex
clusive agreement, as with one exception no other customer
had been found for the costly alternator. The Swedish gov
ernment planned to erect a powerful station, and the Swedish
minister at Washington, W. A. F. Ekengren, had begun
negotiations with General Electric.
But the Swedish government wanted only one alternator.
The Marconi Company was a far larger customer, and in
acquiescing to its proposal, General Electric was obliged to
terminate its negotiations with Sweden. Minister Ekengren
was seriously disturbed. He knew what an advantage that
alternator would give to radio development in Sweden. He
called upon Rear Admiral William Bullard, then Director of
Communications for the Navy. Admiral Bullard became as
disturbed as Minister Ekengren, but for a far different reason.
Familiar with the merits of the alternator, he knew that
the American Marconi Company, despite its name and loca
tion, was dominated by the British Marconi Company. He
foresaw what radio would become within a few years; and
376 MEN AND VOLTS
he wanted America, not a foreign country, to have control
over the alternator which was at that time the most practical
device for producing continuous radio waves at high power.
This was the situation in March, 1919, when E. P. Edwards,
later Manager of General Electric's Radio Department, re
turned to Schenectady from New York with the necessary
data to draw up the contract giving the Marconi Company
exclusive purchasing rights to the Alexanderson alternator.
As he began his work, he was called on long distance by
Commander Hooper, in charge of the Radio Section of the
. Naval Bureau of Engineering, who besought him to delay
negotiations until a conference could be arranged.
That conference, a momentous one in the history of Ameri
can radio, took place on April 5, 1919. E. W. Rice, Jr., Presi
dent of General Electric; Charles A. Coffin, Chairman of the
Board; Owen D. Young, Vice President; Albert G. Davis,
Vice President in Charge of Patents; and others, were met
by Admiral Bullard and Commander Hooper.
Admiral Bullard was spokesman for the Navy. "Gentle
men," he said, "we are satisfied that the General Electric
Company, through the Alexanderson alternator, has de
veloped the most perfect system of radio communication in
existence. We should like to make use of it ourselves, but we
cannot secure the necessary appropriation. We know that
you are negotiating with the Marconi interests, expecting to
sell this apparatus exclusively to them. We are here to per
suade you on the grounds of self-interest and patriotism not
to do it!"
Then he pointed out what such a step would mean, in
giving to Great Britain the control of world radio com
munication. In effect, his message was: "Save radio control
for America!"
Owen D. Young, as spokesman for General Electric, re-
A PERIOD ENDS 377
plied: "You have placed a definite problem before us. You
tell us that we have a wonderful system, that the Navy itself
cannot buy it, and that we should not sell it to the only com
mercial company which is prepared to buy it.
"We realize the patriotic note in your appeal; but what do
you want us to do with this apparatus? Do you want us to
put it to one side, where neither ourselves nor the public will
derive any benefit from it?"
"We did not come without an alternate plan," replied Ad
miral Bullard. "I would recommend that your company
should either exploit this system directly, or should organize
a subsidiary company to do so."
The appeal struck home. General Electric broke off nego
tiations with the Marconi Company.
Next the General Electric officials launched a new com
pany for radio communication, rather than put their own
company into a field foreign to its province. They purchased
the block of stock in the American Marconi Company which
was owned by British interests. Then the American Marconi
Company was purchased by General Electric in behalf of the
proposed new company.
The new concern was established around December 1,
1919, under the name of the Radio Corporation of America.
It was to be the selling agent for General Electric's radio
products.
General Electric officials now conceived of a mobilization
of all American radio and communications interests behind
the new company, and undertook negotiations which led to
the participation in the Radio Corporation of the American
Telephone & Telegraph Company, the Western Electric
Company, the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Com
pany, and the United Fruit Company.
This procedure adjusted a patent dilemma which was as-
378 MEN AND VOLTS
suming a gravity reminiscent of the deadlocks of 1890 and
1896. Now, in 1919, the conflict of patents held by compet
ing companies, yet necessary for the operations of all, would
have crippled radio communication in all its aspects. Such
an outcome would have been calamitous, for radio was di
recting the public mind to technical innovations in a manner
without precedent.
The marvels which electricity was producing were meet
ing with far less prejudice and a far readier welcome than
did those of three decades ago. People had become electri
cally minded!
As STEINMETZ ENTERED the high-studded laboratory room,
with its wide windows and its maze of apparatus, conversa
tion ceased. Heads turned in his direction, attention was
riveted on that impressive figure, diminutive in stature, yet
suggestive of a power beyond physical strength.
"Good morning! Good morning!" he exclaimed. "How are
you?" Then, to his adopted son, J. LeRoy Hayden, he added,
"What's new?"
It was the greeting with which he had opened the day at
office and laboratory for nearly thirty years. But on this
morning, Steinmetz knew better than anyone else what was
"new." He was about to demonstrate his famous lightning
generator.
For weeks he had been investigating lightning with this
strange device. His purpose was to discover new knowledge
which he could pass on to the designers of lightning ar
resters, so that these watchdogs of transmission systems might
be made more reliable. As he picturesquely termed it, they
are the traffic officers; lightning is the criminal of these
systems.
In the study which he had been making, the lightning
NIAGARA FALLS AS ILLUMINATED BY GENERAL ELECTRIC
IN 1925
GENERAL ELECTRIC BUILDING, 570 LEXINGTON AVENUE, NEW YORK,
FLOODLIGHTED WITH FLUORESCENT AND MERCURY LIGHTS, 1940
A PERIOD ENDS 379
generator was but a means of an end. Yet it was spectacular
in itself.
There were many who wanted to see, on this winter's
morning of 1922. And what they saw were rows of large
glass panes, connected by wires to a group of glass tubes
and by other wires to a circuit, or "discharge path," in which
was placed a small tree limb. The glass plates were the con
denser, which stored up electricity as does a thundercloud
until the point was reached when it could hold no more and
electricity was discharged in a quick flash that was the
artificial lightning-bolt. The lightning "flashed," the thunder
"roared," and the tree limb was split into fragments. It was a
perfect imitation, in miniature.
"We get a discharge," said Dr. Steinmetz, "of 10,000
amperes at 120,000 volts; that is, over one million horse
power, lasting for a hundred thousandth of a second. This
gives us the explosive, shattering effect of real lightning."
According to his calculation, natural lightning might rep
resent as little as 3000 amperes but with a hundred million
volts behind it, or five hundred million horsepower.
This was the most spectacular of many deeds which Gen
eral Electric men performed in these later years of the great
electrical enterprise. General Electric was more than a manu
facturing concern. It was an institution of science and of
engineering, of vocational training and of character build
ing, an institution of wide social and economic influence.
Through its scientists, engineers, workmen, and salesmen it
had become what it was.
A few months before Steinmetz manufactured lightning,
the General Electric laboratory at Pittsfield transmitted elec
tric current at a million volts. This was achieved by Guiseppe
Faccioli and Frank W. Peek, Jr., upon the spot where the
famous SKC trio had pitted their confidence against the elec-
380 MEN AND VOLTS
trical conservatism of the early nineties. The plant manager
at Pittsfield at that very moment was Cummings C. Chesney,
last of the SKC men.
As for the manufacture of the incandescent lamp, hardly a
hand operation now remained. One by one machines had
taken over these intricate, patience-wearing operations.
In 1918 William R. Burrows, Howell's resourceful asso
ciate, was still looking for more economical methods of manu
facturing the lamp. He reflected that there were six or eight
major processes, each located in a different department.
Some machines produced more rapidly than others, so that
surplus parts had to be stored between operations. Burrows
and his staff soon reduced the number of basic machines to
four, which were placed next to each other. The work was
fed in sequence from one to the next. A balance of produc
tion was .thereafter maintained, in which there were no
surplus parts. Production costs dropped down, as did the
price to the consumer. Within thirty months General Electric
reduced its lamp prices five times, the total reduction
amounting to thirty-seven per cent.
A further economy was the tipless lamp. For forty years
no one had been able to eliminate that little glass tip, which
was a liability for it increased the breakage hazard. The tip
was caused by the method of exhausting the air from the
bulb, through a glass tube welded to the top of the bulb,
which in being sealed off left a protuberance. In 1929 two
foremen of the National Lamp Works of General Electric at
Cleveland, Loris E. Mitchell and Arthur J. White, contrived
to exhaust the lamp through the base of the bulb. This new
method abolished one step of manufacture, and production
cost and the market price dropped again.
A PERIOD ENDS 381
THE PIONEERS OF THE COMPANY, the men who had brought
the organization through its earlier years, grew older. In
evitably, younger shoulders assumed the heavier burdens
of management.
In January, 1919, General Electric segregated its export
business, which up to that time had been handled by a for
eign department. The foreign business had increased three
fold during the preceding five years. It needed separate at
tention attention of a kind different from that accorded
domestic affairs. So it was decided to set up a new company,
to be called the International General Electric Company.
To head that new company, a man was chosen from out
side the organization, a vice president of the Western Electric
Company, who had built on a background of engineering
training a reputation for merchandising ability and a keen
grasp of the fundamentals of business. That man's name was
Gerard Swope. Strictly speaking, he was returning to the
fold. But probably few were aware that he was the same
"G. Swope, helper, per day $1" who had been on the Com
pany's payroll at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, when
he was a student at Massachusetts Tech and General Electric
was only a "million a month" concern.
For almost two years Swope traveled constantly in the
foreign countries in which General Electric was doing busi
ness. He reorganized the scattered personnel of the various
foreign offices, he worked out standard and consistent con
tracts with foreign business firms, he developed a smooth-
running organization to handle the large amount of business
which had all but swamped the previous staff.
The duties of Owen D. Young, as General Counsel, had
been at first largely in giving legal advice and handling
strictly legal affairs. But gradually he was called on to be
382 MEN AND VOLTS
arbitrator in other matters. All sorts of questions were
brought to him, and he showed an uncanny faculty for com
ing to a quick decision, but a decision that the passage of
time showed to be as wise as though it had been the result
of long and laborious discussion. When matters reached an
impasse, it became a habit to take them to Mr. Young.
In the organizing of the Radio Corporation, too, Young
had taken a leading part. As Chairman of the Board of that
company, he had already, by 1922, shown his ability in guid
ing the new venture through the hazards and pitfalls of its
earliest years.
In the spring of 1922, the industrial world learned of im
portant executive changes in the General Electric organiza
tion. The directors had elected Gerard Swope as President
of General Electric, and Owen D. Young as Chairman of the
Board. Edwin W. Rice, Jr., whom Swope succeeded as Presi
dent, became Honorary Chairman of the Board.
And so Coffin, the great leader, retired. He kept his desk
in the suite of offices at 120 Broadway, New York, where the
executive heart of the Company had long been centered.
He came regularly to his office. Visitors there met with the
same kindly reception, the same quiet humor that had
smoothed the deliberations of so many executive and di
rectors meetings. But his day-by-day interests were now more
personal, confined largely to innumerable philanthropic ac
tivities that had been one side of his life for a long span of
years.
In honor of the first President, the Charles A. Coffin
Foundation awards were added to a long and growing list
of activities in which General Electric had long been pio
neering again leading the way that others would eventually
follow. This was the field of employee relations, which Gen
eral Electric was exploring by establishing plans contributing
A PERIOD ENDS 383
to employee security. A pension plan had been set up in
1912; a mutual benefit association to provide benefits in case
of sickness, death, or hospitalization had been established in
1913; a profit-sharing system in 1916; a life-insurance plan in
1920; a savings plan in 1922. A suggestion system, whereby
employees were paid for suggestions helpful to the operation
of the Company, had been established as far back as 1906,
and through the intervening years one plan after another had
been added to protect employees against the vicissitudes of
life, and to provide opportunity and a measure of security.
IN THE SPRING OF 1926 a young General Electric man, Wil
liam W. Trench, called upon Charles A. Coffin at the latter's
office in New York. It was one of the last interviews in Mr.
Coffin's career of which there is a record. Mr. Trench de
scribes it as follows:
"That May morning found him full of the exuberance of
youth. Just in from his home on Long Island, he was full of
the beauty of the country had time to discuss two child
poets whose works aroused his enthusiasm, to speak glow
ingly of the notable men who had been attracted to Gen
eral Electric by the fascination of the industry, possessing,
as it does, no known bounds of service or accomplishment.
"The conversation touched on the extraordinary contribu
tions of young men to the advancement of the industry. Mr.
Coffin remarked on the age at which Edison did his revolu
tionary work at which Langmuir and Coolidge brought
forth their first great discoveries. His thoughts turned to the
possibilities of making greater use of youth in other fields of
activity. He deplored the program of several young men he
knew who were still pursuing their studies at twenty-eight,
with the realm of actual life yet unexplored he looked with
some hope at ways and means of aiding youths to acquire
384 MEN AND VOLTS
wisdom as well as knowledge during the early vital years of
their lives.
"As in the case of any discussion with Mr. Coffin, one left
the room stimulated aroused. One felt a greater interest in
the manifestations of nature in the beauty of cultural things
in the possibilities of building and training youth for larger
activities in the part America should play in world affairs."
Mr. Coffin was then in his eighty-second year. Two months
later he passed away.
EPILOGUE
The Second Generation
WITH THE DEATH OF Charles A. Coffin the first great era in
General Electric history came to a close. During his admin
istration he had launched a new industrial art and estab
lished it firmly as an essential part of mankind's way of liv
ing. Now, under the leadership of Owen D. Young and
Gerard Swope, a new era in the Company 's history began.
Before them lay the task of bringing a frontier organization
to industrial maturity, of refining the rough-hewn policies
that had served the pioneer period. There was plenty of pi
oneering yet to be done, but it was pioneering of another
sort. The struggle to overcome the skepticism that had con
fronted the early efforts of the pioneers was largely won.
Now came the task of moulding the giant force of electricity
to human needs; of applying it to bring new comforts and
conveniences, higher living standards for the nation; of fit
ting a new industry to take its place beside the older indus
tries to help build a greater America.
It was to this task that Owen D. Young and Gerard Swope
now applied themselves. They early worked out a division
of responsibilities that was to continue as long as they held
385
386 EPILOGUE
office. As Mr. Young described it, "One of us shall act as cap
tain of the ship, the other as navigator." Mr. Young would
concern himself with policy, Mr. Swope with production, re
search, engineering, and sales.
In the 18 years of their leadership, the teamwork of these
two men produced many marvels, but none of more lasting
significance than their common effort on behalf of labor. For
years the Company had been in the forefront of American
industry in providing fair compensation and good working
conditions for employees, but these were to be supplemented
by many employee benefit plans. Many of these plans had
been inaugurated before Mr. Coffin retired, but under Mr.
Young and Mr. Swope they were expanded and welded into
a unified program for the employees' welfare. Since 1916
there had been in effect supplementary compensation and
profit-sharing plans for the employees, and Mr. Swope and
Mr. Young applied themselves to the perfecting of these
plans. Together they further developed the pension plan
which had operated since 1912, and the mutual-benefit asso
ciations which provided sickness, hospitalization, and death
benefits. They established life insurance plans; a savings
plan; the suggestion system, whereby employees reap the
benefits from their suggestions for improving methods and
working conditions; vacations with pay; a plan to adjust em
ployee earnings automatically as variations occur in the cost
of living; loan funds; a plan to assist employees in acquiring
homes; and year by year additional methods were worked
out to protect employees against the vicissitudes of life, and
provide opportunity and a measure of security. Employee
representation was instituted, unemployment insurance was
put into operation, and educational and recreational facilities
for employees developed.
These efforts on behalf of labor, described as 'liberal" and
PHILIP D. REED
Chairman of the Board of General Electric.
CHARLES E. WILSON
President of General Electric.
EPILOGUE 387
even as "radical" by many of their contemporaries, sprang
from a new conception of their responsibilities as leaders of
the General Electric Company. Up to the time the electrical
industry was founded most businesses had been managed by
their owners directly. As the years passed and large corpora
tions came into being, there came about a separation of man
agement and ownership now represented by stockholders
but management still considered itself the agent of the
owners, working in their interests. It was this conception of
management that prevailed throughout the business world
at the time Mr. Young and Mr. Swope succeeded to the
Board Chairmanship and Presidency of General Electric.
They were among the first to recognize a new conception of
management's responsibilities a conception of manage
ment, not as an agent of the owners, but as a trustee of all
groups vitally interested in industry owners, employees,
and the general public, including customers. It was their de
termination to guard the interests of all three groups.
This conception of their responsibilities had a profound
influence on the General Electric Company. No serious labor
disturbance occurred during their entire administration, even
though that period saw the nationwide struggle which ac
companied the union movement in America.
Another field in which this, the second generation of Gen
eral Electric administrators, was outstandingly successful
was the field of public relations. Mr. Coffin had been of a
retiring nature. He himself said, "A company's job is simply
to make goods and sell them. The less said about personali
ties, the better." As a result of this reticence, many consid
ered General Electric an "interest," controlled by "Wall
Street." Under the direction of Mr. Young and Mr. Swope,
the public began to get better acquainted with General Elec
tric. The introduction of home appliances, together with the
388 EPILOGUE
appliance advertising, helped; the public relations program
that they instituted was instrumental in bringing it about;
and they themselves, rapidly growing to the stature of inter
nationally known figures, became widely recognized as the
leaders of General Electric. The emphasis which Mr. Young
placed on this phase of the Company's activities is illustrated
by his admonition to a group of employees:
"Everyone," he said, 'lias had mornings when he hates to
hear the telephone ring, or to see the office door open. I beg
of you, gentlemen, when next you meet such a morning, take
a stick of dynamite and blow up one of our plants. But do
not take it out on a customer of the General Electric. We can
replace the plant you have destroyed; we know its value; we
have a reserve from which we can rebuild. But we cannot
measure the goodwill you have destroyed, and we can never
know if we have replaced it."
Consideration for the public and public opinion directed
several important policy changes during the early years of
their administration. General Electric's ownership of the
Electric Bond and Share Company, giving it an influential
interest in a goodly number of public utilities, was a poten
tial source of public criticism, and Mr. Young and Mr. Swope
soon advocated taking the Company out of this business.
"We can't carry water on both shoulders," said Mr. Swope;
"it is wrong to our own customers." Even against the advice
of Mr. Coffin they urged this step to their Board of Directors,
and in December 1924 they disposed of General Electric's
holdings in the Electric Bond and Share Company by dis
tributing its stock to General Electric's stockholders.
In another direction, too, this new concept of their man
agement responsibilities began to be felt. On behalf of the
general public additional emphasis was placed on making
electricity more useful, and less costly so that everyone could
EPILOGUE 389
afford its advantages. When they took control, lamps and
fans were about the only General Electric products sold to
the general public in fact, few electric appliances of any
sort were on the market. General Electric products consisted
principally of huge turbines and generators, motors, and
other apparatus, sold largely to industry, railroads, public
utilities.
Between 1925 and 1930 General Electric devised and put
into production many new electrical appliances, designed to
help banish drudgery from the home. Electric refrigerators,
radios, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and many
smaller appliances were placed on the market. Air-condition
ing equipment was developed; electric ranges, water-heaters,
electric ironers, and garbage-disposal units took their place
beside the others. At first these devices were crude and
costly, but as sales volume increased and improved methods
of production were worked out, the selling prices were
steadily reduced. At the same time, vast improvements were
made in the products themselves they lasted longer and
consumed less electricity, so that each year millions more
families were able to afford them. It was not many years be
fore the manufacture of electrical products for the home be
gan to be almost as large a part of General Electric's business
as the large apparatus which had previously accounted for
most of the Company's sales. In creating these new comforts
and conveniences for the home, contributing directly to the
benefit of the public, General Electric also assisted in creat
ing a whole new branch of the electrical industry, providing
new employment for thousands of people in the factory,
thousands of salesmen all over the country, and a host of
workers in other industries providing the raw materials from
which these appliances are made.
Nor was General Electric idle in the field of industrial
390 EPILOGUE
equipment. Under the leadership of Mr. Young and Mr.
Swope, General Electric's scientists, engineers, and workmen
were busy fitting electricity and electric apparatus to the
needs of the world. They were revolutionizing methods of
production throughout industry by creating electrical meth
ods for doing existing jobs, and for making possible new op
erations which could not be done before. In every factory
and shop, electricity was being put to work to enable many
industries to produce goods by the thousands at lower cost,
so that millions of people could enjoy them.
By constant improvement of the apparatus for generating,
transmitting, and distributing electricity, General Electric
was making it possible for the power and light companies to
expand the areas they served, and helping them to reduce
the cost of electricity year by year so that more people could
enjoy its benefits. The steam turbine has been so improved
that today twice as much electricity is produced for each
pound of coal consumed as was produced in 1922. Hydrogen
cooling was developed for large generators, further increas
ing their efficiency. Transformers have been vastly improved,
new steels developed for the cores which have greatly re
duced power loss in the transformers, and a new method de
veloped in which the cores of distribution transformers are
wound, producing better transformers at less cost. Research
in lightning has been carried forward and expanded, and
many new protective devices developed to minimize light
ning damage.
Throughout the whole range of electric apparatus em
ployed in making and distributing electricity, constant im
provement has resulted in making electricity more readily
available to everyone. In this field, General Electric is still
seeking new and better ways. Research and development on
the mercury turbine, direct-current transmission, and hun-
EPILOGUE 391
dreds of other experiments give promise of the progress yet
to come.
To help industry provide in abundance the thousands of
articles in common use, General Electric has developed hun
dreds of new electrical devices. Arc welding has enabled
industry to fabricate giant machines for the factory, as well
as smaller products for the home. Bridges, buildings, ships,
and hundreds of industrial products are made more easily,
more quickly, and at less cost than would be possible with
out arc welding.
Electric heat, in the form of huge electric furnaces and
small elements, is employed in melting, annealing, harden
ing, and enameling metal products. Many industrial proc
esses would be practically impossible without electric heat.
New motors more compact, more flexible, more adapt
able give vast amounts of mechanical power to help in
dustry do its many tasks. Small motors fractional horse
power have been applied to bookkeeping machines, elec
tric appliances, air-conditioning equipment, and hundreds
of other useful applications. Electric control has been ap
plied to hundreds of machines, making them capable of do
ing things that would be impossible by hand. In many fields,
electric control governs the processes of converting raw ma
terials to useful finished products.
In mining operations and in the oil industry, electricity has
made possible improved methods, and today electricity oper
ates the drills, pumps oil through electrically welded pipe
lines to electrically operated oil refineries, and operates the
gasoline pumps at the service stations. In every industrial
endeavor electricity has been applied to enable men to pro
duce more with less effort.
In the field of transportation, electricity has made vast im
provement possible. General Electric played an important
392 EPILOGUE
role in electrifying the Pennsylvania Railroad from New
York to Washington and Harrisburg the world's largest
main-line electrification project. High-speed electric locomo
tives have won new passenger revenue for the railroads.
Auxiliary equipment for air-conditioning trains has made
travel more comfortable. General Electric has developed a
new, more powerful, steam-electric locomotive, which carries
its own steam turbine to produce the electric power it uses
to drive its wheels.
For urban transportation, General Electric has developed
trolley coaches, streamlined street cars, and oil-electric buses.
Faster, smoother, more comfortable transportation has been
furnished hundreds of American cities. On the high seas,
electricity has made ships faster, safer, more comfortable.
Turbine-electric and geared drives have revolutionized
methods of ship propulsion. And in dozens of other ways,
electricity has contributed to passenger, freight, and naval
vessels alike.
In the air, General Electric superchargers have become al
most standard equipment on commercial and military air
planes. Airplane instruments, airport lighting, radio beacons,
all owe their efficacy to electricity.
In the constant war against disease, electricity has been
placed at the aid of the physician and surgeon in countless
ways. The X-ray, developed by Dr. W. D. Coolidge of the
General Electric Research Laboratory, has proved invalu
able in diagnosis, and in the treatment of disease. The
electro-cardiagraph, for analyzing heart conditions; the arti
ficial fever machine for treating several painful, crippling
diseases; electro-surgical apparatus; diathermy; ultraviolet
radiation; infrared radiation; ionic radiation; surgical ioniza-
tion; and other remedial measures have been provided by
electricity.
EPILOGUE 393
Through research and engineering developments, the in
candescent lamp has been vastly improved and reduced in
cost. The "Science of Seeing" has been developed, aiding
and safeguarding the sight of millions of people. The lamp
has invaded the field of photography, and street and highway
lighting have made our streets safer after dark. New light
sources of ever greater efficiency have been developed
sodium lights, fluorescent lights all are opening up new
fields of usefulness. Sealed-beam headlamps for automobiles
are making night driving safer and more comfortable.
Another achievement of vast importance in the home has
been the radio. Dr. Irving Langmuir's development of the
high-power vacuum tube made radiobroadcasting possible,
and General Electric's own radiobroadcasting stations have
pioneered in making radio entertainment available to almost
everyone. Today, General Electric has regular broadcasting
stations at Schenectady, Denver, and Oakland; has two
shortwave stations at Schenectady and one at San Francisco
broadcasting to South America, Europe, and the Orient in
several languages; has television stations at Schenectady and
at Bridgeport; and has a frequency-modulated station at
Schenectady.
In still another field General Electric has been pioneering
the new field of plastics, already important, and promising
vast benefits for the future. As an outgrowth of the early non-
metallic gears, the present list of plastic products ranges
from heels for ladies shoes to radio cabinets, from pencils to
parts for machines. In any forecast of the future, plastic
products must be given a leading place.
This then, was the picture of General Electric that Mr.
Young and Mr. Swope could look back upon as 1939 drew to
a close. Behind them lay a period in which General Electric
394 EPILOGUE
had made electricity of service to mankind, contributing to
greater comfort of living for millions of people. Behind them
lay a period of post-war collapse, an unprecedented period
of business boom, followed by a decade of devestating de
pression. Yet through it all General Electric had made steady
progress in applying electricity to the needs of civilization,
creating "More Goods for More People at Less Cost." Mr.
Young was just past 65, Mr. Swope was 66. They had long
advocated the retirement of General Electric employees at
65; now they faced the task of turning over to others the
responsibilities they had discharged so well.
At the Board of Directors meeting on November 17, 1939,
Mr. Young read the statement that he had written on his
scratch pad a week before, "We took up these offices to
gether and we wish to lay them down together." January 1,
1940. Listening to his words were two men who had entered
the room a few minutes before as the Assistant to the Presi
dent and Executive Vice President, respectively, but who
were to leave a few minutes later as Philip D. Reed, Chair
man of the Board of Directors, and Charles E. Wilson, Presi
dent.
So ended the second period of General Electric history;
so started the third. What lies ahead none can know, but if
the history of the past can be taken as a guide, the future
holds in store possibilities as vast and as promising as any
that have gone before.
APPENDIX
Statement of
OWEN D. YOUNG
to the
Temporary National Economic Committee
Regarding the Formation of Capital
of the
General Electric Company
WASHINGTON, D. C.
May 17, 1939
THIS is AN EFFORT to draw an over-all picture of the material
growth of the General Electric Company and to show the
origin and development of its capital. The statement does
not deal with the adventures and the accomplishments of
the Company in the field of science, nor with its experience
in welding together great numbers of human beings of widely
diversified capacities and skills into an organized and effec
tive service.
Even in the material field, the attempt to reflect the story
truly and briefly is a daring one. None will understand that
better or make more charitable allowance than the group for
which this memorandum is prepared.
The corporate age of the General Electric Company is 47
years, but as it sprang from the consolidation of the Edison
and Thomson-Houston Companies, it is perhaps more cor
rect to say that its present age is sixty years.
At the close of its sixtieth year on December 31, 1938, we
find its material resources are carried on its books at the net
value of $322,739,000, classified as follows:
397
398 APPENDIX
Net working capital (current assets less current
liabilities )
Affiliated companies and other investments, (in
cluding International General Electric Co.,
and manufacturing, selling, real estate and
other companies, $105,585,000)
Plant and equipment
Other assets
Less: other liabilities and miscellaneous reserves
Total capital investment
This capital was accumulated as follows:
From retained earnings, now carried as surplus and
general reserve
From issue of capital stock
This capital stock was issued:
For properties
For cash
In exchange for bonds of the Company
As dividends
$155,023,000
$141,528,000
40,148,000
10,022,000
$346,721,000
$ 23,982,000
322,739,000
$142,452,000
180,287,000
$ 37,784,000
75,379,000
17,334,000
49,790,000
$180,287,000
Representing this stock there is now issued and outstand
ing 28,845,927 shares, held by 208,580 stockholders. There
are no bonds and no preferred stock outstanding. In a word,
the two hundred thousand-odd stockholders own the Com
pany, not an equity in its assets.
This picture, which is one of affluence in the foreground,
might well be misleading unless we can see in the back
ground the rough and dangerous road on which the pioneers
set out, with confidence and courage, more than a half cen
tury ago. In that great caravan were scientists and inventors
to originate, engineers to apply, manufacturers to make, com-
APPENDIX 399
mercial men to sell, people with savings to finance, entre
preneurs and administrators to develop and manage, and a
vast army of conscientious and skillful men and women do
ing their respective jobs with pride in a new art and en
thusiasm in the creation of a new industry.
In looking for the beginning of the road it is necessary for
us to recall what has been earlier stated, that the progenitors
of the General Electric Company were the Edison General
Electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Electric Com
pany. Let us speak of the latter first, not because it is the
more important of the two, but rather because, in typical
American fashion, it arose out of the unknown.
If we exclude the telegraph, it is fair to say that in 1878
the electrical manufacturing industry was not only non
existent, but the art as a practical one was unknown. The
men who created, financed and managed the Thomson-
Houston Company were likewise relatively unknown. At that
time Edison was well enough known through his inventions
so that his initial adventure into the electrical industry was
financed by a group of prominent New York capitalists. Not
so with the Thomson-Houston group. There were no prior
inventions, there were no names of great capitalists, and there
was very little money.
Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston were teachers in
the Philadelphia Central High School. They built a dynamo,
induction coils and an arc lamp. Thomson showed the con
traption to his friend, Thomas H. McCollin, a commercial
photographer in Philadelphia. McCollin asked his cousin,
George A. Garrett, to see a demonstration. Thomson, then
26 years old, said, "I can build a better machine than this,
one that will run any number of lights you want." Garrett,
with enthusiasm replied, "Let's build a four-lighter. Ill
stand the expense." That was America speaking in 1879!
400 APPENDIX
The first installation was in an all-night bakery, the second
in a brewery. When the brewery caught on fire one of the
firemen who was holding the hose said, "What the dickens
kind of a light is that? You pour water on her and she won't
go out!" That was news in America sixty years ago.
At the same time, Mr. Edison, having incorporated the
Edison Company with the backing of J. P. Morgan and a
capital of $300,000, was receiving considerable well-deserved
publicity in the New York press.
Thereupon, Frederick H. Churchill of New Britain, Con
necticut, seeking a new industry for his town, invited Thom
son and Houston to settle there. When they accepted, Church
ill circulated a prospectus in New Britain which, after de
scribing the new company as "a rare opportunity for the
upbuilding of a successful business enterprise," ended with
the following sentence: "Such an industry would have within
it a capacity for expansion and growth such as is furnished
by but few of the business opportunities that today present
themselves to the business world."
Churchill died in 1881 and the New Britain venture failed;
not, however, before one of its installations had been made in
an armory in Lynn, Massachusetts. A Lynn newspaper pro
prietor, Silas A. Barton, became interested in the possibility
of a second installation in that city and visited New Britain.
Learning that the business was for sale, he suggested the
idea of purchase to a group of Lynn shoe manufacturers,
among whom was Charles A. Coffin, then under forty years
of age. The upshot was that Coffin and his associates pur
chased a controlling interest in the company, moved it to
Lynn and changed its name to the Thomson-Houston Electric
Company.
The members of the Lynn syndicate were successful shoe
manufacturers. Initially they were primarily interested in
APPENDIX 401
bringing a new industry to their town. That business soon
captured the imagination of Charles A. Coffin, and from that
time until his retirement in 1922 he was its leader through
bad times and good.
It is necessary for us to remember that in 1882 the problem
which faced both the Thomson-Houston Company and the
Edison Company was not only the origination, development
and manufacture of electrical machines. That was only half
the task. Broadly speaking there were no buyers. New cus
tomers had to be created to buy the new machines. This led
to the creation of local light and power companies. The
sponsors were usually made up of local capitalists and poli
ticians, for it was necessary to have a franchise and some
money.
For the most part they were motivated by civic pride and
the promotion of local development. The capital of the com
panies was proverbially inadequate. This forced the manu
facturing companies to accept in part payment for the new
equipment the bonds and stocks of the new customer com
panies. The Edison Company, through a somewhat different
technique that of issuing exclusive licenses against secu
rities of local operating companies ultimately faced the
same necessity of accepting additional securities in part pay
ment for its products.
Leaving now the Thomson-Houston Company at Lynn,
with Charles A. Coffin and his associates in charge, let us
look at the development of the Edison Company.
In 1879, while Thomson, the high school teacher, was
tinkering with his arc light system, Edison, still under 35,
had already established a modest position as an inventor.
One of his earlier inventions, relating to the electric tele
graph, had been the subject of patent litigation. Grosvenor
P. Lowrey, a prominent New York lawyer, had defended
402 APPENDIX
Edison's interests and as a result became one of his most
faithful and staunch supporters. Lowrey, having confidence
in Edison's ability and knowing of his interest in developing
an incandescent lamp, approached Mr. J. P. Morgan and
other influential financiers of his acquaintance. The result
was the organization of the Edison Electric Light Company.
The capital stock amounted to $300,000, of which $250,000
was issued in payment for equipment and the remaining $50,-
000 was subscribed for, with 80 per cent paid in in cash.
That, too, was America speaking in 1878.
Edison's immediate problem was the discovery of some
material for a filament that would stand incandescence for
a considerable period without disintegration.
On October 21, 1879, his experiments were crowned with
success at Menlo Park, when his carbonized cotton filament
burned continuously for forty hours. Truly a historic demon
stration!
To successfully operate an incandescent lighting system,
however, it was necessary for Edison, in addition to the lamp,
to develop a completely new set of mechanisms to generate
and transmit the electric current. This was the kind of stag
gering task which only a great genius could master. It soon
made Edison's facilities at Menlo Park inadequate. In 1880,
therefore, he organized the Edison Machine Works in New
York City to manufacture generators, and the Edison Lamp
Works near Newark, N. J., to manufacture lamps.
In 1886, Edison decided to move the Edison Machine
Works out of the metropolitan area. He became interested in
an unused plant at Schenectady, and made an offer which
was refused by the owners.
An impasse threatened. But civic pride burned bright in
the breasts of some, at least, of Schenectady 's citizens. They
grasped what it would mean to the town to have a plant of
APPENDIX 403
the famous Edison. A meeting was called, and eventually by
local subscription a fund was raised which made up the dif
ference between "bid and asked" prices.
So it was that the Mohawk Valley became the center for
manufacturing the generating equipment required by the
growing number of Edison licensee operating companies.
These were stirring times. The formative period of electric
development was approaching its height. The Edison system,
as an organization for manufacturing, licensing and selling
electric light systems, was beginning to sprawl. Greater in
tegration seemed desirable, and in 1889 a merger of the in
dividual Edison enterprises was consummated through the
formation of the Edison General Electric Company.
At the same time that the Edison Machine Works was es
tablished at Schenectady and the Thomson-Houston Com
pany was getting under way at Lynn, another idea was
germinating in the minds of several competent and creative
engineers, notable among whom were Charles J. Van Depoele
and Frank J. Sprague. In 1887 and 1888 these two, working
independently, had demonstrated the practicability of using
electricity to propel streetcars.
This opened almost at once a vast new field for the electri
cal manufacturers. Larger power units had to be made, longer
transmission was necessary, and cars needed to be equipped
with motors. The old horse railways had to be transformed,
franchises modified or enlarged and additional capital pro
vided. As in the lighting field, the problem of financing was
difficult but imperative. It invited the manufacturing com
panies to extend their limited credit further in order to en
large their business.
The rapidity of the development of the Edison and Thom
son-Houston Companies is shown in the following statement
of their condition in 1891:
404 APPENDIX
Edison General
Electric Thomson-Houston
Capitalization $15,000,000 $10,400,000
Gross business 10,940,000 10,304,500
Profits 2,098,000 2,700,000
Number of employees 6,000 4,000
Factory space, sq. feet 400,000 340,000
Customers 3-4,000 3-4,000
Central stations 375 870
Isolated installations 2,300 very few
Street railways equipped 180 204
Street railway cars 2,230 2,760
The Thomson-Houston Company, springing from the un
known, is catching up with the great Edison Company and in
points surpassing it. With two-thirds the capital and two-
thirds the number of employees, Thomson-Houston is equal
ling Edison in gross business and exceeding it in profits. It
has a larger number of central lighting stations, more street
railways and more streetcars equipped. The Edison Com
pany, in its annual report for that year, said that it "could
have done a much larger business if it had been willing to
accept securities in payment for orders; but ... a strict rule
was adopted of declining all such and doing business ex
clusively on a cash or short credit basis."
The Thomson-Houston Company had been rediscounting
its customers' notes with its banks and pledging operating
company securities as collateral for its loans. Finally the
banks became hesitant, particularly in accepting securities
as distinguished from customers' notes, and in 1890 Charles
A. Coffin organized the United Electric Securities Company.
The purpose was to transfer to it large blocks of securities of
utility operating companies and to sell to the public its own
debentures, and so obtain longer term money to bolster the
APPENDIX 405
waning treasury of Thomson-Houston. The Thomson-Hous
ton Company kept the common stock of the United Electric
Securities Company.
The public, however, was hesitant too. It soon became ap
parent that debentures could not be sold in sufficient quan
tities to finance the rapidly increasing amount of utility
securities which the manufacturing company was obliged to
take. The Edison Company was drawing in its horns as a mat
ter of business policy. The Thomson-Houston Company was
doing the same thing from necessity.
Perhaps at this point we should remind ourselves that there
were several other companies operating at this time in the
electrical manufacturing field; notable among them was the
Westinghouse Company. They were all more or less in the
same condition with the same problems and the same dif
ficulties.
Under such circumstances, what could be more natural
than to combine the Edison and Thomson-Houston Com
panies, giving the consolidated concern the business leader
ship of Charles A. Coffin, the inventive genius of Edison and
Thomson, eliminating patent conflicts which were threaten
ing both concerns, and bringing together the financial in
terests in Boston which had supported Thomson-Houston
with the great prestige of Mr. Morgan and his associates in
New York?
So it was that the General Electric Company was incor
porated on April 15, 1892, and began active business on the
first day of June in that year. Charles A. Coffin was made
President, and the contest began for the market of electrical
manufactures between the Westinghouse Company led by
George Westinghouse, the brilliant and imaginative engi
neer, and Charles A. Coffin, the daring and equally imagina
tive man of business.
406 APPENDIX
The first board of directors of the General Electric Com
pany reflected its distinguished and substantial backing; F.
Lothrop Ames, Charles A. Coffin, T. Jefferson Coolidge, Jr.,
and Henry L. Higginson, all of Boston, Thomas A. Edison,
Charles H. Coster, Frank S. Hastings, General Eugene Griffin,
Darius O. Mills, H. McK. Twombley, and J. Pierpont Morgan
of New York.
The directors made their first report to stockholders on
April 11, 1893, covering the eight months from June 1, 1892,
to January 31, 1893. At that time it stated its capital invest
ment to be $45,688,755, against which it had issued $10,000,-
000 of bonds, $4,236,900 of preferred stock and $30,426,900
of common stock with a surplus of $1,024,955. It had 3,272
stockholders. There were then 1,277 central station lighting
companies using Edison and Thomson-Houston apparatus,
supplying 2,500,000 incandescent and 110,000 arc lamps. Of
the lighting companies, the report says:
"The growth of these companies has been phenomenal, and it
is very satisfactory to note that those which have been established
longest are making the most rapid increase in size of plant and
volume of business.
"During the past year there has been a very marked apprecia
tion in the value of the securities of local companies, especially
in the larger cities, testifying to the increased confidence of in
vestors in such properties."
It is interesting to note, at this time, the growth in two
years of the electrification of street railways. On February 1,
1891, there were 151 roads operating electrically or under
contract; on the same date in 1893 there were 435. On
February 1, 1891, there were 1,578 electric cars; on the same
date in 1893 there were 8,386. On February 1, 1891, there
were 1,252 miles of electric railway in operation; at the same
date in 1893 there were 4,927 miles.
APPENDIX 407
In its first eight months of its existence, the Company did
$11,728,000 of business, at a profit of $2,996,011 of which
$1,971,056 was distributed in dividends and $1,024,955 was
carried to surplus.
The prestige of the Company enabled it to sell $454,300
par value of the preferred stock of the United Electric Secu
rities Company for a price in excess of $408,000. It was still
necessary for the Company, however, to endorse and dis
count customers' notes, because such notes unendorsed were
not acceptable to the banks. On January 31, 1893, these
amounted to $3,787,312.69. In addition it had outstanding
$10,000,000 of five per cent bonds.
In such a condition the new General Electric Company
faced the panic of 1893. It will be interesting to see what hap
pened during the next few years.
The first shock of the depression was dramatically told in
the second annual report of the Company issued under date
of January 31, 1894:
"It is needless to say that the past year has been a most trying
one to all corporations. It has been especially so to companies
like your own, dealing with local enterprises situated in all parts
of the United States, and largely dependent on normal conditions
for their success and development. During the summer of 1893,
even old and strong customers were obliged to ask for leniency
in paying their accounts and notes. Under these circumstances,
your Company found itself with its own obligations to meet, but
unable at that time to collect the money with which to meet them.
The difficulties thus presented were carefully considered by your
Board and were met by selling to a syndicate certain of the Com
pany's assets consisting of claims against, and stocks and bonds
of, local lighting and railway companies, the same being of a
class of which your Company sold several million dollars in 1892
and which your Directors, in their last report, said they intended
to continue to sell from time to time as heretofore 'through the
408 APPENDIX
ordinary channels.' The channels through which your Company
usually made such sales having become unavailable owing to the
panic, your Directors adopted a plan used on several occasions in
the earlier days of the Thomson-Houston Company, and made
the sale of assets above described to a syndicate which paid over
$4,000,000 in cash. Although the transaction involved a large
shrinkage from book valuations, the sale was at a price high
under the conditions then prevailing. Few of the securities sold
were listed on any exchange or commonly dealt in, and it was
not possible to effect a ready sale except in bulk to a syndicate.
These assets were placed in a trust known as 'The Street Railway
and Illuminating Properties/ After the financial stringency had
subsided, the right to subscribe to them was offered to the Stock
holders of your Company.
'The depreciation in value of the assets thus sold applies
equally to those still on hand. Holders of stocks and bonds of
almost every kind find them quoted today much lower than a
year ago, and this Company, as a holder of electrical stocks and
bonds, is no exception to the rule. In fact, the shrinkage in values
of electrical securities has been greater than in most others. The
last year has been characterized by shrinkage in every direction,
and your Company has suffered severely from it."
The officers of the Company were making a titanic effort
in their race with receivership. By January 31, 1894, the debt
had been reduced by $6,750,000. The cash had dwindled
from $3,871,000 on January 31, 1893, to $591,000 on January
31, 1894. The directors stated:
"While the liquidation of the debt has been going on, the
Company has also readjusted its basis for sales, either to cash
or to short credits to desirable customers. In view of the extreme
depression and the uncertainty as to the early future, your Direc
tors have not felt justified in any other course than that of ad
hering strictly to sales on this basis. It is believed that your Com
pany has lost little legitimate business in consequence of its cur-
APPENDIX 409
tailment of credit to customers. It intends to confine its business
to this basis, and to accept smaller profits."
The capital investment of the Company dropped in that
year from $45,000,000 to $32,000,000 and its surplus from
$1,000,000 in the black to $12,000,000 in the red. Such was
the first impact of the panic on the capital structure of the
new concern.
It is interesting to note that the red figures in the surplus
continued at substantially the same figure until 1898, when it
was wiped out by a reduction of capital stock of $14,000,000.
In January 1899, the surplus was in the black to the extent
of $156,000, and it has remained in black continuously ever
since. The directors further said in their report of January 31,
1894:
"Your Directors do not believe that it will be possible for some
time to come to do as large a business as was done by the Com
pany prior to the panic, although a gradual improvement has
been apparent during the last two months. The street railway
business, which to a considerable extent was formerly done
through syndicates and promoters, many of whom have become
embarrassed, promises to be smaller than during the previous
year. Arc lighting business is also reduced, largely because of the
inability of local companies to secure capital with which to ex
tend their business for the purpose of carrying out municipal
contracts. The business of the Company, with respect to incan
descent lighting, which is to a great degree performed by strong
and conservatively managed local companies, is in a more healthy
condition, and has not suffered so severely."
In the third annual report, as of January 31, 1895, to cover
additional losses the directors "arbitrarily charged $2,000,000
to Profit and Loss Account."
During that year, however, they were busy dealing master
fully with their debt. Of it they say:
410 APPENDIX
"In the last report, your Directors expressed the opinion that
they could, out of the then unliquidated assets, pay off the bal
ance of your floating debt and also provide all necessary working
capital. These expectations have been realized, and in addition
thereto the Company has purchased and cancelled $1,250,000 of
its own Debentures at an average cost of less than 89 per cent."
In the fourth report as of January 31, 1896, the Directors
make the following statement:
"In their last report, your Directors referred at some length to
the liquidation of old assets, and stated that the sum of $2,000,000
had been charged to Profit and Loss for the purpose of providing
for all shrinkages which could then be anticipated in the liquida
tion of old matters.
"Much has been accomplished in the year just closed in liqui
dating old and slow assets, and the condition of the assets of like
character which still remain on the books of the Company is such
as to enable your officers to more definitely fix their proper values.
Information regarding these matters will be found in the report
of the Second Vice-President, to which particular attention is in
vited. There have been charged against the $2,000,000 item above
referred to the sums of $530,152.16, representing the shrinkages
which have accrued from the liquidation so far as completed,
leaving $1,469,847.84 still standing to provide for possible shrink
ages in the future. It is the belief of your Directors that this
amount is sufficient to cover all the purposes for which the above
sum of $2,000,000 was originally set apart/'
The purge continued, but signs of health were reappearing.
"The business secured by your Company for the fiscal year
just closed was less than ten per cent greater in value of sales
than for the year previous. The actual increase in output of fac
tories, based upon capacity of machines and number of articles
produced, is more than thirty per cent greater than for the pre-
APPENDIX 411
vious year. While the selling prices as thus shown have been ma
terially reduced, there has been a corresponding curtailment in
manufacturing and other expenses and lowering in costs, largely
due to improved designs and methods of manufacture/'
The gross business was still running around $12,000,000.
Even in 1897 the business had not increased. In that year,
however, the directors referred again to the $2,000,000 that
had been set aside in 1894 to provide for shrinkage in assets.
"The business of your Company has suffered during the past
year, in common with that of all manufacturing enterprises, from
the disturbed financial and political conditions which have pre
vailed during a considerable portion of the time. These conditions
have curtailed the amount of capital ordinarily available for the
establishment and extension of Power and Lighting Plants, and
have enforced the practice of great economy on the part of its
customers. As a result, the shrinkage in orders received by your
Company was very marked, especially during the latter half of
the year. This shrinkage is not shown by a material falling off in
shipments, as given in the Profit and Loss Statement on page 17
of this report, but the amount of work in progress and unfilled
orders on hand is considerably less than a year ago.
"With a return to normal commercial conditions, a correspond
ing revival in the business of your Company may be expected.
The volume of business secured by it for the first three months
of the current year is slightly in excess of that for the same period
in either of the three previous years.
"On January 31, 1895, the sum of $2,000,000 was set aside, as
shown in the Annual Report of that year, to provide for shrinkage
in assets, the exact values of which it was then extremely difficult
to fix. During the past year your Directors have been able to
value these items with substantial accuracy, and the $2,000,000
fund has been found sufficient and has been used to provide for
the proper adjustment of all accounts and other assets for which
it was created."
412 APPENDIX
In opening the sixth report as of January 31, 1898, the
President said:
"The past year witnessed a revival in business which increased
rapidly in activity and volume during its latter months."
He was there referring to orders taken rather than sales
billed. The latter remained at substantially $12,000,000. The
clouds were lifting the sum was beginning to shine. For
five years the depression had continued. The struggle for
survival was over at last.
A reduction of forty per cent in the share capital of the
Company was made, bringing the common stock from $30,-
460,000 to $18,276,000 and the preferred stock from $4,252,-
000 to $2,551,200.
In 1898 the Company was clearing the way for dividends.
The surplus went into the black, as heretofore stated, to
$156,000. The business jumped to $15,500,000. In the report
to stockholders for that year there appears the following
significant statement:
"The Company has no Note Payable, nor is there under dis
count any paper bearing the Company's endorsement or guar
anty.
"It has not borrowed any money, nor has the Company's credit
been used during the year either by issuing notes, endorsing cus
tomers' paper for discount or lending its name in any way; but by
adhering to the policy of the previous four years and maintaining
sales on a basis of cash or short credit to desirable customers, all
purchases have been paid for in cash."
By 1898 the volume of business had grown to more than
$22,000,000, and the market was beginning to take securities
which the Company was selling at prices substantially in ex
cess of their book value after the drastic write-downs of the
APPENDIX 413
depression years. The Company was off to a new start and
was to participate profitably in the truly amazing develop
ments of the next thirty years.
By the turn of the century, then, the capital investment of
the Company as shown by the report of January 31, 1901,
was $32,114,681 (in contrast with the $46,000,000 with which
it had started eight years before) and was represented by
$1,534,000 in bonds, $2,551,200 of preferred stock, $21,400,-
300 of common stock, and $6,629,181 of surplus. The sales
billed for that year were approximately $28,000,000.
The two succeeding years were very profitable ones, es
pecially due to the liquidation of securities above the then
book values, and the surplus had risen to $15,000,000. All the
preferred stock and about $1,000,000 of bonds were con
verted into common. About $2,000,000 of new bonds were
issued. The Company restored the stock reduction which
had been made in 1898, which brought its capital stock to ap
proximately $42,000,000.
During the next four years it was able to find new capital
with which to carry on its rapidly increasing business by is
suing its common shares to stockholders for cash at par to
the extent of approximately $20,000,000.
So the Company faced the critical year of 1907 with a
capital investment of $81,000,000 represented by $2,000,000
of bonds, $64,000,000 of common stock, and $15,000,000 of
surplus. Its volume of business had grown to approximately
$60,000,000.
As a result of the panic of 1907 the directors said in their
report of January 31, 1908:
"Late in the year there was a sudden and severe shrinkage in
the value of all merchandise and materials used by your Com
pany, notably copper. All said materials, whether raw, manu
factured, or in process, which were on hand January 31st, 1908,
414 APPENDIX
were inventoried at the prevailing lower prices. The book value
of such inventories was thereby reduced by about $2,000,000."
The stockholders having subscribed for only $1,500,000 of
common stock in 1907, the Company issued $13,000,000 of
5% ten year debenture bonds convertible into stock at par
on and after June 1, 1911. The financial pressures had forced
the use of convertible debentures to maintain an adequate
capital structure, but fortunately by this time the resources
and credit of the Company enabled it to withstand the shock
of the short depression of 1907.
During the year 1911, $12,000,000 of the bonds were con
verted into common, bringing the common capital to $77,-
000,000. In 1912 the Company declared a stock dividend of
30% out of surplus for the purpose, as stated in the report,
"of recouping the stockholders in part for dividends passed
or reduced during the years 1893 to 1902." During that same
year the Company authorized an issue of $60,000,000 of forty
year debentures to be sold from time to time as required,
and they sold, in 1912, $10,000,000 of such bonds bearing a
rate of 5% per annum.
So, at the end of 1912, the capital investment stood at
$125,000,000, with bonds of $12,000,000, surplus of $12,-
000,000 and common stock of $101,000,000.
During the war years, 1917, 1918 and 1919, there were
substantial temporary borrowings, increases of capital and
surplus, the detail of which throws little light on the normal
and progressive capital development of the Company.
The year 1920 brought another crisis. The orders for that
year were $318,000,000, more than eighty millions in excess
of the previous year. Inventories and receivables had in
creased, so when the sudden and severe decline in market
prices came, the Company wrote off of inventory some $18,-
APPENDIX 415
000,000. During the year it made short term loans of $45,-
000,000, but between January and April of the succeeding
year, $42,000,000 of such loans had been repaid. The com
mon capital, however, was increased in excess of $50,000,000
during the two years 1920 and 1921 ($40,000,000 being for
cash and property and the balance as stock dividends ) bring
ing the total capital investment up to $298,000,000, consisting
of $176,000,000 of common stock, $38,000,000 of bonds and
$84,000,000 of surplus and general reserve.
In 1922 a special stock was created having no preference
over the common except a limited dividend rate of 6%. For
the next several years this special stock was issued as stock
dividends, and no further dividends in common stock were
issued. The last dividend paid in special stock was in 1926,
and the total amount issued was $43,000,000.
In 1923 the Company called and paid off $15,000,000 of
its bonds. In 1925 it called $15,000,000 more, and it had ac
quired enough in the market in the meantime so as to re
duce its funded debt to $2,000,000. In 1935 the Company
called this remaining $2,000,000 of bonds and retired all of
its $43,000,000 of special stock.
The Company had in the year 1935 $180,000,000 of com
mon stock, $136,000,000 of surplus and general reserve, mak
ing a total capital investment of $316,000,000.
From the above brief sketch of capital growth, I have only
drawn attention to the major changes and the problems which
faced the management. The resume of the source of capital
was shown at the beginning of this statement.
When one looks at the growth of the volume of sales of
the General Electric Company, he finds it remained sta
tionary at $12,000,000 for the first five years of its life, but at
the turn of the century it reached more than $25,000,000. At
1910 it was $70,000,000; at 1920 it was $275,000,000; and at
416 APPENDIX
1929 it reached its high point of $415,000,000. In 1933 it
dropped to $136,000,000; in 1937 it recovered to $350,000,-
000 and in 1938 it was $260,000,000. The enormous growth
in the two decades after 1910 needs to be accounted for by
anyone who wishes to understand the background of the
capitalization of the electrical industry.
I wish now to go back to the trying year of 1893, when the
General Electric Company transferred reams of utility secu
rities to the Street Railway and Illuminating Properties in
order to raise $4,000,000 in cash, and thereby saved itself
from bankruptcy. The Street Railway and Illuminating Pool,
as it was then called, was strictly a liquidating concern. It had
no intention of entering the utility business as such. It had
no particular interest in or knowledge of management of
such properties. In order to make its securities marketable,
it was obliged in many instances, if not indeed in most, to
reorganize the operating units through receivership by re
ducing the prior lien bonds and preferred stocks. It thereby
threw larger equities in the new common. The new bonds and
preferred were sold to the public to the extent and at such
prices as the market would take them. The new common
shares remaining in the liquidating pool were, for the most
part, not marketable through then established channels.
Something new needed to happen and it did.
For the ten years preceding the turn of the century, the
glamour of the new electrical art had attracted many of the
most brilliant young men of the time into the field of electri
cal engineering. Most of them took a post-graduate course
with the manufacturing companies known as "The Test."
Thereafter, some of them remained in manufacturing, but
many others went out to the lighting and railway companies.
A few of them started in business on their own account, first
as expert advisers to existing companies, and later as ex-
APPENDIX 417
perts in management. It was to this last group that liquida
tors like the Illuminating Pool went for the purpose of creat
ing, through expert management and engineering skill, values
in common shares. The usual procedure was to turn over to
such management groups a small block of the common
shares at a rather nominal figure and install the engineering
organization as manager. To spur the management, it was
usually customary to grant options on additional blocks to
be taken up in specified periods at increasing prices.
So the young engineers came into positions of manage
ment and later control of operating public utilities. They re
placed the nominees of the old politician and the local capi
talist who, with little knowledge, had endeavored to operate
in the early days and whose influence was much diminished
and in many cases entirely eliminated by the purge of the
panic of 1893.
So we find at the beginning of the twentieth century groups
of highly trained young engineers, able and ambitious to de
velop utilities, with an opportunity open to them not only to
render great service to the community, but to acquire a com
petence for themselves. At the same time in the manufactur
ing organizations their contemporaries were coming into
positions of influence. For the first time the manufacturers
had competent and appreciative buyers, and conversely these
young managers of utilities were stimulating and urging the
electrical producers to make more efficient and more econom
ical equipment.
Here then were producers and users venturing into a new
field unafraid of new things. The rate of technical advance
was tremendous. Human brains alive and at work every
where were enlarging the field of electrical service and ma
terially reducing the costs. Values began to be reflected in
these common stocks and then the public itself began to buy
418 APPENDIX
them, in limited quantities to be sure, but nevertheless a
market was emerging. Soon the old liquidating concerns had
finished their task, usually with great profit to the stock
holders who had dared to invest their money in the dark days
of the panic.
But when the utility common shares became valuable the
new managers did not wish to sell them, although they could
do so at a profit, because they might lose control of the com
panies which they had really made. As energetic Americans,
however, they were ambitious to extend their management
operations and achieve the added economies that such ex
tension promised.
To meet this situation the utility holding company was in
vented, which enabled these ambitious young managers not
so much to sell their original common shares at a profit as to
obtain some funds against them through the issue of holding
company securities, and thereby enable them to enlarge their
operations in the communities which they served or to ac
quire an interest in other properties and so extend their man
agement program. Then, too, the holding company was a
better medium for the investor. Instead of taking common
shares in an individual operating company, he was able to
invest in a diversified group of shares, and if he took pre
ferred stock of the holding company he would gain some
security through the equity margin represented by the com
mon. ,
This, broadly, is the story of utility holding companies be
fore the great war. If holding companies have, in these later
days, fallen under criticism, we must ever remember the
service which they performed in the rapid expansion of elec
trical services to the public. As an effective instrument for
providing capital it made possible the rapid development and
use of the steam turbine, not only in great centers of popu-
APPENDIX 419
lation but in power plants serving large numbers of rural
communities through networks of transmission systems. In
no other way could the small communities have received such
high character of service at such low cost.
This mechanism was developing during the period from
1900 to 1910, during which time the business of the General
Electric Company trebled. But even so, the full effect was
not felt until the next two decades when the business of the
Company rose from $70,000,000 to more than $400,000,000.
This tremendous increase was not experienced alone by the
General Electric Company, but by the entire electrical manu
facturing industry. Indeed, General Electric's percentage of
the industry business has remained through the years at be
tween twenty and twenty-five per cent.
There is another aspect, however, of this co-operation be
tween the engineers of the utilities and the engineers of the
electrical manufacturers. As I have suggested before, it was
difficult for the manufacturers to keep pace with the demands
of their own customers for new things. To do so, the General
Electric Company in 1901 established a research laboratory
and called to it men of great vision and ability to explore the
unknown. Those men had no specified jobs. To improve what
we had was the work of the engineers. The research men
were to move out into an unknown land, and they were sup
ported on their adventure in the hope that they would bring
back among their discovered treasures a few at least that
would be of practical advantage to the electrical industry.
One might well have criticized in those days a corporate man
agement which gambled stockholders' money on such remote
chances. Yet I suppose no venture has been more profitable
to the General Electric Company, to investors and operators
in utilities and to the public served by them than these re
search laboratories.
420 APPENDIX
The drive for economy and efficiency in the production of
electrical power so urgently demanded by the utility engi
neers was supported by the work of the research laboratories
and the engineers of the manufacturers. Indeed, the profits
of the utility operating companies became so large as not only
to attract investors, but to precipitate constantly calls from
customers for reduced rates. In the beginning, municipalities
endeavored to regulate rates, but the utility rapidly outgrew
the municipality. Then State Commissions were charged with
that responsibility, but the utilities in some cases overran
State boundaries and so the Federal government found its
justification for a limited entry into the field of utility regu
lation.
I should like to say in passing that in the political debates
incident to the entrance of the Federal government into the
field of regulation, there has been criticism of the incompe
tence not only of local regulating bodies, but frequently of
State commissions. I should like to take the opportunity of
saying here that by and large I think those criticisms are un
fair and unwarranted. The fact is that the research labora
tories and the engineers in the electrical industry made such
rapid progress in efficiencies and economies that regulating
bodies were unable to keep up with them. As a consequence,
by the time the rather cumbersome machinery of regulation
established a rate, the efficiencies introduced meanwhile fre
quently kept the profits on the new rate as high as they were
on the old ones. This fact led customers to criticize the regu
lating boards. Such criticism to my mind was unjustifiable.
Indeed, on the whole, I think the fact that the utility com
panies were highly prosperous during the early days was of
great public advantage. Their earnings were largely turned
back into their properties and so supplemented the capital
which they were able to get from the public and which in
APPENDIX 421
amount would, I think, have been inadequate to have pro
vided for the rapid expansion of facilities which took place
between the years 1910 and 1930.
I have spoken of the part which the engineer managers of
the electrical utility companies played in the development
of the business, and consequently the capital formation of the
General Electric Company. To complete the picture it is
now necessary to speak of the major adventures of the Gen
eral Electric Company itself in the utility field.
I have already told how essential it was in the earlier days
for the Company to accept public utility securities in part
payment for its apparatus and how large blocks of such utili
ties were sold in the panic of 1893 to save the Company's
life. Attention has also been called that prior to the organiza
tion of the General Electric Company, Charles A. Coffin had
organized the United Electric Securities Company of Boston
as a medium through which, by the issue of its debentures
and preferred stock, he could find an indirect market for the
securities of operating companies which he wished to take.
The United Electric Securities Company was continued in
existence as a subsidiary of the General Electric Company
and was used from time to time for the purpose of liquidating
in part the utility securities of the General Company. Its
headquarters were in Boston and its securities were largely
sold in that market.
In 1904 the General Electric Company caused to be or
ganized the Electrical Securities Corporation in New York
for the purpose of doing a similar business in New York and
thereby widening the opportunity of the General Electric
Company to aid in the financing of utilities. The common
stock of this company too was held by the General Electric
Company. Many years later, to save overhead and simplify
the organization, the United Electric Securities Company of
422 APPENDIX
Boston was liquidated by a transfer of its assets in the do
mestic field to the Electrical Securities Corporation, and in
the foreign field to the International General Electric Com
pany, which is the subsidiary of the General Electric Com
pany doing its foreign business, except in Canada. It is
unnecessary to speak of the United Electric Securities Com
pany further than to say that it served a useful purpose for
more than forty years with satisfactory returns to its investors
and the General Electric Company and that it had rendered
a substantial service to the financing of utilities during pe
riods when the market was not ready to supply capital de
mands.
The Electrical Securities Corporation still exists, but it no
longer issues its securities to the public, all of the outstanding
ones having been called and retired. It had developed
through many years a highly specialized management and it
is today, practically speaking, only an incorporated Securities
Department of the General Electric Company. It too, as a
financing mechanism to protect utility credits, had served a
useful purpose.
These two companies were investment companies. They
were not in any sense management companies although at
infrequent times they were compelled as investors to partici
pate as directors, and occasionally as managers. Such activi
ties, however, were purely incidental.
I shall now speak of another adventure of the General Elec
tric Company into the utility field which did not originally
contemplate, but which ultimately eventuated, in manage
ment and in a "holding company." I speak of the Electric
Bond and Share Company. It was natural that the two invest
ment companies above referred to should take the securities
of the larger public utility operating companies. It was, of
course, the ambition of the engineer managers, of whom I
APPENDIX 423
have spoken, to operate initially in the larger communities.
Even after the turn of the century, the utilities operating in
the smaller communities were finding it difficult to get ade
quate capital and particularly equity capital. Prior lien se
curities, such as bonds and preferred stocks of the smaller
companies could only be sold on a high interest basis and
when adequate capital for common stock was not available,
the senior securities often could not be sold at all.
Under these circumstances, the General Electric Company,
again under the leadership of Charles A. Coffin, conceived
the idea in 1905 of organizing the Electric Bond and Share
Company for the purpose of aiding the smaller utilities in
raising junior capital and in selling their senior securities at a
better price. The development of the utility business in serv
ing many communities from centralized power plants through
the use of long transmission lines practically forced the Elec
tric Bond and Share Company, through the normal evolution
of its business, into a large holding and management com
pany. Meantime, other operating units, through holding com
panies and otherwise, were extending their lines to serve not
only small cities, but small villages and hamlets; indeed, they
were reaching out for the farms. As these operating units be
came larger and the general trend of the utility business was
profitable, the Bond and Share Company was well able to
handle financing and to provide its own capital requirements
without help from the General Electric Company. Accord
ingly, on December 30, 1924, the General Electric Company
decided to divest itself of ownership of the Electric Bond and
Share Company by distributing the common stock of that
Company to its own stockholders as a dividend. Such stock
at the time of its distribution was valued on the books of the
General Electric Company at $25,000,000.
In 1919, after the close of the great war, the General Elec-
424 APPENDIX
trie Company, at the suggestion of the President of the
United States, undertook to secure the co-operation of all
American concerns interested in wireless in the creation of
a unified organization to develop and protect the communi
cation interests of the United States throughout the world.
The story of radio and its rapid development need not be re
peated here. It is only referred to because the Radio Corpora
tion of America was organized for the above purposes in 1919
and as the result of a decree of the Federal Court, the com
mon stock of the Radio Corporation which the General Elec
tric Company held was distributed in 1933 to the stockholders
of the General Electric Company as a dividend. The value
of that stock as carried on the books of the General Electric
Company was approximately $26,500,000 and that amount
was deducted from surplus in that year.
While speaking of dividends, perhaps I should say at this
point that in addition to the Electric Bond and Share and the
Radio Corporation dividends of $51,000,000, the General
Electric Company has, during the forty-eight years of its life,
paid cash dividends to its stockholders of $655,662,000 and
an additional $47,000,000 to retire its special stock issued as
stock dividends. During this same period the Company has
sold approximately $7,000,000,000 worth of electrical prod
ucts and it has paid to its employees in wages and salaries
something over $2,700,000,000.
Now we are back to the point where I started. The enter
prise has been profitable, but it took the vision and daring of
genius to create it. It took confidence, persistence and cour
age to develop it and carry it through its earlier days. It re
mains only for us at this time and for those who come after
us to so administer this great concern that it may continue
to render a service in the future comparable to the past.
Index
Adams, Thomas E.
Brush-Adams lamp invented 69
Addison, Dr. Thomas H. G-E
representative on West Coast 200
Alexanderson, Ernst F. W.
alternator on trial at New Bruns
wick, 372; duplex radio telephone
system, 354; single-phase railway
motor, 350; high-frequency alter
nator, 351; magnetic modulator,
352; multiple-tuned antenna, 354;
two-way wireless telephony, 354
Alteneck, inventor of Siemens dy
namo 7
American Electric Company
organized, 33; bought by Lynn
Syndicate, 54
American Marconi Company
Alexanderson alternator tested,
372; purchased by G. E. Co., 377
American Telephone & Telegraph
Company
part in organizing RCA 377
Ames, F. L.
financial supporter of Thomson-
Houston Co., 147; Director of
G. E. Co., 195, 406
Andrews, William S.
Edison lighting installation, Sun-
bury, Pa., 59
Arc lamps
Brush type, 7, 8; displayed at Dr.
Longworth's residence, 27; first
installation, Wanamaker's store,
13, 30; automatic regulator, 15,
19; street, first installation, 27;
Jenney type, 71; luminous, 310
Asmussen, Oscar, friend of Stein-
metz 169
Association of Edison Illuminating
Companies
organized, 97; renewing custom
er's lamps, 265
B
Babcock, A. A., turbine-electric ship
propulsion 330
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, tunnel
electrification 254
Barton, Silas A.
General Manager of Thomson-
Houston Co., 164; organizer of
Lynn Electric Lighting Co., 52
Batchelor, Charles
came to Schenectady, 149; Edi
son's model maker, 22
425
426
INDEX
Bell, Dr. Louis
installation at Mill Creek, Cal.,
232; three-phase induction motor
tests, 209
Bentley, Edward M., pioneer in
electric transit
first electric car 78
Bentley-Knight Electric Railway Co.
contract for equipment, Observa
tory Hill Passenger Railway Co.,
121; patents, 141
Bergmann and Company
organized, 43; formed part of
Edison G. E. Co., 152, 156
Boehm, Ludwig, Edison's glass-
blower 22
Bolton, Werner von
lamp filaments; tantalum wire,
315; tungsten, 335
Bradley, Charles S. inventor of rotary
converter 230
Brady Manufacturing Co.
Wood's dynamo manufactured 17
Brockton, Mass.
three-wire lighting system in
stalled 61
Brush, Charles Francis
arc headlight, 69; arc lamps, 7, 8;
combined incandescent and arc
lamp system, 57; copper-coated
carbons, 30; double-carbon arc
lamp, 142; dynamo designed, 6,
8; lamps, Broadway installation,
41; patent agreement with Tele
graph Supply Co., 9; sixteen-light
dynamo, Niagara Falls, first instal
lation, 30; street lighting installa
tion, 27; retired, 197
U. of Michigan graduate 7
Brush Electric Co.
lamps and generators, 215216;
manufactured Short motors, 142;
stock, controlling interest sold to
Thomson-Houston Co., 163
Brush Electric Light and Power
Company
Broadway lighting 41
Buck, Harold W.
strain insulator invented 326
Buckeye Incandescent Lamp Co.,
186; sealing-in machine, 261
Burrows, William R. lamp improve
ments 264, 301, 380
Bush, Arthur R.
electric lighting on steamers 64
Cahoon, J. B. Chief of Experts,
Thomson-Houston Co. 164
California Electric Light Company
incorporated, 29; selling electric
service, first, 29
Canadian Edison Manufacturing
Company purchased 156
Carbon brushes
lubrication, 312; railway motor
use, 137
Carbon products manufactured 313
Cataract Construction Company,
Niagara Falls 235
Centennial Exposition, machinery
exhibits 5
Central London Tube Railway
Sprague elevator contract 292-294
Cermak, William, porcelain maker
243
Charles A. Coffin Foundation,
Awards, established 382
Chesney, Cummings C.
started Pittsfield plant 177
Churchill, Frederick H. 400
Treasurer American Electric
Co. 33
Cincinnati, Ohio
arc lamp displayed 27
Circuit breakers, oil, early develop
ment 267
Clark, John H., electric ship pro
pulsion study 330
Clark, William J.
joined Thomson-Houston Co., 132;
Manager Railway Department,
285; motor contract for South Side
Elevated Railway of Chicago, 293
Clarke, Charles L. Acting Chief
Engineer, Edison Electric Light
Co. 182
Cleveland, arc lighting, first large
scale installation display 27
INDEX
427
Coffin, Charles A.
company consolidation plans ac
cepted, 193; full time to Thomson-
Houston Co., 90; first Director of
G. E. Co., 195, 406; becomes
President of G. E. Co., 196, 405;
President of G. E. Co., resigns,
348; Chairman of Board, G. E.
Co., 348; Chairman of the Board,
G. E. Co., retired, 382; died, 384
Columbia, lamp manufacturer 186
Columbia, South Carolina, textile
mills electrical installation 210
Condensation pump, mercury 352
Consolidated Electric Lighting Com
pany, lamp manufacturer 187
Coolidge, T. Jefferson, Jr.
financial supporter of Thomson-
Houston Co., 147; first Director of
G. E. Co., 195, 406
Coolidge, William D.
came to Schenectady, 332; ductile
tungsten experiments, 338; x-ray
tube invented, 355
Cooper Hewitt Electric Co.
merged with G. E. Co. 310
Corbin, P. and F. Company
electric light tests 49
Coster, C. H.
first Director of G. E. Co. 195, 406
Cowles, Alfred and Eugene
electric furnace experiments 103
Crescent Beach
street car line electrification 133
Crosby, O. T., Railway Department,
first 198
Culver, W. S., Brush Co. salesman
216
Curtis, Charles G.
patent agreement with G. E., 276;
steam turbine design and patents,
275, 279
D
Dalzell, J. A., joins Thomson-
Houston Co. 144
Darling, Henry W., Treasurer of
G.E. Co. 177
Davis, Albert G.
Vice-President of G.E. Co. in
charge of Patents 298, 376
Day, Maxwell W., electric ship pro
pulsion study 330
Dempster, J. T. H.
Assistant in Research Laboratory
299
Direct-current dynamo, Thomson's
invention 12
Dow, Alex. President Detroit Edison
Co., idea for automatic substa
tion 362
Dumet wire 302
Duncan, Samuel A., lawyer
181, 183
Dyer, Richard N., patent attorney
181
Dynamos
alternating current, Slattery type,
105; "drum armature" type, 7;
Edison's bi-polar, 23; exhibited,
Centennial Exposition, 5; Gramme
type, 5, 7; "ring armature" type
designed, 7; Siemens-Halske type,
7; Wallace type, 5
E
East Cleveland Railway, first electric
car 80
Edison, Thomas Alva
Inventions:
bi-polar dynamo, 23; current
measuring chemical meter, 99;
dynamo manufactured, Edison
Machine Works, 42; electric rail
ways, experimental, 76; incandes
cent lamp, 22; knife-blade switch,
first type, 102; lamp manufacture,
171; patent controversy, 179;
patent suit, 180; patent, English
Court decision, 185; three-wire
system, 59
Personal Notes
central station operation, wages,
95; personality, 175; first Director
of G.E. Co., 195, 406; retired
from G. E. Co., 196
428
INDEX
Edison Company for Isolated Light
ing 63
merged with Edison Electric
Light Co. 152
Edison effect 94, 346
Edison Electric Illuminating Com
pany of New York
chartered, "First District," 40;
merged with Edison G. E. Co.,
156
Edison Electric Light Company
contract to sell lamps, 43; financ
ing of, 402; incorporation, 21;
formed part of Edison G. E. Co.,
156; lamp patent suit, 180; merger
of Edison Company for Isolated
Lighting with, 152; sale of stock,
37
Edison General Electric Co.
business compared with Thomson-
Houston, 1891, 404; directors act
on consolidation terms, 194; hold
ings at time of consolidation, 194
Edison Laboratory, Menlo Park, first
buildings erected 20
Edison Lamp Company, organized,
43, 402; formed part of Edison
G. E. Co., 156
Edison Machine Works
formation of, 42, 402; built first
Jumbo dynamo, 45; manufactured
Edison dynamo, 42; moved to
Schenectady, 114, 149, 402;
formed part of Edison G. E. Co.,
156
Edison Shafting Company
organized, 43; merged with Edi
son Machine Works, 149
Edison Tube Company
organized, 43; merged with Edi
son Machine Works, 149
Edison United Manufacturing Com
pany, purchased 156
Edwards, E. P. Manager, Radio De
partment, G. E. Co. 376
Eickemeyer and Osterheld, first to
employ Steinmetz 170
Eickemeyer plant, purchased 199
Electric Bond and Share Co. stock
distributed to G. E. Co. stock
holders 388, 423
Electric furnaces
arc, 103; resistance, 314
Electric locomotives 255, 361
pioneer inventors 78
Electric motors
Eickemeyer winding method, 256;
operating ammunition hoists, 253;
repulsion first built, 146; railway
types, 142; Sprague early uses,
115; Sprague experiments, 62;
three-phase induction, 209
Electric ship propulsion 368
Electrical Securities Corporation,
organized 249, 421
Electricity, first commercial sale
29, 31
Electroplating, first use of dynamo
10
Elevated electric railroad, Chicago
World's Fair, 1893 214
Elevators
Sprague motor used, 117, 290;
Sprague-Pratt type, first installa
tion, 290
Emmet, William LeRoy
Curtis steam turbine tests, 277;
electric ship propulsion, 330, 368;
steam turbine mechanical con
struction, 279; work at Niagara,
237
Emmons, George
executive ability, 245; personality,
244; bookkeeper, American Elec
tric Co., 35; Factory Auditor,
Thomson-Houston Co., 245; au
ditor at Lynn Works, 87; Plant
Manager at Lynn Works, 245;
Assistant Manager of Schenectady
Works, 245; Manager of Schenec
tady Works, 245
English Court, decision on Edison
lamp patent 185
"Experts," (early engineers) 68, 164
F
Fabroil, cloth gear 318
Faccioli, G. transmission million volts
of electricity 379
Factory organization, Thomson-
Houston Co. plan 198
INDEX
429
Farmer, Moses G., inventor incan
descent lamp 182
Fireboats, first electrically propelled
330
Fish, Frederick P.
Counsel for Thomson-Houston
Company, 193; General Counsel
of G. E. Co., 197
Fiske, Lieutenant Bradley A. 251
Fiske Street Station, Chicago, to be
gin operation 279
Folsom Falls, California, electric
power plant 250
Force, Martin, Edison's laboratory
assistant 22
Fort Wayne Electric Company
Eurchased interest in Wood's arc-
ght system, 164; reorganized,
225; Slattery alternating-current
system, 215-216
Fort Wayne Electric Corporation
organized, 226; purchased by
G. E. Co., 284
Fort Wayne Electric Light Com
pany 71, 143
Foster, W. J., three-phase induction
motor tests 209
Franklin Institute of Philadelphia,
tested dynamos 10, 12, 23
French Thomson-Houston Company
168
Fuller Bakery, Philadelphia, Thom
son-Houston dynamo installed and
tested 14, 400
Fuller-Wood Co., Wood's dynamo
18
G
Gardner, George P., financial sup
porter of Thomson-Houston Co.
147
Garfield, E. I, first Secretary of G. E.
Co. 197
Garrett, George S., witnessed dem
onstration, Thomson's inventions
13
Gary, Indiana, steel mill, electric
drive 320
Gaulard and Gibbs system 107, 177
"Gem," incandescent lamp devel
oped 315
General Electric Co.
broadcasting stations, 393; Comp
troller, first, 198; consolidation an
nouncement to employees, 195;
cooperation with labor, 387; De
partment Heads, first, 198; Direc
tors, first, 195, 406; District Offices
established, 176, 198; Electric
Bond and Share Co. stock dis
tributed to stockholders, 388; En
gineering Committee formed, 221;
Erie Works, land purchased, 331;
Executive Committee formed,
220; executive officers, first, 197;
exhibits, World's Fair Chicago,
1893, 215; financial reports, 221,
397-398, 406-415; frequency-
modulation station, 393; Home
Office transferred to Schenectady,
226; incorporation date, 193, 405;
Manufacturing Committee formed,
221; Moore's gaseous lamp patents
obtained, 332; Mutual Benefit As
sociation, established, 383; new
title beginning date, 195; Niagara
power plant plans, 235; patent
agreement with Curtis, 276; patent
agreement with Westinghouse,
Tesla type polyphase induction
motor, 287; patents held, 272;
Pension Plan established, 383;
Pittsfield Works started, 177;
profit-sharing system established,
383; progress of industry since
1922, 385-394; purchase Cooper
Hewitt Electric Co., 310; Research
Laboratory organized, 299, 314;
River Works, Lynn, new plant,
287; Sales Committee formed,
221; Schenectady Works, history
of buildings, 150, 242-243, 305,
313-314; sales, 1892-1938, 415-
416; stockholders and shares is
sued, 398; tantalum lamp manu
facture, 316; tungsten filament,
commercially introduced, 335;
tungsten filament patent pur
chased, 335; Young, Owen D.,
430
INDEX
General Electric Co. Continued
statement on G-E financial his
tory, 397-424
Generators, expansion in use of
205, 214, 363
Gibson, Langdon, Production De
partment Manager 246
Gramme, early dynamo inventor 7
Grand Central Terminal, electrifica
tion 288
Great Harrington, Mass., alternating-
current lighting system 105
Greene, S. Dana
commercial engineer, 235; gun
turrets electrically operated, 252;
head of Lighting Department of
G. E. Co., first, 198
Greene, Stephen, textile mill en
gineer 210
Griffin, Eugene
first Director of G. E. Co., 195,
406; joined Thomson-Houston Co.,
132; personal interest in young
experts, 166; Vice-President of
G. E. Co. first, 197; Vice-Presi
dent of G. E. Co. in charge of
Commercial Operations, 247
Gun turrets, electrically operated 252
H
Hadfield, Sir Robert, silicon steel
alloy discovered 331
Halvorson, C. A. B., perfected arc
lamp manufacture 305
Hanaman, Franz, tungsten filament
experiments, success of 333
Harrison Lamp Works, lamps manu
factured 43
Hastings, Frank S., first Director of
G. E. Co. 195, 406
Hayden, J. LeRoy, Steinmetz's as
sistant and friend 308
Hewitt, Peter Cooper, invented
mercury-arc lamp and mercury-
vapor rectifier 310
Hewlett, Edward M.
light installations, New York and
vicinity 201
Inventions
relays designed, 268; Panama
Hewlett, Edward M. Continued
Canal control system designed,
357; steel mill motors control de
signed, 321; switches and switch
boards designed, 214, 268; sus
pension type insulator, 326; de
veloped Selsyn system, 358 .
Hicks, W. Preston, Sales Manager,
Edison Electric Light Co. 156
Higginson, Henry L.
first Director of G.E. Co., 195,
406; financial supporter of
Thomson-Houston Co., 147
Hoboken Shore Road, two-truck
locomotive built 288
Horse cars, horses and cars estimated
number 3
Houston, Edwin J.
Brush inventions studied, 10;
patent contracts with American
Electric Co., 34; Professor of Boys
Central High School, 12, 399
Howell, John W.
electrician Edison Lamp Com
pany, 182; lamp engineer, 94, 301;
lamp experiments, 204, 252, 264
Howell, Wilson S., insulating com
pound made 39
Hydroelectric plant
first on Pacific Coast, 201; Mill
Creek, 231; Niagara Falls, 235
I
Illuminating Engineering Labora
tory, transferred to Schenectady
266
Incandescent lamps
filaments
early experiments, 37; legal
definition, 183-185; improve
ments in, 178, 265; tungsten,
first, 333; tungsten, ductile, 336
first sale 43
gas-filled 346, 348
"Gem" 315
invented 22
early manufacture 43, 92
patent suit 180-187
sales, 1892 206
Sawyer-Man type 58, 93
INDEX
431
Incandescant lamps Continued
sealing-in machine (Massey and
Spiller) 262
Swan type 57
tungsten manufacture begun 338
Induction motors
first repulsion type built, 146;
three-phase experiments, 209
Inductor alternator, developed by
Stanley Electric Manufacturing
Co. 284
Insulators
made and tested, 243; porcelain,
269; strain type, 327; suspension
type, 326
Insull, Samuel
President Commonwealth Edison
Company of Chicago, 279; Vice-
President of Edison G. E. Co.,
176; 2nd Vice-President of G. E.
Co., 197
Interborough Rapid Transit Co.,
electrification 297
International General Electric Co.,
organized 381
Intramural Railway, Chicago World's
Fair, 1893 214
Jackson, Mich., magnetite lamps,
first used 310
Jehl, Francis, Edison's laboratory
assistant 22
Jenney, James, invented arc lamp 71
Jenney and Schaffer direct-current
arc dynamos 143
Johnson, Edward H.
organized Sprague Elevator Co.,
197; President Edison Electric
Light Co., 84; President, Sprague
Co., and Edison Electric Light
Co., 155
Jumbo dynamo, first 45
Just, Alexander, tungsten filament
experiments, success of 333
K
Kellogg, J. W. Commercial Manager
of Marine Work 252
Kelly, John F. joined with Stanley
and Chesney 178
Knight, Walter H.
first electric car, 79; electric street
car development, 197; switchboard
designed, 214
Kruesi, John
Assistant General Manager Edison
Machine Works, 149; came to
Schenectady, 149; Consulting en
gineer, 245, 276; Edison's ma
chine-shop expert, 22; Manager
Schenectady Works, 197, 242
Kuzel, Hanz, tungsten filament ex
periments 335
Langhans, Rudolf, lamp filament ex
periments 171
Langmuir, Irving
came to Schenectady, 345; lamp
filament experiments, 346; mer
cury condensation pump invented,
352; radiotron invented, 353
Libbey Glass Company, purchased
by G. E. Co. 302
Lighting
arc lamps, Brush type, 7; New
York, first installation, 46-48;
World's Fair, Chicago, 1893, 213;
Wabash, Indiana first town wholly
lighted by electricity, 31
Lightning, artificial, Steinmetz's ex
periments 379
Livor, Harry M. chose Schenectady
for site of factory 113
Locomotives, electric, 255, 361
Lovejoy, J. R.
personal interest in young experts,
166; Supply Department, first,
198, 287; visits Lynn factory with
President Henry Villard, 193
Lowrey, Grosvenor P.
Edison's friend and promoter of
Edison Electric Light Company,
21, 402; Edison's lawyer, 181
Lynn Electric Lighting Company,
organized 53
432
INDEX
M
McCool, Bill, millwright 241
McDonald, R. T.
arranged arc lamp demonstration,
70; negotiated sale of Fort Wayne
Co., stock, 143; died, 284
McKee, John R.
gun turrets electrically operated,
252; Manager, Commercial De
partment Thomson-Houston Co.,
90; Manager, Power Department
of G. E. Co., 198; Manager, Power
and Mining Department of G. E.
Co., 247, 285; President, Thom
son-Houston Motor Co., 91; Presi
dent, Thomson- Van Depoele Elec
tric Mining Co., 91
Madigan, William
foreman, Schenectady Works, 240,
243, 280, 281; planned building
Curtis turbine, 281-282
Magnetic blowouts, electric switches
and street car motors 35, 206
Magnetite lamps, first used 310
Malignani, Arturo, vacuum process
for lamps 263
Man, Albon, inventor incandescent
lamp 182
Manhattan Elevated Railway, elec
trification 288, 295
Marks, L. B., enclosed arc lamp pat
ent purchased 261
Mason, Dave, emergency man, Spra-
gue Co. 153
Maxim, Hiram S.
inventor incandescent lamp, 182;
witness in lamp patent suit, 181
Maxwell, Howard, designer electric
drive for steel mills 321
Menlo Park, first buildings erected 20
Metal brushes, for railway motors 129
Metropolitan Street Railway Co.,
underground conduit adopted 257
Miller, John
Chief Millwright, 241; cloth gear
perfected, 316; foreman, 243
Mills, D. O., Director of G. E. Co.,
first 195, 406
Mine locomotives, electric 91, 286
Mitchell, Loris E. design tipless lamp
380
Mitchell, Sidney Z. hydroelectric de
velopment, Seattle 201
Moody, W. S., Transformer Engineer,
silicon steel alloy, rolling process
331
Moore, D. McFarlan, gas-discharge
lamp development 262, 331
Morgan, J. P., Director of G. E. Co.,
first 195, 406
Morrison, George F.
first work and pay, 43; foreman,
Edison G. E. Co., 173
Mulvey, Peter J. foreman carbon
brush improvement, 311; personal
ity, 312
N
National Electric Lamp Association
organized, 301; G-E interest in,
340; buildings erected, 344; dis
solved, 344
"Nela" origin of name 344
New Mexico, battleship, turbine elec
tric drive, first 368
Niagara Falls
first illumination, 30; power plant,
234-237
"Novagems" 366
Observatory Hill Passenger Railway
Co., road equipment 121
Oil switch, early use 267
Old Colony Steamship Company, in
stall Edison lighting system 65
Ord, Joseph P.
Comptroller of Edison G. E. Co.,
157; Comptroller of G. E. Co.,
first, 198; 2nd Vice-President of
G. E. Co., 197
Overhead trolley wire system, U.S.
Senate hearing 135
Pacinatti, dynamo, "ring armature"
type designed 7
INDEX
433
Paine, Sidney B.
electric lighting in textile mills,
63; electrical salesman, 210
Panama Canal control system 356
Panics, effect on G. E. Co.
1893 221, 407
1907 413
Parker, William, President American
Electric Co. 33
Parshall, Horace F.
Manager, Calculating Department
of G. E. Co., 200; designed gen
erator, 214; designed motor, 211;
engineer, Niagara plant, plans,
235; engineer, Sprague Co., 154
Parsons, Hinsdill, Vice-President and
General Counsel, G. E. Co. 359
Patents
agreements, Brush and Telegraph
Supply Co., 9; consolidations, 192;
Patent Control Board, 272; lamp
monopoly, 340
Peabody, S. Endicott, financial sup
porter of Thomson-Houston Co.
147
Peach, Benjamin F., Jr. Treasurer of
G. E. Co., first 197
Peek, Frank W., Jr. transmission mil
lion volts of electricity 380
Pelton impulse water wheels 232
Pevear, Henry A., organizer of Lynn
Electric Lighting Co. 53
Polyphase system, first in world 231
Polyphase transmission 218
Porter, Charles T., designed steam
engine 44
Potter, William B.
engineer, Railway Department of
G. E. Co., 257; selling experiences,
144
Pratt, Charles E., designer elevator
motor 289
Protective equipment, for transform
ers 108
Radio Corporation of America
organized, 376; distribution of
stock held by G. E. Co., 424
Railway motors, Brush, Sprague,
Thomson-Houston compared 142
Reed, Philip D. Chairman of the
Board, G. E. Co., elected 394
Regenerative braking
electric trains, 361; first time used,
85
Reist, H. G.
fenerator design for steam tur-
ine, 279; three-phase induction
motor work, 209
Resistance welding
principle discovered, 12; Thom
son's method, 50
Rheostats, railway motor demonstra
tion 85
Rice, E. W., Jr.
personal interest in young experts,
166; steam turbine interest, 275;
work on Niagara power plant
Elans, 235; superintendent at
ynn, 87; Thomson-Houston or
ganization plan, 102; Technical
Director of G. E. Co., first, 197;
Vice-President in charge of En
gineering and Manufacturing, 247;
President G. E. Co., 349; Honor
ary Chairman of the Board, G. E.
Co., 382
Rohrer, Albert H.
assistant engineer at Lynn, 87; en
tertains President Villard, Edison
G. E. Co., 191
Rotary converter Bradley type, first
used 238
Ryan, Walter D'Arcy
Illuminating Engineer, 266; illu
mination installations supervised,
364; designed Tower of Jewels,
Panama-Pacific Exposition, 367;
scientific basis for illumination,
265
Rach, Christian, foreman 150, 243
Radio, trans-oceanic system, first 351
San Francisco, headquarters Pacific
Coast territory 200
434
INDEX
Sawyer-Man Electric Company, in
candescent lamp manufacture
58, 93, 182, 187
Schaffer and Jenny, direct-current
arc dynamos 143
Schenectady
in 1886, 111; experimental rail
way track, 293; home office G. E.
Co., 226
Schuyler, D. A.
sixteen-light arc dynamo invented,
143; joined Thomson-Houston Co.,
144
Searchlights
Mt. Washington, 202; St. Louis
Exposition, 311; U.S. Army and
U.S. Navy, 311
Securities, G. E. Co., 1893 221-223
Short, Sidney Howe, single-reduction
motor experiments 142
Siemens-Halske Co.
Alteneck's drum-armature type
dynamo invented, 7; purchased by
G. E. Co., 284
Slattery alternating-current system
216
Smythe, Captain, plan electrification
textile mills 248
South Side Elevated Railway of Chi
cago
electrification, 292; multiple-unit
train control, first installation, 294
Southern California Edison Co. 231
Sprague, Frank J.
electric street railroad built, Rich
mond, Va., 123; elevator develop
ment, 117, 289; motor experi
ments, 62, 84; multiple-unit
system of train control, 291, 295;
railway motor experiments, 84,
115; streetcar motor designed, 78,
115; three-wire lighting system in
stalled, Sunbury, Pa., 60; trolley
pole invention refused, 83; re
signed from Sprague Co., 158
Sprague Electric Co. organized 294
Sprague Electric Elevator Co.
organized, 197, 290; merged with
Interior Conduit and Insulation
Co., 294
Sprague Electric Railway and Motor
Co.
incorporated, 84; electric street
railroad built, 123-125; electrifica
tion of West End Road of Boston,
158; growth of motor business,
1888-1889, 153; merged with Edi
son G. E. Co., 157, 289
Sprague Interior Conduit and In
sulation Company 197
Stanley, William
Pittsfield Works started, 177; trans
former designed and built, 106,
178
Stanley Electric Manufacturing Com
pany
organized, 178; purchased by G. E.
Co., 284
Statue of Liberty, lighting 105
Steel mills, electric driven, Gary,
Indiana 320
Steele, George F.
Sprague motor salesman, 116;
Sprague elevator motor, interest
in, 289
Steinmetz, Charles Proteus
arrived in America, 169; personal
ity, 199, 308; appointed Head En
gineer, 230; experimental labora
tory, 304; explained hysteresis
law, 229; magnetite-titanium elec
trode study, 305; manufactured
lightning, 379
Stiles, Aaron K., Manager Van De-
poele Electric Manufacturing Co.
131
Stockly, George W., offered shop
facilities to Brush 8
Streetcar motors, series-parallel con
trol 207
Street lighting
arc lamps, first demonstration, 27;
Wabash, Indiana, first town wholly
lighted by electricity, 31
Street railroads
Crescent Beach, electrification of,
133; Observatory Hill, electric
equipment, 121; Richmond, Va.,
123
Substations, automatic first in opera
tion 362
INDEX
435
Sunbeam Incandescent Lamp Com
pany of Chicago 186, 299
Sunbury, Pa., central lighting sys
tem 59
Sunny, B. E., Manager Chicago Of
fice of Thomson-Houston Co. 200
Swan, Joseph W., incandescent lamp
invention 57
Swope, Gerard
work at World's Fair Chicago,
1893, 215; first President, Interna
tional General Electric Co., 381;
President G. E. Co., 382; Presi
dent, G. E. Co., retired, 394
Synchronous converter, invented 231
Taylor, Edward, designed first auto
matic substation 362
Telegraph Supply Co., part in
Brush's early invention 8-9
Terry, Franklin S.
organizer of National Lamp Works,
300; proprietor Sunbeam Incan
descent Lamp Co. of Chicago, 299
Textile mills
electrical machinery, first installa
tion, 210; install Edison's lighting
system, 64; Pelzer, So. Carolina
electrification, 248
Textolite 318
Thomson, Elihu
Inventions:
experiments, first, 11; Brush inven
tions studied, 10; constant-current
transformer, 260; direct-current
dynamo invented, 12, 92; dynamo
designed, 6, 106; inductorium in
vented, 355; oil-immersed trans
formers, patent, 238; protective
equipment, transformers, 108; re
cording watt-meter, 168; repulsion
motor, first built, 146; resistance
welding method, 50; Roentgen-ray
transformer invented, 355; trans
former designed, 107
Personal Notes
declined membership on Board of
G. E. Co., 197; "Electrician"
American Electric Co., 34; Profes-
Thomson, Elihu Continued
SOT Central High School of Phila
delphia, 11, 399
Thomson-Houston Electric Company
organized, 54, 400; early days, 88,
165; business, 1883-1888, 141;
business compared with Edison
G.E. Co., 1891, 404; consolida
tion terms, 194; patent contract
with American Electric Company,
34; electric railway developments,
130; electrification of West End
Road of Boston, 159; incandescent
lighting system planned, 58; elec
tric locomotive for tunnel use, 254;
purchased Ft. Wayne Co. stock,
143; Van Depoele Co. patents ac
quired, 131
Thomson-Houston International Co.
organized 91
Thomson- Van Depoele Electric Min
ing Co., electrical mining equip
ment 91
Thomson Welding Co., organized 92
Tournier, Julien Charles, type of in
dustrial worker 329
Train control
contactor form of series-parallel,
295; multiple-unit method, Spra-
gue's idea, 291
Transformers
design, early types, 106-107; de
sign, Stanley, first built, 178; oil-
immersed, began use of, 238
Transmission lines
California and vicinity, 250; Niag
ara to Buffalo, 236
Tremaine, B. G., Organizer of Na
tional Lamp Works 300
Trench, W. W. last interview with
Mr. Coffin 383
Trolley poles
invention, 83; Sprague invention
refused, 83
Turner, William B., personality 150
Twombley, Hamilton McKay
Chairman of Board of G. E. Co.,
196; Director of G. E. Co., first,
195, 406; consolidation plans,
Thomson-Houston Electric Co.
and Edison G. E. Co., 193
436
INDEX
U
Underground conductors, first used,
three- wire lighting system 61
United Electric Securities Co.
223, 404, 421
United Fruit Company, radio inter
ests combined with Radio Corpo
ration 377
United States Electric Lighting Com
pany, lamp patent suit 180
Upton, Francis R.
Edison's mathematician, 22; Man
ager Edison Lamp Works at Harri
son, 197
Utility holding companies, value of
418
Van Depoele, Charles J.
carbon for brushes, suggested and
accepted, 135; trolley pole inven
tion, 82-83; died, 197
Van Depoele Electric Manufacturing
Company of Chicago 82, 131
Villard, Henry, President Edison
G. E. Co. 191
Vinal, O. B., foreman, Gary installa
tion 319
W
Wabash, Indiana, first town wholly
lighted by electricity 31
Wages, central station operators,
Edison's plan 95
Wallace, Judge, opinion in lamp suit
184
Wanamaker's store, Brush arc lamps,
first installation 13
Ward Leonard system 252
Waterhouse, A. G.
join Thomson-Houston Co., 144;
sixteen-light arc dynamo invented,
143
Weintraub, Ezechiel, mercury arc
rectifier 309
West End Road of Boston, electri
fication 158
Western Electric Co., part in or
ganizing RCA 377
Westinghouse Electric and Manufac
turing Company
organized, 106; part in organizing
RCA, 377; patents held, 272; poly
phase induction motor, Tesla type,
patent agreement, 287; trans
former design, 106
Weston, Edward, inventor incandes
cent lamp 182
White, Arthur J., foreman, design
tipless lamp 380
Whitestone, Samuel, bookkeeper of
Sprague Co. 157
Whitney, Willis R.
magnetite-titanium electrode study,
305; organized Research Labora
tory of G. E. Co., 299
Wilson, Charles E., President G. E.
Co. 394
Wood, James J.
arc-light system, 164; automatic
regulator invented, 19; dynamo
invented, 6, 17
World's Fair, Chicago 1893
General Electric exhibits, 215; il
lumination, 213
Young, Owen D.
came to Schenectady, 360; Chair
man of the Board, G. E. Co., 382;
Chairman of the Board, G. E. Co.,
retired, 394; General Counsel,
G. E. Co., 359, 381; Report to
Temporary National Economic
Committee, 397
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