Forty Years of Edison Service, 1882-1922; Outlining the Growth and Development of the Edison System in New York City (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III Formation of the First New York Edison Company BEHOLD ! I make all things new," is a phrase that may be reverently appropriated to describe the effect of the successive electrical inventions of the last fifty years. More particularly is the influence of the telephone, the arc lamp, the incandescent lamp, the electric motor, the trolley car, the underground roads, the electric elevator, the Edison central station system of distribution, to be seen in the great centers of population. Of all the modern cities New York best exemplifies what electricity can do, for in every branch of electrical utilization it is pre-eminently the largest exponen t and patron. Perhaps that is a mere corollary of having the largest number of inhabitants, but Greater New York is the vivid exhibition of the furthest reach of the electrical arts, all save machinery manufacture; but even the largest electrical factories in the world, at Schenectady in the Empire State, are administered from New York, which is equally the center of all American electrical finance. It was but fitting, if not, indeed, inevitable that Manhattan Island should be the scene of Edison's first real central station experiment as a public utility, just as it was the home of the parent Edison Electric Light Company, and of all the other great enterprises with which his name had been connected since he struggled into town seeking an humble job at the telegrapher's key, but with a head fuller of more great inventions and arts than ever before sprang from one human brain. There have been many creative forces at work to make the splendid metropolis that sits on its magnificent throne- gateway to the New World, but he who went down on his hands and knees in her very dirt to give her the use of electric light and power, ...