Other Early Stations--The Meter - 10

Other Early Stations--The Meter - 10

 About the same time that southern Europe was thus opened up to the new system, South

America came into line, and the first Edison central station there was installed at

Santiago, Chile, in the summer of 1883, under the supervision of Mr. W. N. Stewart. This

was the result of the success obtained with small isolated plants, leading to the formation

of an Edison company. It can readily be conceived that at such an extreme distance from

the source of supply of apparatus the plant was subject to many peculiar difficulties from

the outset, of which Mr. Stewart speaks as follows: "I made an exhibition of the `Jumbo'

in the theatre at Santiago, and on the first evening, when it was filled with the aristocracy

of the city, I discovered to my horror that the binding wire around the armature was

slowly stripping off and going to pieces. We had no means of boring out the field

magnets, and we cut grooves in them. I think the machine is still running (1907). The

station went into operation soon after with an equipment of eight Edison `K' dynamos

with certain conditions inimical to efficiency, but which have not hindered the splendid

expansion of the local system. With those eight dynamos we had four belts between each

engine and the dynamo. The steam pressure was limited to seventy-five pounds per

square inch. We had two-wire underground feeders, sent without any plans or

specifications for their installation. The station had neither voltmeter nor ammeter. The

current pressure was regulated by a galvanometer. We were using coal costing $12 a ton,

and were paid for our light in currency worth fifty cents on the dollar. The only thing I

can be proud of in connection with the plant is the fact that I did not design it, that once

in a while we made out to pay its operating expenses, and that occasionally we could run

it for three months without a total breakdown."

It was not until 1885 that the first Edison station in Germany was established; but the art

was still very young, and the plant represented pioneer lighting practice in the Empire.

The station at Berlin comprised five boilers, and six vertical steam-engines driving by

belts twelve Edison dynamos, each of about fifty-five horse-power capacity. A model of

this station is preserved in the Deutschen Museum at Munich. In the bulletin of the Berlin

Electricity Works for May, 1908, it is said with regard to the events that led up to the

creation of the system, as noted already at the Rathenau celebration: "The year 1881 was

a mile-stone in the history of the Allgemeine Elektricitaets Gesellschaft. The

International Electrical Exposition at Paris was intended to place before the eyes of the

civilized world the achievements of the century. Among the exhibits of that Exposition

was the Edison system of incandescent lighting. IT BECAME THE BASIS OF

MODERN HEAVY CURRENT TECHNICS." The last phrase is italicized as being a

happy and authoritative description, as well as a tribute.

This chapter would not be complete if it failed to include some reference to a few of the

earlier isolated plants of a historic character. Note has already been made of the first

Edison plants afloat on the Jeannette and Columbia, and the first commercial plant in the

New York lithographic establishment. The first mill plant was placed in the woollen

factory of James Harrison at Newburgh, New York, about September 15, 1881. A year

later, Mr. Harrison wrote with some pride: "I believe my mill was the first lighted with

your electric light, and therefore may be called No. 1. Besides being job No. 1 it is a No.

1 job, and a No. 1 light, being better and cheaper than gas and absolutely safe as to fire."

The first steam-yacht lighted by incandescent lamps was James Gordon Bennett's

Namouna, equipped early in 1882 with a plant for one hundred and twenty lamps of eight

candlepower, which remained in use there many years afterward.