Other Early Stations--The Meter - 11
The first Edison plant in a hotel was started in October, 1881, at the Blue Mountain
House in the Adirondacks, and consisted of two "Z" dynamos with a complement of eight
and sixteen candle lamps. The hotel is situated at an elevation of thirty-five hundred feet
above the sea, and was at that time forty miles from the railroad. The machinery was
taken up in pieces on the backs of mules from the foot of the mountain. The boilers were
fired by wood, as the economical transportation of coal was a physical impossibility. For
a six-hour run of the plant one- quarter of a cord of wood was required, at a cost of
twenty-five cents per cord.
The first theatre in the United States to be lighted by an Edison isolated plant was the
Bijou Theatre, Boston. The installation of boilers, engines, dynamos, wiring, switches,
fixtures, three stage regulators, and six hundred and fifty lamps, was completed in eleven
days after receipt of the order, and the plant was successfully operated at the opening of
the theatre, on December 12, 1882.
The first plant to be placed on a United States steamship was the one consisting of an
Edison "Z" dynamo and one hundred and twenty eight-candle lamps installed on the Fish
Commission's steamer Albatross in 1883. The most interesting feature of this installation
was the employment of special deep- sea lamps, supplied with current through a cable
nine hundred and forty feet in length, for the purpose of alluring fish. By means of the
brilliancy of the lamps marine animals in the lower depths were attracted and then easily
ensnared.
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