Other Early Stations--The Meter - 4

Other Early Stations--The Meter - 4

  [14] By reason of the experience gained at this station through the use of these crude

plug-switches, Mr. Edison started a competition among a few of his assistants to devise

something better. The result was the invention of a "breakdown" switch by Mr. W. S.

Andrews, which was accepted by Mr. Edison as the best of the devices suggested, and

was developed and used for a great many years afterward.

Supplementing the story of Mr. Andrews is that of Lieut. F. J. Sprague, who also gives a

curious glimpse of the glorious uncertainties and vicissitudes of that formative period.

Mr. Sprague served on the jury at the Crystal Palace Exhibition with Darwin's son-- the

present Sir Horace--and after the tests were ended left the Navy and entered Edison's

service at the suggestion of Mr. E. H. Johnson, who was Edison's shrewd recruiting

sergeant in those days: "I resigned sooner than Johnson expected, and he had me on his

hands. Meanwhile he had called upon me to make a report of the three-wire system,

known in England as the Hopkinson, both Dr. John Hopkinson and Mr. Edison being

independent inventors at practically the same time. I reported on that, left London, and

landed in New York on the day of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883--May 24--

with a year's leave of absence.

"I reported at the office of Mr. Edison on Fifth Avenue and told him I had seen Johnson.

He looked me over and said: `What did he promise you?' I replied: `Twenty-five hundred

dollars a year.' He did not say much, but looked it. About that time Mr. Andrews and I

came together. On July 2d of that year we were ordered to Sunbury, and to be ready to

start the station on the fourth. The electrical work had to be done in forty-eight hours!

Having travelled around the world, I had cultivated an indifference to any special

difficulties of that kind. Mr. Andrews and I worked in collaboration until the night of the

third. I think he was perhaps more appreciative than I was of the discipline of the Edison

Construction Department, and thought it would be well for us to wait until the morning of

the fourth before we started up. I said we were sent over to get going, and insisted on

starting up on the night of the third. We had an Armington & Sims engine with sight-feed

oiler. I had never seen one, and did not know how it worked, with the result that we soon

burned up the babbitt metal in the bearings and spent a good part of the night getting

them in order. The next day Mr. Edison, Mr. Insull, and the chief engineer of the

construction department appeared on the scene and wanted to know what had happened.

They found an engine somewhat loose in the bearings, and there followed remarks which

would not look well in print. Andrews skipped from under; he obeyed orders; I did not.

But the plant ran, and it was the first three-wire station in this country."

Seen from yet another angle, the worries of this early work were not merely those of the

men on the "firing line." Mr. Insull, in speaking of this period, says: "When it was found

difficult to push the central- station business owing to the lack of confidence in its

financial success, Edison decided to go into the business of promoting and constructing

central-station plants, and he formed what was known as the Thomas A. Edison

Construction Department, which he put me in charge of. The organization was crude, the

steam-engineering talent poor, and owing to the impossibility of getting any considerable

capital subscribed, the plants were put in as cheaply as possible. I believe that this

construction department was unkindly named the `Destruction Department.' It served its

purpose; never made any money; and I had the unpleasant task of presiding at its

obsequies."

On July 4th the Sunbury plant was put into commercial operation by Edison, and he

remained a week studying its conditions and watching for any unforeseen difficulty that

might arise. Nothing happened, however, to interfere with the successful running of the

station, and for twenty years thereafter the same two dynamos continued to furnish light

in Sunbury. They were later used as reserve machines, and finally, with the engine,

retired from service as part of the "Collection of Edisonia"; but they remain in practically

as good condition as when installed in 1883.

Sunbury was also provided with the first electro- chemical meters used in the United

States outside New York City, so that it served also to accentuate electrical practice in a

most vital respect--namely, the measurement of the electrical energy supplied to

customers. At this time and long after, all arc lighting was done on a "flat rate" basis. The

arc lamp installed outside a customer's premises, or in a circuit for public street lighting,

burned so many hours nightly, so many nights in the month; and was paid for at that rate,

subject to rebate for hours when the lamp might be out through accident. The early arc

lamps were rated to require 9 to 10 amperes of current, at 45 volts pressure each,

receiving which they were estimated to give 2000 c.p., which was arrived at by adding

together the light found at four different positions, so that in reality the actual light was

about 500 c.p. Few of these data were ever actually used, however; and it was all more or

less a matter of guesswork, although the central-station manager, aiming to give good

service, would naturally see that the dynamos were so operated as to maintain as steadily

as possible the normal potential and current. The same loose methods applied to the early

attempts to use electric motors on arc-lighting circuits, and contracts were made based on

the size of the motor, the width of the connecting belt, or the amount of power the

customer thought he used-- never on the measurement of the electrical energy furnished

him.