As Bright as Day

In 1878 New York lit its homes and offices with gas. Electric arc lights existed, but they were blinding and fit only for streets and big halls. Thomas Edison promised a small, steady electric lamp for every room, fed from a central station through mains under the street, like gas. Nobody had built any piece of that system. Edison and his men built all of it.

1. March 1876 · Menlo Park

   The invention factory

   Thomas Edison, 29 years old, moves into a new two-story laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, a hamlet on the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Philadelphia. The building cost $2,500. Swiss machinist John Kruesi runs the machine shop and turns Edison’s rough sketches into working models. By the spring of 1878 the staff is 25 men, and the phonograph, built in that shop, has made Edison famous.

2. Autumn 1878

   A light for every room

   In September 1878 Edison sees an arc-light system at a Connecticut shop and sets out to beat it: a small, steady lamp for homes and offices, fed from a central station through mains under the street, just like gas. The New York Sun prints his plan on 16 September. Drexel, Morgan & Co. and other backers put up $50,000, and he hires the physicist Francis Upton to work the numbers.

3. 22 October 1879 · 1:30 a.m.

   Lamp No. 9

   After a year spent on costly platinum, the team tries carbon. Charles Batchelor carbonizes a piece of ordinary cotton thread, thirteen thousandths of an inch thick, seals it in a glass bulb and pumps out the air. At 1:30 in the morning it goes on the battery. It glows through the night and into the afternoon. After 13½ hours they turn up the current until it shines like three gas jets.

   

   Charles Batchelor’s notebook, 22 October 1879Some very interesting experiments on straight carbons made from cotton thread.
4. November 1879

   A cardboard horseshoe

   On 1 November Edison signs the patent application for a high-resistance carbon filament. It becomes U.S. Patent 223,898. The lab carbonizes everything in reach: paper, wood, cork, celluloid, fishing line, coconut hair. On 16 November Upton writes home that they have the first lamp that answers the purpose: a horseshoe of charred cardboard about an inch high, as bright as a good gas burner.

5. 31 December 1879 · Menlo Park

   The public sees it

   On 20 December Kruesi orders the shop to have everything ready by New Year’s Eve: lamps, chandeliers, a meter, ten street lights. Poles carry lamps down the road to the depot. On the night, the railroad runs extra trains from east and west, and hundreds come through a storm. Twenty-five lamps light the laboratory, eight the office, and twenty more the street and nearby houses.

6. 1880 · Menlo Park

   From a lamp to a system

   A lamp is not enough. Edison needs dynamos, mains, meters, fuses, sockets and switches, and a factory to make lamps by the thousand. The staff builds a full-scale model of the underground system at Menlo Park. In July they test bamboo filaments, which become the standard. On 1 October the lamp factory starts commercial production. In December Edison organizes the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York.

7. 1881–1882 · Lower Manhattan

   Under the streets

   Edison picks the First District, about half a mile on a side, from Wall Street north to Spruce and from Nassau Street to the East River. In spring 1881 his crews start digging. Kruesi’s Electric Tube Company lays about 80,000 feet of copper conductors in iron pipe under the streets. Into 255 and 257 Pearl Street go six Jumbo dynamos, 27 tons each, good for about 1,200 lamps apiece.

8. 4 September 1882 · 3 p.m.

   Switch on

   Edison gives the signal from the offices of Drexel, Morgan & Co. At Pearl Street his chief electrician, 22-year-old John Lieb, closes the switch, and Jumbo No. 9 is the first dynamo on the line. About 400 lamps are wired so far. At The New York Times, 27 lamps light the editorial rooms and 25 the counting room. When darkness falls at seven, the paper calls them as bright as day.

   The New York Times, 5 September 1882The giant dynamos were started up at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and, according to Mr. Edison, they will go on forever unless stopped by an earthquake.
9. 18 January 1883

   The first electric bill

   Edison will not bill anyone until the system runs reliably. The meter is a set of glass jars holding zinc plates. Current carries zinc from one plate to the other, and each month the plates are weighed. The first bill goes to the Ansonia Brass and Copper Company, for about $50. By 1884 Pearl Street serves more than 500 customers and 10,000 lamps.