Brilliant_ The Evolution of Artificial Light - Jane Brox [100]
Yet unlike in ancient times, people weren't accustomed to giving in to the long November night. For most, the dark wasn't restful; it simply felt as if the world had stopped and everyone and everything were suspended in amber, especially after the novelty of the first hour wore off. For as long as no one had any idea at all how long the helplessness would go on, there was no future, and no knowing the future. After a few hours, theaters canceled their scheduled performances, and people ran out of pocket money. They were still lined up outside phone booths waiting to call home, but what could they say other than that they were somewhere? November 9–10, 1965, became known as "the night of the long night," and it was particularly long for those trying to sleep in hotel lobbies or on office floors; in barber chairs or on cots in banquet rooms; curled up in hallways or sprawled on subway stairs or benches in train stations.
Meanwhile, throughout the affected area, each local utility had become an island again, and in each affected power station not only were the managers looking at systems that had no obvious failure, but they were also still unsure as to whether their own station was at fault or merely one link in the cascade. They had to get their system back up with the same equipment that had shut it down, and although it took only a few seconds to lose power, it would take hours to get back on-line—for it's no simple thing to align the spheres again. All switches, relays, and circuit breakers had to be checked, as did turbines, generators, and boilers. "The turbine generators had to be turned slowly by mechanical means to make sure they had not been bowed out of shape in the blackout." The power failure itself had caused some damage. For instance, turbine bearings at Con Edison's Ravenswood plant were damaged by lack of lubrication during the lapse in power.
Power was needed to beget power. "Unfortunately many of the affected utilities had made no provision for the unlikely possibility that their entire system would shut down simultaneously and, hence, there were no independent auxiliary power sources for such an eventuality. Intricate circuits had to be established, some from remote sources, to feed in the essential auxiliary power." Even with power, the enormous boilers, some of which were as tall as fifteen-story buildings, had to be heated up to 3,000 degrees, and the pressure had to be built up to more than 2,000 pounds per square inch. And everything couldn't be turned on at once, or it would overload the system. "As power became available, it was essential that the load be picked up in a careful, sectionalized, synchronized process. As each section was brought up to load, it was necessary to synchronize its frequency with that of the energized remainder of the system. It was then possible to tie the section in with the remainder of the network without disturbing the maintenance of the network's synchronism."
Service was restored to parts of New York and New England within a few hours, but it would be almost midnight before northern New York State was completely back online; Boston and Long Island didn't get power until 1:00 A.M. In New York City, it would take more than thirteen hours for the power to fully return.
The electric lights of New York—the gaudy marquees and overlit skyscrapers, which had for decades far exceeded necessity—accounted for a small fraction of the overall power demand. Even so, it was by light that most people had come to gauge their connection to life, and it was the loss of light that was most remarked upon. The following day, the headline of an Italian