Brilliant_ The Evolution of Artificial Light - Jane Brox [49]
A reporter who visited the Merrimack Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, where Edison had installed a system in early 1882, described the palpable difference the light made:
Standing at one end of the room and glancing down the long rows of looms, each with its own little light placed three feet above the fabric being woven, one is first struck by the agreeable quality of the light, and next by its perfect steadiness.... The absence of heat is another valuable quality.... The temperature of the room, which would be raised ten or twelve degrees by the lighting of the gas, is not influenced by the 262 electric lights. Upon approaching the loom and examining the work in process, it appears that every thread, every line of pattern in fancy plaid goods, is remarkably clear and distinct; imperfections are quickly noticed and as quickly remedied, and it would seem that the operatives could desire no more perfect light.
Machines are most economical when they run all the time, and electric lights proved so efficient that their use extended the workday, which had been gradually losing its dependence on natural daylight since the introduction of the mechanical clock in the sixteenth century. Edison's success helped to fully establish the three-shift day and the final erasure of natural time in the factory.
A few months after Edison outfitted the Merrimack Mills, he wired the first private home for incandescent light, banker and financier J. P. Morgan's Madison Avenue brownstone. What was a boon to business was still overwhelmingly complicated for a house and—costing as much as 28 cents per kilowatt hour—only for the very wealthy. "It was a great deal of trouble to install it," recalled Morgan's son-in-law and biographer, Herbert Satterlee. "A cellar was dug underneath the stable ... and there the little steam engine and boiler for operating the generator were set up.... The gas fixtures in the house were wired, so that there was one electric light bulb substituted for a burner in each fixture. Of course there were frequent short circuits and many breakdowns on the part of the generating plant." Edison's engine, fueled by coal, belched. It was noisy. It sent up foul smoke and fumes. The neighbors complained that their houses shuddered when the boiler started up in the afternoon. It wasn't self-starting or self-maintaining. Sometimes, the house was plunged into darkness when a generator broke down or the wires short-circuited. In addition, the generator
had to be run by an expert engineer who came on duty at three P.M. and got up steam, so that any time after four o'clock on a winter's afternoon the lights could be turned on. This man went off duty at 11 P.M. It was natural that the family should often forget to watch the clock, and while visitors were still in the house, or possibly a game of cards was going on, the lights would die down and go out. If they wanted to give a party, a special arrangement had to be made to keep the engineer on duty after hours.
Morgan proved to be a patient customer: even after a renovation in which an electric cord running under the rug in his study started a fire that destroyed the room, he stood by the system. But not every wealthy client of Edison's was so intrepid or comfortable with the industrial obviousness of it. Gaslight involved no boilers or burners in the home, removed as it was from its grimy source of power by miles of pipe. The wife of railroad magnate William H. Vanderbilt refused to use the electricity in her newly wired home because she feared living over the boiler.
Meanwhile, Edison's plans for the central power station on Pearl Street in Manhattan made slow progress, in part because of the laborious task of digging subways to lay underground wires for the system. Edison insisted on buried wires, not only to follow the example of gas lines but