Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [45]
Before Edison installed the new board of directors, there had been 103 only eighteen Edison central stations in the United States. A year later there were thirty-one, and by August of 1886 there were fifty-eight. During the same period the number of isolated lighting plants nearly doubled. As the companies prospered, Edison recovered his investments and became a wealthy man. Just as important, his dream of seeing his light spread across the country was beginning to come true.10
EDISON'S LIGHTING SYSTEM inspired an electrical craze. A New York bartender mixed an "electric cocktail" by caramelizing sugar with an electric light wire, then adding alcohol. The Electrical Journal reported in 1882 that a Richmond man "cooked the first four eggs boiled in water by electricity, the first piece of beefsteak, and probably the first bacon" (the rival claimant for the bacon prize was not identified). A physician used the Edison current for the "eradication of a mustache from a woman's lip." J. P. Morgan's daughter appeared at a ball with tiny glowing bulbs in her hair, and the Electric Girl Illuminating Company, incorporated in 1884, adorned servants with incandescent lamps and hired them out, promising "girls of fifty-candle power each in quantities to suit householders."11
Although Edison's light had captured the nation's imagination, in 1886 it remained a luxury service, available only to the relatively few people who had purchased isolated lighting plants or who lived in the central districts of some cities. Arc lamps, because they were placed on public streets, had a more immediate impact.
Brush Electric remained the leading arc lighting firm, but a strong competitor had entered the field. In the late 1870s Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston, two science teachers at Philadelphia's Central High School, designed an arc lamp system, located investors in Connecticut, and founded a manufacturing company there. Originally known as the American Electric Company, in 1883 the firm was reorganized as the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. Brush's supremacy in arc lighting was challenged not only by Thomson-Houston but also by the United States Electric Lighting Company, Fort Wayne Electric, and about twenty smaller firms.12
Because competition was so intense, arc lighting manufacturers marketed their systems aggressively, with salesmen for the companies essentially acting as promoters. In each city, they located investors, helped them organize a local lighting utility, secured a franchise from the local government, arranged for the purchase of equipment, and assisted with setup. Installing an arc lighting system, like installing an Edison incandescent system, involved creating a central station with one or more dynamos, then running conducting wires to carry electricity to individual street lamps, but the similarities ended there. An incandescent lighting system reached into the interior rooms of houses and offices and required the wiring of thousands of individual lamps. An arc lamp central station, by contrast, served just a few dozen street lamps. Even more important, most arc lamp companies avoided the most laborious part of Edison's system installation: digging up the streets to lay conductors underground. Arc lighting firms, like operators of telegraph services, strung their wires on poles over city streets.13