The electric power plant at Niagara Falls in upstate New York was a milestone in the development of the electric power industry. The first hydroelectric plant in the United States, it not only powered industry but also lit up and electrified urban areas and, later, small towns and rural areas. It eventually inspired the worldwide adoption of alternating current.
In the 1880’s, Thomas Alva Edison was the undisputed master of electrical inventions. Called the Wizard of Menlo Park after the location of his New Jersey research and development laboratory, his inventions included motors, generators, and a lighting
In 1888, a competing electrical system using alternating current (AC) was introduced by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation
Niagara Falls in 1913, viewed from the Canadian side of the border.
Westinghouse was interested in Tesla’s AC motor because he was already in the business of manufacturing transformers. The transformer is a rather simple device with two coils of wire of different sizes wound around an iron core. It is used to increase or decrease an AC voltage. Westinghouse visualized an electric power distribution system in which transmission lines would carry electricity efficiently at a high voltage that could be stepped down by transformers to a safe level for users. He was enthusiastic about the advantages of AC, whereas Edison was committed to DC. Newspapers during the early 1890’s wrote about the “battle of the currents,” as the two industrialists competed for contracts.
In the 1880’s, the mining industry in Colorado was using steam engines
Edison scored a triumph for DC in 1892 when his company built the Pearl Street power plant in New York City. The plant used a steam engine
In 1892,
During the late 1880’s, several New York businessmen had expressed interest in a project to harness the tremendous energy of Niagara Falls. The original plan was to divert some of the water above the falls into a canal, along whose banks more than two hundred water wheels would be installed for sawmills and other industrial applications. The diverted water would be returned to the river through a tunnel below the town of Niagara.
Excavation for the intake canal and the return flow tunnel began in 1890, but a major change of plans soon followed. Engineers in Switzerland
The plant’s design consisted of ten turbines located 140 feet below the level of the falls, fed by a downward stream of water going through long chutes from the intake canal. Each turbine was connected to an AC generator, producing a total output that would be greater than all the electric power systems then operating in the United States. It was an ambitious plan requiring turbines and generators larger than had ever been built before. The output of the Tesla generators at the falls was connected to transformers that converted the generators to a high voltage with low current for efficient cross-country transmission to the city of Buffalo, twenty-five miles away. In Buffalo, transformers reconverted the power back to a safe low voltage with high current to operate lighting
Tesla’s AC electric motor and generator, which he had envisioned as a student and later patented, was completed by Westinghouse, and the first electricity reached Buffalo at midnight on November 16, 1896. A dedicatory dinner was held in Buffalo on January 12, 1897. Tesla, during his dinner address, described his vision of electricity’s future and its potential benefits.
After the success of the Niagara Falls power plant, the use of electricity increased rapidly. To be profitable, commercial power plants first catered to large industrial users and municipalities rather than to residential customers. For example, because aluminum metal can be extracted from its ore only by electrolysis, and not by smelting, a refinery was built by the Aluminum Company of America at Niagara, marking the start of large-scale electrochemical industry. At the municipal level, cities could now power their trolleys, or streetcars, by overhead electric lines, replacing the outmoded trolleys pulled by horses.
During the early twentieth century, thousands of smaller communities built their own power plants. A typical installation consisted of a coal-fired boiler that produced high-pressure steam to turn the blades of a turbine connected to the shaft of a generator. The plant’s output was distributed within the town limits for businesses, homes, and streetlights. Home appliances such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners became popular to reduce the drudgery of housework. There were no power lines to serve farmers, however, and no interconnections between neighboring towns.
By 1934, about one-third of American homes were connected to electricity, but it was unequally distributed. In Chicago, almost everyone had electricity, but in rural areas less than 10 percent had access. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was formed to bring the benefits of electricity to people in the countryside. Also, individual power plants gradually were connected into larger grids to improve reliability in case of a local power failure. The steam engine
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Baldwin, Neil. Edison: Inventing the Century. New York: Hyperion, 1995. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Critically acclaimed comprehensive biography, providing information on Edison’s personal life and career. Baldwin argues that Edison embodied the American potential for technological change; his book describes the cultural context of Edison’s inventions. -
Coltman, John W. “The Transformer.” Scientific American (January, 1988): 86-95. A well-written article on transformers and their importance for AC electric power distribution systems, with helpful diagrams. -
Hughes, Thomas P. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Discusses the role of Westinghouse in developing AC for use in electrical utilities. -
Hunt, Inez, and Wanetta Draper. Lightning in His Hand: The Life Story of Nikola Tesla. Denver, Colo.: Sage Books, 1964. A biography of Tesla’s life and scientific accomplishments, with many fascinating anecdotes and sixteen pages of photographs. -
Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. New York: Random House, 2003. The best book available on the AC versus DC controversy, describing confrontations between Westinghouse and Edison to establish the superiority of their respective systems. -
Moran, Richard. Executioner’s Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Tells the story of Edison’s campaign to discredit alternating current technology by frightening the public with the potential hazards of electrocution.
Davy Develops the Arc Lamp
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Faraday Converts Magnetic Force into Electricity
Westinghouse Patents His Air Brake
Edison Demonstrates the Incandescent Lamp
Chicago World’s Fair
General Electric Opens Research Laboratory
Alexander Graham Bell; Thomas Alva Edison; Michael Faraday; Sir William Robert Grove; James Clerk Maxwell; Charles Proteus Steinmetz; Joseph Wilson Swan; Nikola Tesla; George Westinghouse.