The Lights of Manhattan

Edison planned his first American central power station to be built in lower Manhattan Island at Pearl Street Station.  The station was to be built on a site 50 feet by 100 feet and would supply electricity to a half mile area.  Edison had promised in 1878 never to show or offer the electric light until it was so perfected that it was a certain instantaneous victory over the gas light.  For decades he had tested sockets, switches, fuses, lamp holders, and every part he could.  Finally in 1882, he was ready.

The Pearl Street Station (shown on right) purposely would serve Wall Street and the New York Times offices - places that could win support to provide electric lighting all across America.  The wires were buried underground (against city officials preference) with new tubing and new standards of insulation invented, of course, by Edison himself.  These would become incorporated into the earliest laws of electric power in New York.

The Pearl Street Station cost was about $600,000, but there was nothing like it in all the world.  All the devices and parts were home-made at Menlo Park.  On September 4, 1882 at 3 pm the switch was thrown, and 400 lights went on for 85 customers.  At 7 pm, in the New York Times offices, the 52 lamps glowed bright and steady.  One employee said "it seemed almost like writing by daylight."

America had seen its first city lights.   Thomas Alva Edison was just 34 years old.  He said afterwards that "it was time to take a long vacation in the matter of inventions."  The young Edison was called the "King of Invention" and the "Modern Magician."  We thank you Mr. Edison, for the "electric candles" that light our world every day.

Next time...moving into R&D
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Today in Pioneer History: "On April 27, 1773, the British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government.  This granted basically a monopoly on the American tea trade and led to the Boston Tea party in 1773, where an estimated $1 million dollars worth of tea (in today's standards) was dumped in Boston Harbor, and ultimately led to the American Revolution."

A New Frontier System in New England

As fur trading in the Northeast began, fur traders began building "trucking houses" at Springfield, Northampton and other more distant points.  In the 1640s, they began invading the Hudson River Valley, settled by the Dutch in 1624.  The Dutch had ousted the Swedes in 1654 who tried to settle in nearby Delaware.  They tried the same with the New Englanders who began trading in the Mohawk Valley with the Iroquois.  The New Englanders retaliated by seizing New Amsterdam in 1664 and renaming it New York.

New England farmers came close behind the fur traders.  Unlike their fellow frontiersmen in Virginia,
New Englanders moved in groups under the guidance of leaders rather than as individuals scattered about as their future western pioneer would do.  Areas adjacent to settled areas came first. The building lots were laid out, fields were plowed for farming, then a village green, around which was church, parish, house and school were built. 

The New England frontiers advanced in orderly sections adjacent to each other, assuring pioneer "safety, Christian communities, schools, civility and other good ends."  The system encouraged community enterprise, fields cleared by joint labor, cattle watched over by herdsmen, and the common effort aided in marketing the small agricultural surpluses. 

Now you know where the idea of the village square came from in many towns and cities today!

Next time..Appalachian Country
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Today in Pioneer History:  On this day, August 27, 1875, the powerful western capitalist William Ralston is found drowned in San Francisco Bay, hours after being asked to resign as president of the Bank of California. Ralston was one of the first men to build a major financial empire in the Far West.