Abstract
AT an ordinary general meeting of the Newcomen Society held in London on April 15, and at the seventh annual meeting of the American members held in New York on April 16, two papers were presented dealing with two historic electric power houses. One of the papers was by Mr. G. A. Orrok and dealt with the Pearl Street station in New York, the first central station in the world; the other was by Col. R. E. B. Crompton and gave a history of the first installation of house-to-house electric supply in England, the power house of which was described as “the parent generating station of Great Britain”. It was the invention of the incandescent light, the perfecting of the dynamo, and the invention of the multiple are system, with its corollary in the feeder system and three-wire system, which brought the central station into being as a means of furnishing a means of transmitting light, heat, and power in any amount and to such distances as might be required. In the early 'eighties, many private installations of electric lighting plant were laid down, and generating plant was supplied to individual buildings and ships, but the two stations referred to at the meeting of the Newcomen Society were the first stations in the United States and England respectively to supply electric current to customers in the same way that gas and water had been supplied.
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Two Historic Electric Power Stations. Nature 128, 140–141 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128140a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128140a0