The name Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847-October 18, 1931) is well known--as a scientist, a businessman and an inventor with 1,093 U.S. patents to his credit even though his formal schooling was limited to three months in Port Huron, Michigan. Although Edison may have been one of the most important people to live in the last 1,000 years, our purpose is not to convince you of his importance as an American. You can turn here to learn about the man. But we would like to tell you about his Pennsylvania connection.
Edison made his mark in our state in Sunbury, the county seat of Northumberland County, 40 miles southwest of Benton. Many will remember that Edison located in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he perfected the incandescent lamp in 1879. A year later, he lit all the streets and a number of the buildings with electricity. Within a few years, he had several plants up and running furnishing electricity through an expensive two-wire system. Edison experimented with a three-wire system and in 1882 Edison and some associates located an experimental plant in Sunbury and one in Mount Carmel, both near the state's anthracite coal fields
The Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Sunbury, standing only three miles from today's Sunbury Steam Electric Station, was chartered April 30, 1883, to supply the electrical needs of Sunbury. Similar companies were chartered for Shamokin in 1882 and in Mount Carmel in 1883. Like all "start-up" companies, raising the money for the company was difficult, but it was accomplished and Edison came to Sunbury as chief mechanical and electrical engineer. He directed the building of the plant as a "hand-on" worker.
The plant was on Fourth Street in what was once known as the 2,400 square foot "old gas house lot" at the northeast corner of Fourth and Vine streets. A dynamo was installed in the red, one-story frame house. Space was divided into the engine and dynamo room, a boiler room housing a Babcock and Wilcox type boiler and an office and meter room. The total capacity of the plant was about 650 10-candle power incandescent lamps.
(A foot-candle of light is the amount of light that a birthday cake candle provides one foot away. A lamp that produces 10 foot candles of light means at one foot from the lamp, 10 foot candles of light will be produced.) The wattage of a light of 10 candle power is 0.188 watts, that is one hundred eighty-eight thousandths of a watt.
Three overhead wires were strung from the plant along Spring run to Woodlawn Avenue and then to Fourth Street and then down Fourth to Market Street.
Engine problems with their Babbitt bearings, probably from the lack of oil, caused a meltdown on the night of July 3, 1883, when the plant was turned on. The town remained dark. The next night, on the Fourth of July, Edison's experiment worked and Sunbury lit up as promised for their Fourth of July celebration. The electricity was supplied by the first three-wire system for commercial direct current lighting in the world. "Cannon crackers" heralded the event, although admittedly the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge just six weeks before got more publicity.
Sunbury's City Hotel was the first building to be lit with Edison's three-wire system. Within minutes, the Central Hotel also became illuminated by 12-candle power lamps and the Northumberland County Democrat of July 6, 1883, gushed that the "light was very brilliant," something of a "beauty in the eyes Of the beholder" statement. The City Hotel was renamed The Hotel Edison, and goes by that name today.
Edison lived at the City Hotel while construction was underway. Newspapers of the time described him wearing a "stiff derby and a Price Albert coat." Because he was hard of hearing, he rarely talked to anyone, helping, he said, to make him concentrate better.
There is some dispute about how long Edison lived in Sunbury after the plant went operational, but it is said that he kept in close contact after he left the area.Some history records that Edison's hardest task was not to develop the invention, but to convince people to want to use electricity for illumination rather than gas. The local gas company in Sunbury did everything in its power to discredit Edison. Log chains were sometimes thrown over the wires as a disruptive tactic. Bankers were nervous about the system because of the high cost of building.
A house on the square in Sunbury, then owned by the Hon. William Dewart, was the first house illuminated by electricity in the town. Electric lights were suspended from the ceiling and a light switch was at each light. Mrs. Dewart was short, unable to reach the hanging switches, so a man by the name of Sidney Bateman, an employee of Edison, made a crude wall switch. This switch was the first ever made or used, and was the forerunner of our modern light switch.
Two men from the area bought the plant from Edison in 1885, giving Edison one-fourth of the stock and bonds of the company. It is interesting to note that the original investors never made a dime from their stock, and even the stock given to Edison turned out to be worthless. The company was later sold by the sheriff, and eventually became part of the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company.
The original dynamos ran continuously for 20 years and were later shipped to the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, and were eventually donated with the original steam engines to the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. The Shamokin Steam Electric Station built in 1900 to replace the original was shut down 22 years later and its load transferred to PP&L's less expensive and newly installed system.
William E. Hecht, writing for PP&L, said that in 1883 there were no insulators and so electric wires were often affixed to gas fixtures with either tape or string. Lamp sockets dangled from beneath gas burners. Wire, known as "underwriters' wire," was often cotton covered, then soaked in paraffin or coated with white lead paint. Many called it "undertakers' wire." ¹
The Northumberland Electric Railway, a 3.2 mile electric street railway between Northumberland and Sunbury, and the invention of the trolley wheel, were results of Edison's work in Sunbury.
The last known visit of Mr. Edison to Sunbury took place in 1922, 39 years after Edison last stayed in what was then known as the City Hotel. His achievements were honored at the City Hotel during the community's sesquicentennial. The community dedicated a plaque at the front entrance of the Edison Hotel on the Market Street side of the building during Edison's visit. The significance of the work of Mr. Edison in Sunbury is that the system worked. You are able to read this short segment of Mr. Edison's life as relates to a neighboring community thanks in part to his efforts.
¹ Ruth Cavanaugh, Staten Island, reinforced our story. She said that "In our old Brooklyn home, which was over 100 years old when we bought it in 1973, I saw the places where the home had once had gas lights. However, it appeared no one had ever put electric lights in the hallway, so I asked my husband to put up a light fixture in the front entry hall. Using a ladder to reach the 11 ft. ceiling, he took down the cover that was over the old gas light fixture, and underneath he found a large bundle of wiring that was wrapped around the pipes, so someone at some point had tried to run electric to the area. He pulled the old wiring out, all the while smoking a cigarette as he worked, and some of the wiring was stuffed into the gas pipe, and he pulled it out, got a big whiff of gas, and quickly dropped his cigarette! He plugged the gas pipe with cotton and put a" cap" over it covered with duct tape, and tested the old wiring and it had electric current, so he proceeded to mount the electric light using the old wiring! Luckily, he didn't get blown off the ladder, and we lived in the house for another 22 years and the light worked just fine for all those years, connected to the electric supply with wiring that was certainly almost 100 years old by then."