601 Main St.  P.O. Box 9        Tel: (812) 547-3411        Mon-Fri 8:00am-4:30pm

    Tell City, IN  47586                Fax: (812) 547-9557       Closed Sat-Sun

Electricity has come a long way over the years. It has slowly evolved into a more efficient and technical business. However, it wasn't always that way...

In the late 19th Century electricity was a new marvel. People had known about electricity for many years. Benjamin Franklin first achieved world renown for his experiments with electricity, including work with his famous kite and key. Until just over a century ago there was no way for electricity to be harnessed for practical use. It was in the late 1870s when America's greatest inventor -- Thomas Alva Edison -- developed and built the first electricity generating plant in New York City using DC current.

Electric lighting came to Chicago in 1880, when the Palmer House Hotel installed electric lights in time for that year's Republican National Convention. Later that year in Philadelphia the first electric lights were strung along a ten-block stretch of Chestnut Street. A year later John Wanamaker installed electric lights in his new department store.¹

Edison's incandescent lamp had created an astonishing demand for electric power. And his DC power station on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan was quickly becoming a monopoly. On the streets, single poles carried dozens of crooked crossbeams supporting sagging wires, and the exposed electrical wiring was a constant danger. Unsuspecting children would scale the poles only to meet an untimely electrical demise. The residents of Brooklyn became so accustomed to dodging shocks from electric trolley tracks that their baseball team was called the Brooklyn Dodgers. In spite of the perils, wealthy New Yorkers rushed to have their homes wired, the most important being the banker, J.P. Morgan, who had invested heavily in Edison.³

Then, in 1887, a young inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla filed seven patents for his invention of polyphase AC motors and power transmission.  These patents were quickly bought by George Westinghouse for $60,000 .  With this breakthrough in electrical transmission by using AC current, rather than Edison's DC current a political war erupted between the two inventors. Edison and a professor by the name of Harold Brown traveled the country killing dogs and old horses on stage to prove how dangerous AC current was.

Meanwhile, a murderer was about to be executed in the first electric chair at New York's Auburn State Prison. Professor Brown had succeeded in illegally purchasing a used Westinghouse generator in order to demonstrate once and for all the extreme danger of alternating current. The guinea pig was William Kemmler, a convicted ax-murderer, who died horribly on August 6, 1890, in "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." The technique was later dubbed "Westinghousing."³

However, much to the contempt of Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla won the bid for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the world's first all-electric fair.  They beat out the newly formed GE company (who taken over Edison's company) by nearly a million dollars. GE's expense was mostly tied up in amount of copper wire they would need to transmit their DC power. This proved that AC was more efficient and more economical to deploy.  When President Cleveland opened the fair by turning on the lights with the push of a button, it was clear to the public that the future of electricity was AC. The age of modern electricity had arrived!³

When distribution systems were first introduced, every customer paid a flat rate for electrical power, regardless of the amount of power they consumed.  Soon, however, people discovered that this kind of a billing system was not totally fair.  In 1881, Thomas Edison invented the first truly equitable form of power measurement.  He called his invention the electric chemical watt-hour meter.

After 1881, several men and companies introduced meters that improved and revised Edison's idea.  In 1897, Professor Elihu Thompson introduced his first induction-type watt-hour meter, which was called the type "C" Thompson Induction Meter.  Thompson's company later became a part of General Electric.  Then in 1903, General Electric introduced the Thompson high-torque meter, which was called the type "I" meter. This meter is considered to be the first truly modern meter.  It was smaller in size, and it was dependable. It also provided ease of adjustment and a large, four-dial register.  Since then, virtually all electromechanical watt-hour meters have had the same basic design and operating principles.²

Soon numerous electric companies were competing to supply power in the nation's major cities. The focus was on business customers, although some wealthy homeowners had electric lighting installed. Because generation capacity was so limited most homes could only have three or four electric lights. And homeowners often had to turn off one light before they could turn on another.

By 1920 all of the nation's major cities had competing electric companies, each with its own sets of poles and wires. In order to bring service to more people, states began adopting laws providing for a single electric company in each city. From these laws grew the "regulatory compact" which formed the foundation of the electric utility industry in the U.S. for nearly eight decades.

Under the compact, the state gave utilities a monopoly within a "service territory." Commonwealth Edison became the electric company for the Chicago area, while Philadelphia Electric had the rights to the Philadelphia area. In return, electric companies agreed to provide services to any customer who wanted it. This was particularly important since service to rural areas was much more expensive than in large cities.

By the late 1990s the nation was moving toward deregulating many industries, including trucking, the airlines, natural gas, and telecommunications. It was only a matter of time before the electric utility industry was opened to competition.

It is important to know that the electricity industry is composed of three separate businesses: 

	Generation. These are the power plants that produce the power.
	Transmission. These are the large lines that take the high voltage power from the generating plants on a sort of super highway for electricity and transport it to distribution points.
	Distribution. The company that brings electricity from the transmission lines into your home or business is a distribution company such as Tell City Electric Department.

Many states have deregulated generation, allowing customers to choose who generates their power. The distribution business remains regulated.

Today, America is the largest consumer of electricity in the world. Electricity touches our lives in just about everything we do from heating the hot water for our morning shower to the light we turn off before going to sleep.¹

¹ Copyright © 2002 Exelon Corporation, "History of Electricity".  All rights reserved.

² "Introduction to Metering"  Copyright NUS Training Corporation

3 "Tesla - Master of Lighting": Life and Legacy" Copyright 2002 PBS