How the rise of electricity transformed urban life in Detroit

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from Model D:


How the rise of electricity transformed urban life in Detroit
AMY ELLIOTT BRAGG | TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2014




Here's a famous story: Alex Dow, manager of the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit, saw promise in his young chief engineer, and in 1896, he invited the engineer to join him at a conference in New York. One night, at a dinner with Thomas Edison, Dow introduced his chief engineer thusly: "There's a young fellow who has made a gas car."

Dow said it laughingly -- A gas car! At the dawn of the electric age! -- and related a story about the engineer's prototype "pop-pop-popping" along the street in front of the station. But after some discussion about the car's technology and the engineer's development of an improved sparked plug, Edison banged the table and said to the engineer: "Young man, that's the thing. You have it. Keep at it."

The chief engineer, of course, was Henry Ford, and this story is famous because it's about following your dreams and pursuing your genius in the face of a doubting world. But hidden inside of this platitudinal story is another more surprising one, a story we take for granted: In pioneering a gas-powered automobile, Ford was out of step with the innovation of his time. We know the story of Ford. We don't know the story of the step. And the step was epic. On a scale of one to "changed everything," the world-transforming rise of electricity competes pretty capably with the Model T.

"We like to think that our generation has lived through the greatest technological transformational change," says Jeff Horner, a lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University. But in the late 1800s and early 1900s, "we figured out how to harness electricity as a serious source of power in a very short period of time -- 10 or 15 years."

"It was much bigger than the internet," he says. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/detroit-energy-history071514.aspx

[JNelson6563]

1. Great article!