by Jill Jonnes
Across the canal stood the limestone transformer building, also by White, a much smaller, faithful echo of the powerhouse. A limestone bridge spanned the canal, waiting to carry the electrical conduits from the powerhouse to the transformer building. Once the men stepped down from the trolley, the wide Niagara River’s powerful presence was palpable with its rushing, tumbling rapids and cooling breezes. Here at last it all was, the river, the canal, the cathedral of power, its quiet austerity belying the gigantic achievement. Inside, the luminous morning light poured in from the ceiling-high windows. It was all so unexpected, so unlike any other industrial venue, so silent, so pristine. Yet the dark mammoth metal dynamos were tall, brooding presences, their vast, ominous power silently controlled by the switchboard. Only one dynamo was in operation that quiet Sunday morning, but Tesla and the others inspected it enthusiastically, clambering up and around on the special walkways. And there was all the ancillary apparatus on the ground floor to be seen and discussed. Next they descended in the ornate elevator to the wheel pits, that cloistered space where one could hear the river water passing through the penstocks and then hear and see the turbines whirling. When the group came back up, they walked out of the big powerhouse and crossed over the canal to the transformer building, which as yet had no transformers. The GE machines were still being manufactured. Tesla closely considered all the complex’s machinery, delightedly asking many questions. As the morning waned, Rankine escorted everyone back to his favorite hotel and dining spot, the Cataract Hotel overlooking American Falls. There they lunched.
When the Westinghouse-Tesla party emerged from their repast, a crowd of newspapermen was lying in wait. After demurring at first, the famous Tesla finally agreed to answer a few questions. “I came to Niagara Falls,” he said, “to inspect the great power plant and because I thought the change would bring me needed rest. I have been for some time in poor health, almost worn out.” And what did he think of the power plant? Tesla’s face lit up. “It is all and more than I anticipated it would be. It is fully all that was promised. It is one of the wonders of the century … a marvel in its completeness and in its superiority of construction…. In its entirety, in connection with the possibilities of the future, the plant and the prospect of future development in electrical science, and the more ordinary uses of electricity, are my ideals. They are what I have long anticipated and have labored, in an insignificant way, to contribute toward bringing about.” And what of Niagara Falls? the local reporters urgently asked. Tesla replied without hesitation: “The result of this great development of electric power will be that the falls and Buffalo will reach out their arms and will join each other and become one great city. United, they will form the greatest city in the world.” Was it truly possible, asked another reporter, that this was Tesla’s first visit to this world-famous cataract? To the cathedral of power? “Yes,” he said, “I came purposely to see it [the plant]. But and it is a curious thing about me. I cannot stay about big machinery a great while. It affects me very much. The jar of the machinery curiously affects my spine and I cannot stand the strain.”
Of course, the Niagara Falls Power Company’s greatest challenge still remained unmet, and that was the long-distance transmission of AC power to Buffalo. The reporters now asked Tesla what he thought of all that. Was it an assured undertaking? There was good reason to wonder. Just six months earlier, on December 16, 1896, after fourteen months of indecision and politicking, the city of Buffalo had finally come to a franchise agreement with William Rankine that obliged the Niagara Falls Power Company to deliver to a newly formed Buffalo entity, the Cataract Power and Conduit Company, 10,000 horsepower of electricity on or before June 1, 1897. The first declared customer was the Buffalo Street Railway Company, which contracted for 1,000 horsepower (DC, of course). The Conduit Company cautiously sought no further contracts until such time as all went smoothly with this. Tesla’s eyes flashed as he responded to the question of transmission. “Its success is certain. The transmission of electricity is one of the simplest of propositions. It is but the application of pronounced and accepted rules which are as firmly established as the air itself.”35 As he became enthusiastic, his long, thin hands gestured about his face, trembling noticeably.
While Nikola Tesla was the star of the show, the reporters were also interested to hear the thoughts of George Westinghouse, one of the nation’s great industrialists and the man who had taken Nikola Tesla’s brilliant AC inventions and made them a commercial reality. Westinghouse was feeling quite jovial and listened to Tesla enthuse “with much interest and good nature.” Did he believe the Niagara Falls Power Company could really sell so much electricity, 100,000 horsepower ultimately? Many people said there would never be that much demand. “This talk is ridiculous,” said Westinghouse, his walrus mustache bristling. “When you think that a single ocean steamship like the Campania uses 25,000 horse power, it is easy to be seen that there will be no surplus here. All the power here can and will be used.”36 And what would electricity do? The first and greatest benefits would obviously accrue to Niagara Falls, for Cataract had 1,500 acres to fill with industries, which were coming. “But Buffalo’s possibilities are to be made marvelous as well,” he said.
First, however, the power had to reach Buffalo. And until such time as electricity was conveyed successfully from Power House No. 1 to the Queen City of Lake Erie, the whole great Niagara power enterprise and effort would not have surmounted its greatest challenge. After all, Edward Dean Adams, Coleman Sellers, William Rankine, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, and his excellent team of engineers had not been toiling all these years to provide direct current to local factories. Where was the glory in that? Their electrical dream, what they had been striving to show the world, was the revolutionary delivery of electricity to entire cities and regions, electricity that was generated cheaply and abundantly in one locale. From there it would flash forth over far distances to satisfy every imaginable need—incandescent lighting in offices and homes, arc lighting for the avenues, DC for street railways, and motive power for factories and mills. And this was just the beginning. Once electricity was cheaply, reliably available, who knew what inventions would draw on its energy? Yes, so these men had stilled the doubters by showing they could harness large quantities of hydropower using massive turbines and dynamos. But could they send big volumes of electricity big distances? And indeed, as William Rankine told the reporters that day with Tesla, the Niagara Falls Power Company was even now arranging the contract for erection of the towering wooden transmission poles, modeled on those of the telegraph companies. But not until early November were the long-awaited GE transformers finally installed in the transformer house. They were testament to the continuing rapid advance of the electrical arts: The dynamos’ two-phase AC was to be stepped up to even more efficient three-phase AC for transmission. By mid-November of 1896, the Niagara Falls Power Company was finally ready.
All afternoon on the cold Sunday of November 15, William Rankine and several engineers were at Power House No. 1 testing the delivery of the 1,000 horsepower to the transformer. However, Rankine had promised his father, an Episcopal minister, that the actual transmission of power would not begin on the Sabbath. So late Sunday night he was back at the powerhouse, lit now not by daylight, but by brilliant hissing arc lights. Inside, the mighty dynamos hummed. Outside, the Niagara River flowed swiftly past and the remaining dead leaves rustled in the almost bare trees. Rankine and one Westinghouse engineer mounted to the switchboard platform. Over at the transformer house, a GE engineer had been supervising and testing all day. They waited for midnight. As soon as Monday came, at 12:01, William Rankine pulled down three switches. Twenty-six miles away in Buffalo, a small group huddled in the southwest corner of the Buffalo Railway Company powerhouse. One man’s eye was on his watch, and when it read 12:01, he pulled down three knife-blade switches on their two rotary transformers. “Perhaps two seconds elapsed,” reported a jubilant Buffalo Enquirer. “Electrical experts say t
he time was incapable of computation. It was the journey of God’s own lightning bound over to the employ of man.”37 The Niagara Falls Power Company’s alternating current electricity had flashed out at a pressure of 2,200 volts, been swiftly stepped up in the GE transformer to 10,700 volts, flashed over the twenty-six miles of cable to the Cataract Power and Conduit Company’s transformer, been stepped down to 440 volts, and flashed on to the Buffalo Railway Company, where rotary transformers—delivered and tested just that day—brought it up further to 550 volts of DC. The Buffalo streetcars were soon jogging along their rails with Niagara hydropower, mundane yet wondrous proof of this miraculous new and invisible reality—long-distance transmission of AC energy.
YOKED TO THE CATARACT! proclaimed that day’s Buffalo Enquirer, with the subheads “Niagara’s Energy Ready to Stir the Wheels of Buffalo’s Great Industries—Power Transmitted Successfully at Midnight Last Night” and “Now for Prosperity for Greater Buffalo.” In truth, after an hour of transmission the power had been shut off and all involved had gone off to celebrate. Buffalo was indeed now a city of dazzling prospects. Already it was the world’s sixth largest commercial center, storing mountains of Great Plains cereals in its fifty-two grain elevators before they were shipped out to feed the world. Five million head of livestock passed through each year. Buffalo boasted the world’s largest coal trestle; twenty-six railroads had seven hundred miles of track and depots; every day 250 passenger trains alone came and went. Almost six thousand vessels docked at its port each year.38 And soon the city would boast the nation’s most abundant, cheapest electricity.
Edward Dean Adams had taken Nikola Tesla’s counsel against any formal dedication when the cathedral of power began its mighty work at Niagara Falls. The Buffalo men were of no such reticent nature. Though only a paltry 1,000 horsepower was theirs as yet, the men running the new Cataract Power and Conduit Company were determined to celebrate in grand banquet style. They set a date in mid-January of 1897 and invited Nikola Tesla, who graciously agreed to be the guest of honor. So, for the second time in six months, Tesla found himself journeying up to Niagara, traveling overnight in a private railcar from New York City with Edward Dean Adams, Francis Lynde Stetson, Edward Wickes, several other millionaire directors, and two top Westinghouse engineers, one being Lewis Stillwell. On Tuesday, January 12, at 9:00 A.M. the group debarked at the New York Central depot in Niagara Falls. It was very cold and had been snowing lightly all morning. The town was at its most lovely, its usual ramshackle appearance hidden by the snow and tumbling flakes, the trees shimmering with snow and icicles. The gentlemen climbed into waiting horse-drawn carriages and made the short trip to the elegant Prospect House Hotel. There they met William Rankine and sat down to a hearty breakfast in the marble octagonal dining room, the gentle winter light diffusing softly through its famous domed ceiling of stained glass. Once breakfast had been finished, the group declined to speak to waiting reporters, ascended into the carriages, and headed toward Erie Avenue and Power House No. 1. This time, Nikola Tesla would see the transformers at work as well as several new factories powered by Niagara. In the afternoon, they visited the falls.
That evening, Tesla and the other men, now in formal evening clothes, all returned to Buffalo by train to attend the Cataract Power and Conduit Company’s lavish electrical banquet at the new Ellicott Square Building. Designed by Daniel H. Burnham, the architect and mastermind of the Chicago World’s Fair, this handsome ten-story neo-Renaissance behemoth with its beautiful, airy, glass-roofed interior was said to be the world’s largest office building, with six hundred suites. On the top floor was the Ellicott Club, jammed and noisy with hundreds of arriving guests. Each man was handed a souvenir menu and seating list, indicating his table, bound in engraved aluminum covers made with Niagara power. Outside the club’s dark windows, the snow swirled thickly down on the city below. The din of excited talk rose louder and louder. Nikola Tesla and the New Yorkers were cloistered in a small office away from the local hoi polloi until it was time to be seated.
Three hundred of Buffalo’s leading citizens, from the mayor to the major merchants, were present for this gala occasion, celebrating the long-awaited arrival into the City of Light of the first 1,000 horsepower of Niagara electricity, that mystical, amazing energy. Some fifty eminent scientists and “electricians” had also come north to pay homage, including such important names as GE’s Charles Coffin and Elihu Thomson, Charles Brush of arc light fame, and T. Commerford Martin of the Electrical Engineer. George Westinghouse, never one for ceremonies and occasions, had sent in his stead chief engineer Lewis Stillwell and longtime friend and attorney Charles Terry. Then, of course, there were the rich and powerful Manhattanites, fifty strong, the capitalists whose dollars had underwritten it all.
At 8:00 P.M., the chattering multitudes streamed into the gold-and-white dining room, scintillating like a starry night with hundreds of electrical fairy lights. A giant silver Neptune vase on the long raised speaker’s table displayed crimson roses beribboned with tricolor electric lights. The company settled in at the eight long banquet tables, each decorated with fresh ropes of sweet-smelling smilax, its evergreen bright against the starched white linen cloths, and set with the finest colored china, crystal goblets, and silver. The air warmed and conversation rose, and the hothouse scent of the roses, carnations, palms, and ferns subtly scented the room. The waiters skillfully served course after course of this festive electrical evening: succulent oysters, lobster, tender terrapin, and rare beef filet, all washed down with sherry, Rhine wine, champagne, the palate refreshed by the sorbet electrique. Pontificated the editors of the Buffalo Morning Express, “Such a company never sat down in Buffalo before, while such an event had never previously been celebrated in the history of the world.”
For three hours, the four hundred guests made merry, the best citizens of Buffalo relishing this rare convivial rubbing of elbows with important and powerful New Yorkers whose names “appear almost daily in newspapers around the country. They not only control events. They create many and strive for more.” By 10:00 P.M., the dessert plates with their delectable petit fours were whisked away and the faint blue smoke of hundreds of cigars wisped and curled toward the ceiling. Sandy-haired Francis Lynde Stetson, the first of six toastmasters, responded to the toast to “the Company.” He stood up and bluntly launched on a series of complaints: Since 1889, the New York investors had put up more than $6 million to build the great Niagara power plant and the transmission facilities “without thus far receiving one penny of profit or dividends or interest.” Moreover, Stetson lectured his suddenly silent audience, the most profitable way to use this new power would be to sell all of it to the firms in their own industrial park. Nonetheless, Stetson declared curtly, the Niagara Falls Power Company intended to honor its less profitable arrangement to supply Buffalo electricity, but not on time. The 9,000 horsepower of electricity due the city by June 1897 would not be available until an unspecified future date. Stetson’s ungracious toast received stunned, perfunctory ap-plause. Only a man as hard-nosed as Stetson, a man used to wielding great power and having his way, would possess the nerve to coolly announce such churlish news at a banquet. He earned an editorial rebuke from one local paper the next day.
The mayor and the state comptroller gamely delivered their platitudinous toasts through the pall of cigar smoke. Then it was time to hear from Nikola Tesla, already a legend. All evening eyes had been upon him, for the inventor was an unusual-looking man, so tall and thin, with his coal black wavy hair, his wide forehead, his luminous eyes, his nervous, uncomfortable manner. As soon as he was introduced, the packed room of men rose to their feet and began wildly waving their big linen napkins, cheering for the famous scientist. They would show Stetson who mattered in this world. Smiling shyly, Nikola Tesla stood as the rapturous roars enveloped the room, shaking the china and crystal. When he tried to speak, the audience began clanging their wineglasses with knives and forks, setting up an even greater clamor of
approval. Slowly, the pandemonium subsided, and the smiling crowd calmed and took their seats expectantly.
Tesla then began his toast in his high-pitched voice, the model of modesty, saying he “scarcely had courage enough to address them.” Then, as the room became completely silent, Tesla the idealist urged his listeners to honor the “spirit which makes men in all stages and position work, not as much for any material benefit or compensation, although reason may dictate this also, but for the sake of success, for the pleasure there is in achieving it and for the good they might do thereby to their fellow men.” Finally, here were sentiments fitting to the epochal nature of the night. The crowd’s wild clapping sent the cigar smoke swirling, and some had trouble hearing Tesla’s words about a “type of man … inspired with deep love for their study, men whose chief aim and enjoyment is the acquisition and spread of knowledge, men who look far above earthly things, whose banner is Excelsior!” Tesla and his audience were enjoying each other in this electrical, uplifting moment, as the great creator of Niagara power elevated the occasion above the bitter, mundane concerns of the money men. At Niagara itself, had not Tesla given up already almost $50,000 in royalties?
Unmoved by Tesla’s noble sentiments, the ever practical Stetson looked at his watch, stood up, and whispered loudly in his ear, “Mr. Tesla, we will have to leave in three minutes.” The private railcar of the New York millionaires was attached to a soon-to-depart train. Always good-natured, Tesla endeared himself with his final kind words: “Let me wish that in no time distant your city will be a worthy neighbor of the great cataract which is one of the great wonders in nature.” With that, he bowed. The diners rose as one, their cheers echoing back and forth as Tesla departed from the hot, smoky room redolent of good food and drink, following Stetson, Adams, and the other big New York money men as they made for the elevators.
