General Electric Company

“ Further practical engineering experience was gained with the General Electric Company at Lynn, and in consulting work in connection with the gas and natural oil fields, oil engines, power plant economies, municipal and private steam-electric and gas-electric power plants, continuing from 1905 to 1915. ”

“ Synchronous Converters at Campbell Avenue and Homer Street Station
13 Power Supply The power for the early elevated lines was derived from engine-driven direct-current power plants all of which have since become obsolete. All power, therefore, is supplied from the network of the Commonwealth Edison Co., which maintains an ample reserve to supply all needs. While a large percentage of the power now being purchased is generated at 25 cycles, the policy of the Power Co. on all new equipment is to specify 60 cycles. ”

“ To supersede and cut out all existing Electric Telegraph Companies will be the object of the New General Electric Telegraph Company, of which Mr. Punch meditates the establishment.
Nothing can be clearer to the reflecting mind than that a shock of electricity is, of itself, one of the cheapest commodities that can be produced. ”

“ In the United States a co-operative electrical development association canvasses both the general public and the electricity supply undertakers. Funds are provided by the manufacturing companies acting in concert with the supply authorities and contractors, and the spirit underlying the work is to advertise the merits of electricity—not any particular company or interest. Their efforts are directed to securing new consumers and stimulating the increased and more varied use of electricity among actual consumers. ”

“ The greatest amount of power controlled by the companies in the General Electric group in any State is found in Washington. This is followed by New York, Pennsylvania, California, Montana, Iowa, Oregon, and Colorado. In five of157 the States shown in the table the water-power companies included in the General Electric group control more than 50 per cent. of the commercial power, developed and under construction. The percentage of power in the States included in the General Electric group ranges from a little less than 2 per cent. in Michigan to nearly 80 per cent. in Pennsylvania. ”

“ Well managed central stations broaden their market by putting a premium upon the utmost possible use of electricity. In Brooklyn, for example, the Edison Electric Company charges 10 cents per horse-power hour to customers using 100 to 250 horse-power hours per month; as consumption increases so do discounts until the customer who buys 5,000 horse-power hours pays 4 cents. The demand for current in all its diverse applications is stimulated with energy and address. ”

“ This bill came before Congress as prepared by the staff of the Commission, couched largely in the technical language of the electric art. Federal jurisdiction was to follow the flow of electric energy, an engineering and scientific, rather than a legalistic or governmental test. Technology of the business is such that if any part of a supply of electric energy comes from outside of a state it is, or may be present in every connected distribution facility. Every facility from generator to the appliance for consumption may thus be called one for transmitting such interstate power. ”

“ As was the situation in the Electric Bond & Share Co. case, North American is clearly engaged in activities which bring it within the ambit of congressional authority. North American is a typical utility holding company. It is the pinnacle of a great pyramid of corporations, the majority of which operate electric and gas utility properties. These properties are scattered throughout the United States, many of them serving large cities and contiguous territories. [3] Electric energy is transmitted across state lines by numerous companies in the pyramid or system. ”

“ To focus the inquiry, it is well to state what is not involved in this case. There is no question that the interstate transmission of electric energy is fully subject to the commerce powers of Congress. ”

“ Since he took office and dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from the Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to consumers has come from the company.
The consumption of electricity in the city is the largest per capita in the world, and the rate is the cheapest in the country; and, incidentally, the Company so trusts the people that they let them have electricity without metres, and the people so trust the Company that they save its electricity as they would their own. ”

“ Since 1954, General Electric sought to confine the employees of independent contractors, described hereafter, who work on the premises of the Park, to the use of Gate 3-A and confine its use to them. The undisputed reason for doing so was to insulate General Electric employees from the frequent labor disputes in which the contractors were involved. Gate 3-A is 550 feet away from the nearest entrance available for General Electric employees, suppliers, and deliverymen. ”

“ He knows that he is reducing his own and everybody's price for electricity, and not merely increasing the profits of the Company.
It makes another kind of man slowly out of thousands of men every day, every night, turning on and turning off their lights.
The Electric Light Company has come to have a daily, an almost hourly, influence on the way men do business and go about their work in that city—the motives and assumptions with which they bargain with one another—that might be envied by twenty churches. ”

“ But not every promise brought forward in the name of the electrician has his assent or sanction. So much has been done by electricity, and so much more is plainly feasible, that a reflection of its triumphs has gilded many a baseless dream. One of these is that the cheap electric motor, by supply power at home, will break up the factory system, and bring back the domestic manufacturing of old days. But if this power cost nothing at all the gift would leave the factory unassailed ”

“ It follows at once from this fact that there must be cogent reasons, apart from the matter of first cost, if the general substitution of steel towers for wooden poles on transmission lines is to be justified on economic grounds. During fifteen years the electric transmission of energy from distant water-powers to important centres of population has grown from the most humble beginnings to the delivery of hundreds of thousands of horse-power in the service of millions of people, and the lines for this work are supported, with very few exceptions, on wooden poles. ”

“ Where the electric generators operate at the maximum voltage of the system, as at Garvin’s Falls and in the power-house of the Manhattan Elevated Railway, there may be said to be only one general plan of connections possible. That is, the generators must connect directly with the main bus-bars at the voltage of the system, and the feeders or transmission lines must also connect to these same bars. ”

“ In some cases, gas may yet for some time compete with the electric light both in brilliancy and economy; for the electric light has spurred on the gas Companies to the improved lighting of many of our public streets and places.
With the general introduction of electricity for the purpose of lighting comes the introduction of electricity for the production of power; for the same current entering by the same conductors can be used for the production of light or of power, or of both. The same plant at the central stations will supply power by day and light by night, with evident economy. ”

“ All proposals for the extension of generating stations and mains had to be brought before the Electric Power Supply Department of the Ministry, which issued priority certificates for those judged to be most urgent. The output of electrical manufacturing firms was likewise controlled, so that the production of both electric power and electric plant was centrally organized to meet the ever-increasing demand for current. ”

“ There is however one phase of this industry, which is rapidly placing—even a general knowledge, of the means by which the electric current is generated and distributed beyond the reach of all but those actually connected with it as a business, or the student who proposes to follow it as a profession; this is the tendency to centralize electric lighting and to substitute large central stations, where the machinery for generating the current is located and whence the wires are run for distributing the same, for the numerous small plants now scattered over the country. ”

“ We are living in the morning of electrical knowledge, and what the day may bring no one can imagine. Americans have given the world many of the greatest inventions, and in the field of electricity they have given it nearly everything of value. It is to American ingenuity that civilization is indebted for the electrical telegraph, the sub-marine cable, the telephone, the electric light, and the electric car. The names of Morse, Vail, Field, Bell, Brush, Gray, Edison, and Sprague—all American electrical inventors—will always be prominent in the list of the world's great benefactors. ”

“ If you could store large amounts of electricity in an accumulator of small volume, without appreciable leakage loss, you could build generators designed to handle average rather than peak load—with resultant savings in cost; you could build electric motors, containing their own energy supply and hence portable—which meant electric automobiles and possibly aircraft ”

“ He will still maintain that there is not a company in the country making anything out of electric lighting, and that it is only a matter of time when some fellow slips into his town and, noting things, works up an arc light company, captures the street lighting and some of our friend's best consumers. The price of gas is lowered; all kinds of patent gas burners are invested in to recapture those lost consumers; a fight ensues, factions are made in the town, and the arc light company adds an incandescent plant to the arc light, and captures more of our friend's consumers. ”

“ Except for a few little storage-battery or Diesel generator systems, that couldn't handle one tenth of one per cent of the barest minimum load, it's been the only source of electric current here since 1962, when the last coal-burning power plant was dismantled. ”

“ All supply undertakers are anxious to develop the consumption of electricity for power purposes even more than for lighting, but the first cost of installing electric motors is a deterrent to the adoption of electricity in small factories and shops, and most undertakers are therefore prepared to let out motors, &c., on hire or purchase on varying terms according to circumstances.
A board of trade unit will supply one 8 c.p. carbon lamp of 30 hours or 30 such lamps for one hour. ”

“ Ten years ago we had about 700 miles of electric railway; to-day about 15,000 miles are in operation in the United States alone; a thousand millions of dollars are invested in the stock, and an army of two hundred thousand men is employed by them, mainly in the great cities, but with steady growth towards all sections and into all aggregations of population. Two thousand millions of dollars are reported to be now invested in apparatus of electrical distributions of energy, converted ultimately into light and power. ”

“ In New York, Chicago, Washington, and other large cities the electric automobile for private use is highly developed and there is also an extensive service of electric vehicles ranging in size from a small parcels van to a large lorry capable of carrying loads up to several tons. No doubt the local cost of other means of transport has something to do with this American development, which has, moreover, been strongly supported by the companies which supply electricity to the public. ”

“ In smaller places where the commercial service is not so reliable, it is usual to provide, in addition to the commercial electric-power service, an independent source of power in the form of a gas or steam engine. ”

“ Since that time it has been demonstrated by several gas companies in this and other States that the electric arc system can be added with success, financially, to gas companies and with satisfaction to their patrons; and the writer derives great pleasure in hearing of so many companies who have left the narrow and beaten track of prejudice and are now walking in the broad road of progression. ”

“ Joe Wegg is reported to have said: "Neighbors, this electric plant is no plaything. It is going to give you all better light, at no more cost to you than kerosene. But it will do more than that: it will run machinery of all kinds better than steam will. You've seen electricity running the newspaper press, and the same current has operated the big paper mills at Royal. Here in this audience is a gentleman from Connecticut who has accepted my invitation to look over our village with a view to building a factory here, using the power I shall hereafter be able to furnish. ”

“ The present competition between electricity and coal-gas as illuminating agents could scarcely have been foreseen in the days when coal-gas was itself comparatively a novelty. If we continue, as is probable, to attain cheaper methods of generating electricity, the balloon may grow in favor as the electric light has done, but without causing-the least commotion in the market for railroad stocks. ”

“ Owing to the high relative cost of electric power when generated in small amounts and the great advantages of generating it in proximity to coal mines and waterfalls, the supply of electric power in bulk to small towns and manufacturing districts has become a great feature in modern electrical engineering. ”