Finally, one day in October, 1879, after fourteen months of hard
work and the expenditure of forty thousand dollars, a carbonized
cotton thread sealed in one of Edison's globes lasted forty
hours. "If it will burn forty hours now," said Edison, "I know I
can make it burn a hundred." And so he did. A better filament was
needed. Edison found it in carbonized strips of bamboo.
Edison developed his own type of dynamo, the largest ever made up
to that time, and, along with the Edison incandescent lamps, it
was one of the wonders of the Paris Electrical Exposition of
1881. The installation in Europe and America of plants for
service followed. Edison's first great central station, supplying
power for three thousand lamps, was erected at Holborn Viaduct,
London, in 1882, and in September of that year the Pearl Street
Station in New York City, the first central station in America,
was put into operation.
The incandescent lamp and the central power station, considered
together, may be regarded as one of the most fruitful conceptions
in the history of applied electricity. It comprised a complete
generating, distributing, and utilizing system, from the dynamo
to the very lamp at the fixture, ready for use. It even included
a meter to determine the current actually consumed. The success
of the system was complete, and as fast as lamps and generators
could be produced they were installed to give a service at once
recognized as superior to any other form of lighting.
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