It was
practically duplicated in the following year at Brodie, Colorado.
The motors and generators for these stations came from the
Westinghouse plant in Pittsburgh, and Westinghouse also supplied
the turbo-generators which inaugurated, in 1895, the delivery of
power from Niagara Falls.
CHAPTER X. THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR
The most popular man in Europe in the year 1783 was still the
United States Minister to France. The figure of plain Benjamin
Franklin, his broad head, with the calm, shrewd eyes peering
through the bifocals of his own invention, invested with a halo
of great learning and fame, entirely captivated the people's
imagination.
As one of the American Commissioners busy with the extraordinary
problems of the Peace, Franklin might have been supposed too
occupied for excursions into the paths of science and philosophy.
But the spaciousness and orderly furnishing of his mind provided
that no pursuit of knowledge should be a digression for him. So
we find him, naturally, leaving his desk on several days of that
summer and autumn and posting off to watch the trials of a new
invention; nothing less indeed than a ship to ride the air. He
found time also to describe the new invention in letters to his
friends in different parts of the world.
On the 21st of November Franklin set out for the gardens of the
King's hunting lodge in the Bois de Boulogne, on the outskirts of
Paris, with a quickened interest, a thrill of excitement, which
made him yearn to be young again with another long life to live
that he might see what should be after him on the earth.
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