THE WORLD ATLAS

Technology · 1882

Electricity for cities: Edison's Pearl Street station

Pearl Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City (USA)

On 4 September 1882 Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station in Lower Manhattan began generating electricity from coal-fired steam engines and dynamos, sending direct current through the world's first underground urban network to light about 400 of his new incandescent lamps for some 80 customers; by 1884 it served 508 customers with 10,164 lamps. London's Holborn Viaduct station had opened the same year, and in the 1880s and 1890s engineers such as George Westinghouse switched to alternating current, which could be sent over long distances, making large power grids possible.

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Why it mattered

Central power stations turned electricity from a laboratory curiosity into a public utility that could light streets and homes and drive factory motors, which were several times more efficient than small steam engines. Electric power spread to most of humanity in the 20th century: 49 percent of the world's people had electricity in 1970 and 76 percent in 1990, though about 666 million people, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, still lacked it in 2023.

Elsewhere

The small town of Godalming in Surrey, England, ran what is believed to be the first public power supply in the autumn of 1881, lighting its streets with hydroelectricity, but it was not a commercial success. In the United States 95 percent of generating capacity was alternating current by 1917.

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