Edison Electric Light Station, Holborn Viaduct, London

Holborn Viaduct power station, named the Edison Electric Light Station, was the world's first coal-fired

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many p ...

generating electricity for public use. It was built at number 57

Holborn Viaduct Holborn Viaduct is a road bridge in London and the name of the street which crosses it (which forms part of the A40 route). It links Holborn, via Holborn Circus, with Newgate Street, in the City of London financial district, passing over ...

in central

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, by

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...

Edison Electric Light Company General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energy ...

. The plant began running on 12 January 1882 , three years after the invention of the carbon-filament

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxida ...

. It burnt coal to drive a

steam turbine A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam turbin ...

which drove a , generator which produced

direct current Direct current (DC) is one-directional flow of electric charge. An electrochemical cell is a prime example of DC power. Direct current may flow through a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through semiconductors, insulators, or even ...

(DC) at 110 volts. It initially lit 968 16-

candle A candle is an ignitable wick embedded in wax, or another flammable solid substance such as tallow, that provides light, and in some cases, a fragrance. A candle can also provide heat or a method of keeping time. A person who makes candles i ...

incandescent lamps to provide

street lighting A street light, light pole, lamp pole, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road or path. Similar lights may be found on a railway platform. When urban electric power distribution ...

from

Holborn Circus Holborn Circus is a five-way junction at the western extreme of the City of London, specifically between Holborn (St Andrew) and its Hatton Garden (St Alban) part. Its main, east–west, route is the inchoate A40 road. It was designed by the en ...

to St. Martin's Le Grand, which was later expanded to 3,000 lamps. The power station also provided electricity for private residences, which may have included nearby

Ely Place Ely Place is a gated road of multi-storey terraces at the southern tip of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. It hosts a 1773-rebuilt public house, Ye Olde Mitre, of Tudor origin and is adjacent to Hatton Garden. It is privatel ...

. Having run at a significant loss the station closed in September 1886, and the lamps were converted back to gas. Edison opened a second coal-fired power station in September 1882 in the United States, at

Pearl Street Station Pearl Street Station was the first commercial central power plant in the United States. It was located at 255–257 Pearl Street in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City, just south of Fulton Street on a site measuring . The station ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Background

In 1878, the

City of London Corporation The City of London Corporation, officially and legally the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, is the municipal governing body of the City of London, the historic centre of London and the location of much of the United King ...

had installed 16 electric

arc lamps An arc lamp or arc light is a lamp that produces light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc). The carbon arc light, which consists of an arc between carbon electrodes in air, invented by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the 1800s, ...

over the viaduct, but the experiment was discontinued within six months, and the bridge returned to

gas lighting Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from combustion of a gaseous fuel, such as hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, coal gas (town gas) or natural gas. The light is produced either directl ...

. The

Victoria Embankment Victoria Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and river-walk along the north bank of the River Thames in London. It runs from the Palace of Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London, and acts as a major thoroughfare ...

was lit with electric lamps at around the same time, using the

Yablochkov candle A Yablochkov candle (sometimes electric candle) is a type of electric carbon arc lamp, invented in 1876 by the Russian electrical engineer Pavel Yablochkov. Design A Yablochkov candle consists of a sandwich of two electrodes, which are long carb ...

s demonstrated at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878. The Holborn Viaduct project was preceded by two months by an electricity supply from a

water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

Godalming Godalming is a market town and civil parish in southwest Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, at the confluence of the Rivers Wey and Ock. The civil parish covers and includes the settleme ...

, Surrey – the world's first public electricity supply. This hydroelectric project was on a much smaller scale, however, with a generator running 4 arc lamps and 27 incandescent lamps.

Location and technical specification

Lacking the legal precedent to lay underground cables (digging the street was the sole prerogative of the gas companies), Edison's associate

Edward Hibberd Johnson Edward Hibberd Johnson (January 4, 1846 – September 9, 1917) was an inventor and business associate of American inventor Thomas Alva Edison. He was involved in many of Edison's projects, and was a partner in an early organization which evolved ...

discovered culverts existed on the Holborn Viaduct which would allow for electrical cables to be laid. The American-built 'Jumbo' generator (named after

P.T. Barnum Phineas Taylor Barnum (; July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871–2017) with James Anthony Bailey. He was ...

circus elephant A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclis ...

) was driven by a Porter-Allen steam engine built by

Babcock & Wilcox Babcock & Wilcox is an American renewable, environmental and thermal energy technologies and service provider that is active and has operations in many international markets across the globe with its headquarters in Akron, Ohio, USA. Historicall ...

Closure

The station was on Crown property and so could not be extended, and was running at a significant annual loss. It closed in September 1886 and the lamps were converted back to gas. The building in which it was housed was destroyed by bombing during

the Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

, and the large building called 60 Holborn Viaduct has since subsumed the site.

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