IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2019 - 82

history

Adam Allerhand

early ac power
the first long-distance lines

IN 1883, A 2,000-V, SINGLE-PHASE,
133 1/3-Hz power distribution system,
designed and built by French inventor
Lucien Gaulard and his British backer
John Dixon Gibbs for the Metropolitan
Railway of London, stretched for 15 mi
and provided electric power for arc and
incandescent lights at five railway stations. In 1884, a single-phase, 3,000-V,
133 1/3-Hz Gaulard-Gibbs power distribution system in Italy (Figure 1) extended about 25 mi from Turin (elevation 240 m, population 250,000 in 1881)
to Lanzo Torinese (elevation 530 m,
population 2,700 in 1881). It was the first
multiple-user ac power-distribution system in the world. Having a small town
at the foothills of the Italian Alps as the
destination demonstrated the practicality of bringing electric power to remote,
sparsely populated locations by using
high-voltage ac power transmission. This
would not have been possible profitably
with Thomas Edison's low-voltage dc
power transmission.

Background
Before the invention of commercially
viable incandescent electric light bulbs
and electric motors, the only significant
uses of electric power were commercial
electroplating (beginning in the 1840s)
and arc lighting (beginning in the 1850s).
There were not enough electrometallurgy businesses and arc lights to justify the
extensive development and deployment
of central station power plants. Even so,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2019.2921059
Date of publication: 19 August 2019

ieee power & energy magazine

In this issue's "History" column, we explore early power transmission and the
first and second long-distance ac power transmission lines by Lucien Gaulard and
John Dixon Gibbs. We welcome Adam Allerhand for the first time to these "History" pages of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine. He is professor emeritus of chemistry at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of approximately 100
research articles, most of them in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. He is also the author of An Illustrated History of Electric Lighting (2016).
John Paserba
Associate Editor, "History"

the first central station in the world, built
by the Brush Electric Co. of Cleveland,
Ohio, and owned by the California Electric Light Co. of San Francisco, began
offering dc-powered arc-light service to
subscribers in 1879. By 1886, the Brush
Electric Co. had installed dc central stations for arc lights in several cities in
the United States. Incandescent electric
lighting was the driving force for the extensive development and construction of
central stations that took place near the
end of the 19th century (see Table 1).
On 31 December 1879, Edison publicly demonstrated the first practical in-

candescent electric lights and the first dc
power transmission system for incandescent electric lighting. Edison's laboratory and other indoor and outdoor areas
in Menlo Park, New Jersey, were illuminated by a total of 53 lights (Figure 2).
At the start of 1881, there were approximately 500 Edison lights in operation in
Menlo Park, over an area of 1 mi by 0.5 mi
surrounding Edison's lab and works and
using nearly 8 mi of wire. In 1880, Edison was already planning a commercial
version of an electric-power distribution
system. On 9 August 1880, he filed a
patent application, "System of Electric

figure 1. The 1884 Gaulard-Gibbs transmission line originated in Turin, went
through Venaria Reale and Ciriè, and ended in Lanzo Torinese. (Source: Google
Earth. Annotated by the author.)
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