IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023 - 20

Book Review
in the United States. In 1917, the company advertised
itself with an Adonis-like figure holding a transmission
tower. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner
presented a paper in 1893 to the American Historical
Society postulating that the American frontier had at
last closed, with ramifications for the American psyche.
Turner maintained that Americans would find
new frontiers, and by the 1920s, an American electric
power company, Samuel Insull's Middle West
Utilities picked up on this trope proclaiming that the
" equalitarian " process of electrification was the next
frontier.
Receptivity to power lines and poles in
rural areas
The 1930's was a decade of receptivity to power
lines and poles in rural areas, thanks to the Rural
Electrification Act of 1936. This part of Roosevelt's
New Deal provided small towns and groups of farmers
with the means to finance electrification. The
effects were felt as late as the 1950s, by which time
the act had helped bring electricity to 79% of American
farms. In 1933, only 11% of farms had electrical
service. Imagine walking into a barn at night and
having to carry a lantern in one hand so that one can
tend to the livestock versus just flipping a switch to
turn on an overhead bulb. For the most part, farmers
were receptive to having wires and poles spread
over their land. Between 1936 and 1941, landowners
in the country granted over 1 million separate
easements for electricity. In 1941, folk singer Woody
Guthrie wrote and performed a song celebrating the
Columbia River hydropower which served to bring
electricity to rural areas.
The 1960s was a period in which pressure to
expand power grids in California was often countered
by the public's demand that wires be buried-a
costly undertaking. The power industry in
California countered with an effort to design and
construct attractive towers and pylons. A major figure
in designing these supports in California was the
noted American industrial designer, Henry Dreyfuss.
His exposure to the problem of making them attractive
has its roots in 1931 when Bell Telephone Laboratories
approached the 27-year-old Dreyfuss with
the problem of making telephone poles more sightly.
His reputation grew with his design of such common
household products as telephones, vacuum cleaners,
and thermostats. Some 30 years later, he was
engaged by Southern California Edison to design
20
attractive pylons for its electric power distribution.
By then, much public opinion was mobilized against
the spread of towers and lines. Between 1964 and
1968, Dreyfuss made at least three types of designer
power lines. One, called the " Starburst " can still be
seen from Hollywood Boulevard. In 1969, Dreyfuss
and the electrical executive Robert Coe received the
national " Design in Steel " award for their " futuristic "
and " ultra-modern " structures. Based on his work,
Dreyfuss authored an entire book, Esthetic Designs
for Transmission Structures. He maintained that
these monuments of engineering could and should
have the same visual beauty as some of the great
20th-century bridges.
After World War II, the public's warm feelings
toward rural transmission lines cooled. Much of the
book deals with how this played out in California.
Interestingly, Frank Lloyd Wright complained that
the view from his house would be spoiled by pylons
and wires and it is thought that he complained to
no avail to President Truman. Wuebben tells us that
even today the view from Wright's architectural
gem is compromised and that " lattice steel towers
mar the vista from this desert jewel of American
architecture. "
Much of the latter quarter of Power over People
deals with social protest and political uprisings
directed toward preventing, typically, the appearance
and encroachments of high-voltage lines and
their supports. Unlike in the 1930s, the American
people mostly had electric power, and the growth of
high-voltage distribution systems in no way seemed
to affect their ability to have electricity. In some
cases, protestors engaged not only in peaceful protest
but in guerilla warfare. Minnesota was the site of
some of this. The CU Project was a 430-mile, 400-kV
line that went from central North Dakota to Minneapolis
and St. Paul. From 1976 to 1978, 120 power line
protesters of the project were arrested in Minnesota
and were charged with trespassing and assault.
Battle between Southern California
Edison and Chino Hills
A major and concluding subject of the book is the
battle between Southern California Edison and the
people of Chino Hills. In 2009, the California Public
Utilities Commission allowed California Edison's
plan to construct a 500,000-V elevated transmission
line right down the middle of a suburban neighborhood,
Chino Hills, for 3.5 miles. A thousand homes
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023

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