IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2021 - 85

history

Adam Allerhand

charles f. brush
a pioneer of electric lights

THE AUTHOR OF AN ARTICLE OR
a book about a single person is in danger of focusing heavily on that person's accomplishments and neglecting
the broader picture so that the result
is a hagiography. I will try not to fall
into that trap. I start out by quoting,
in a condensed version, from Harold
C. Passer's superbly researched The
Electrical Manufacturers: 1875-1900,
published in 1953:
The beginning of the arc-lighting industry can be divided into
three stages. In the first stage,
many inventors tried to develop
a practical system, without succeeding. In the second stage,
one of the many engineer-entrepreneurs carried out the act
of innovation that founded the
arc-lighting-equipment industry. That pioneer innovator was
Charles Brush. He combined in
one person the commercial ability to envision where arc lighting
could be used successfully and
the technical ability to invent an
arc-lighting system that fitted his
commercial vision. Most cities
of any size were buying light for
their streets from gas companies,
a potential market for arc lamps.
With this commercial vision before him, Brush solved the technical problems. The result was
the spectacular success of the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2020.3032804
Date of current version: 6 January 2021

january/february 2021

This issue's " History " column explores Charles F. Brush's contributions to dynamos, arc lighting, and central stations. It addresses Brush's competition at the
time and describes some of his activities after Thomson-Houston Electric took
control of Brush Electric in 1889. It is a welcome treatment of an electric business pioneer who has not had much published about his life and work.
We welcome back Adam Allerhand for his third appearance on our pages.
He is professor emeritus of chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and
listed among the 1,000 most-cited scientists in the 1965-1978 period. He is a
fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1987;
the author of roughly 100 research papers, mostly in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy; and the author of An Illustrated History of Electric Lighting (2016).
John Paserba,
Associate Editor, " History "

Brush Electric Company. In the
third stage, engineer-entrepreneurs entered arc lighting after
Brush had shown that it could be
commercially successful. One of
these entrepreneurs was Elihu
Thomson. The Thomson-Houston system was probably the most
reliable and lowest in operating
cost when it was introduced.
After its introduction, in 1880, incandescent electric lighting gradually
began to displace gas lighting in small
indoor environments, but it failed to
make inroads into arc lighting for
streets and large indoor areas before
high-intensity light bulbs were developed. In 1887, fully one-half of the generating capacity of the central stations
in the United States came from arc
light dynamos. In 1902, only 386,000
1540-7977/21©2021IEEE

arc lamps were sold in the United
States, compared to approximately 18
million incandescent bulbs. But that
comparison does not present the whole
picture from the standpoint of revenue,
because roughly 170 million arc carbons were consumed that year, with a
total price tag of some US$5 million,
with each carbon burning for only
about 8 h, compared to hundreds of
hours per incandescent bulb. My estimate of the revenue from the sale of 18
million incandescent bulbs in 1902 is
also approximately US$5 million. Both
figures are based on prices in a 1904
General Electric catalog.

Background
Alessandro Volta's invention of his
electrolytic voltaic pile, announced
in a letter read at the Royal Society
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