The world's first hydroelectric central station switched on
On this day · 30 September 1882
On a Wisconsin riverbank, a water wheel and an Edison dynamo lit a paper mill and a home—just weeks after Pearl Street.
On September 30, 1882, the Vulcan Street Plant on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, began generating power, becoming the first central-station plant in the world to make electricity by pairing a hydropower site with one of Thomas Edison’s dynamos.
The scheme came from paper manufacturer H. J. Rogers, who had read about Edison’s lighting system. A water wheel turning under a ten-foot fall of water spun an Edison “K”-type generator producing about 12.5 kilowatts—enough to light two paper mills and Rogers’s own house at 110 volts.
The first central-station plant in the world to generate electricity by combining hydro-power with one of Edison’s new generators.
It opened just 26 days after Edison’s coal-fired Pearl Street station in New York, but it drew its energy from moving water rather than burning fuel. The original building burned down in 1891; a replica now stands in Appleton, marking the modest birthplace of an industry that today supplies a sixth of the world’s electricity.
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