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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1973-02-08, Page 664H18:' Hulk N EXPOSITO eco EAFORTH.'.,T„ FEB. 8, 1979 . ii 0 la E mireStve ec 1 • • for Matchless Living... GO ELECTRIC 4 How much home are you missing through outdated wiring? Let us help you get the most out of electricity. Make certain you are taking advantage of a properly planned electrical service that will avoid overloading — that is adequate to handle today's additional appliances. Call Us Now For a Free Estimate NATIONAL ELECTRICAL WEEK February 12th to 17th FRANK KLING LTD. Phone 527-1320 Seaforth No matter what the weather is like outdoors you can control the climate indoors with o INSTALL ADEQUATE CIRCUITS Adequate circuits in your home will make electrical liv'rng more comfortable, safer and more satisfying: For peak efficiency, phone for an electrical wiring check up now! —Ask us too how little it costs to up grade your electrical service. February 12th to 17th Sills Hardware HEATING — PLUMBING ELECTRICAL WORK Phone 527-1620 — Seaforth heating 'and cooling Rain or Shine dial your comfort room by' room ELECTRIC HEATING AND COOLING installed by experts Gary Gingerich, Don Twyford and Don Horne are experts In the field and ready to discuss with you all your electrical and heating problems. GINGERICH'S SALES & SERVICE SEAFORTH 527-0290 -- ZURICH 236-4351 NATIONAL ELECTRICAL WEEK Feb. 12-1/ --$50 BONUS Your PUC help wits the cost and pay $50 towards the cost of upgrading any 30 amp. DOMESTIC OR COMMERCIAL SERVICE Does Your Home Have Any of These ELECTRICAL HAZARDS? FUSES Fusess.are the safety valves in' your electrical wiring. Fuses greater than-15 amperes must not be used in ordinary lighting and receptacle circuits, as the conductors in tHeAe circuits can safely carry on- ly 15 amperes. Never replace blown fuses with pennies, washers, tin foil or oversize fuses. If 15 ampere fuses will not allow you to operate the lights and appli- ances which are now connected in a circuit, then this circuit is overloaded. FLEXIBLE CORDS Flexible cords must not be used for permanent wiring, that is, to make permanent extensions to circuits. These cords are not large enough to safely carry as much current as the permanent wiring without becoming dangerously overheated. Flexible cords create electrical fire hazards when they are: • (a) bare or badly deteriorated; (b) run under rugs; (c) nailed to baseboards, door qr win- dow frames, walls and ,ceilings; (d) run through partitions, walls and floors; (e) permanently connected to perman- ent wiring by splices or joints; (0 operating appliances - which have heating elements such as ket- tles, toasters, irons, rangettes and heaters; (g) used to provide multiple branches and, outlets from one socket or outlet. FIXTURES and APPLIANCES All 'fixtures and appliances must be approved by the Canadian Standards Association. Check for: • • " ' (a) home-Made and unapproved fix- tures and appliances; (b) loose or improperly made Wilts and connections - these may cause overheating; (c) deteriorated wiring in fixtures usually caused by heat; (d) wattage of lanips (light bulbs) too high for fixtures, causes excessive heating; (e) deteriorated fixtures, denoted by rust, bare wires, broken sockets; (f) drop cords .used to operate irons, toasters and heaters, or other ap- pliances. If you receive an electrical shock from any appliance, have it checked immediately. PERMANENT WIRING Check for: (a) bare or improperly made and tap- ed joints and connections; loose electrical connections may produce excessive heat; (b) sparking switches; receptacles (wall plugs) that heat up when in use; (d) objects hung on open wiring; (e) cables connecting water heaters, oil burners, sump pumps, dryers, and other electrical equipment, in- securely fastened, giving a poor ground; ' (f) switches, receptacles and light out- - lets in the kitchen, basement, bath- room, utility rooms and garage not .' groUnded; (g) interference on radio or televi- sion receivers; this may be caused by poor electrical connections in your wiring system. If you recognize any of these hazards in your home, ACT NOW. Call your Public utility Commission,. or a qualified electrician, Full-time electrical help depends on up-to-date wiring For Information Contact Your Local Utility or Electrical Contractor FUSE BLOWING BLOWING signifies LOW HOUSEPOWER our i FREE home-wiring SURVEY (304" I will show you how to NATIONAL ELECTRIC WEEK FEB. 12th -17th arn The Name of the Game is Electrical Living Dr. Roger Whitman, Chairman Edmund Daly, Mayor F.C.J.Sills, Commissioners Walter Scott, Manager. LIVE UTTER—ELECTRICALLY SEAFORTH PUBLIC UTILITY COMMISSION r^ Week February 12 to 17 young Tom Edison hung around the telegraph offices, which were equipped with a variety of elec- trical instruments. In 1862, he had the good luck to save the life of the baby son of the station- master at Mt. Clemens who had strayed into the path of a rolling boxcars In gratitude, the father, Mr. Mackenzie, taught him to be- come a telegrapher. Edison arrived for his first lesson with his- own-neat set of instruments which he had made in a gunsmith's shop in Detroit. Although he quickly became an excellent operator, he was appar- ently quite unsatisfactory as an employee. He could find lots of work, for many of the regular operators had been conscripted as telegraphers in the armies of the Civil War. Once he got a job, it seemed he was more interested in tinkering and trying to improve the equipment than' in sending and receiving Morse code. Tom Edison •as a result was frequently fired and wandered from town to town. In May 18641 he won a post as a dispa.tcher/telegrapher at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the 7 p.m. to '7 a.m. shift. In no time, he had invented a machine which would send a signal indicating that he was awake and alert while in reality he was taking a little cat-nap. A few run-ins with the authorities of the Grand Trunk Railway and an on-the-carpet visit to the office of the general manager in Toronto and Thomas Alva Edison decided that Canada wasn't for him after all. Be returned to the United States. Edison was invariably untidy, poorly dressed, frequently hungry and often homeless. His small earnings were spent on electrical parts and books. It Wasn't uncommon for him to sleep on the floor of a friend's room or in a quiet corner at a railroad station. In June. 1868 The Journal of the Telegraph reported that Mr. Thomas Edison of the Western Union Office, Boston, had in- vented a "mode of transmission both ways on a single wire which is simple, interesting and ingen- ious." The following year, Edison devised an apparatus which would synchronize the telegraph print- ing machines of the period, which frequently garbled the messages. He thought his invention might be worth $5,000 but when he of- fered it for sale he was asked "How would $40,000 strike you?" At least, this was Edison's story in later years, but there IS kience that the figure was actually $30,000 -- which is not surpris- ing in view of his indifference to arithmetic and finance. Edison also added that this was the first timelirhis life he had ever received a cheque and the first time, he ever went inside a bank. His commercial star now rose to keep company with the bright it star of invention and in 1871 he opened a factory in Newark, N.J. to fill .,au. order for 1,200 stock tickers for Western Union. The following year he invented an automatic telegraph which could handle 1,000 words per minute (manually the speed was about 40). In 1875, he introduced the mimeograph and in the space of four years he was granted 200 patents. Early in December 1841,Bam &Won, the landlord of the tavern in Vienna, Ontario, took down his fiVearm from the wall oft' for TRrOnt9 to join Lyon Mackenzie in his rebellion. Were it not for that impul- sive move, his son, famed in- ventor, Thomas Alva Edison, would have been born in Canada and Canadians could claim this legendary genius as their own. But Sam Edison came from a dtscrappy" family. His father, Sam Sr.. had formed a Canadian militia company to fight the Americans in the War of 1812., His grandfather, John Edison, an American of pUtch descent, had been loyal to the British side in the War of Independence and for his pains he and MS' family were trans- ported to Nova Scotia in 1783. In 1811, the Edison family, now numbering 19, were tired of the haydsbips and damp of Nova Scotia and, led by old John, started on the long trek to a 600-acre tract of land granted to them in Upper Canada On the Otter River, about two • miles from Lake Erie. During Mackenzie's agitat; ions in 1837, the Vienna tavern was a gathering place for local radicals and Sam Edison was definitely "again the govern- ment". But partway to Toronto, Edi- son learned that the rebellion was already a military failure. He quickly changed his plan, doubled back to Vienna, gathered a few belongings and, leaving his family to spend Christmas alone, walked and ran 80 miles in 2 1/2 days to cross the frozen St. Clair River, keeping ahead of Sir Bond Head's men who wanted to ,bring him to account; Sam Edison, senior, dis- missed the incident with a"Well, Sammy's long legs saved him that time!" Ten years later, SamJr., now reunited with his family, owned a lumber business in Milan, Ohio. In the early honrs of a snowy February 11, 1847, the family gained another, member, a baby boy with a very large head whom the doctor was afraid might have brain fever. The parents frankly wondered whether he was defec- tive. They named him Thomas Alva. During Tom's early years, his father and schoolteachers, Rev. and Mrs. Engles, had a very low opinion of the boy's mental abili- ties. They frequently thrashed him in an effort to get young ToM to learn. Thomas Alva Edison had little interest in second-hand know- ledge but had an insatiable curio- sity for 'finding, out things for himself. Spelling and arithmetic -- no, that was for lesser people to do,,but such experiments as filling his friend Michael Oates with Seidlitz powder (an effer- vescent laxative) to See whether he would float -- now that was something worth knowing! • When he was 11, Toni and Michael went into the market garden business. "That sum- mer," Epson later said, "we netted •all of two or three hundred dollars." It—ivas typical of what was to come; a merchant prince who kept very sloppy accounts! The following year, Tom was working full time as a newsboy on a train between Port Huron and Detroit. By the time he was 15 he was publishing his own news- paper from the baggage car of the train.' The Weekly Herald con- tained such words as "villian", oppis Mon" and 4,shure" and the grammar was iitteeping with the publication's spelling. Fascinated with mechanics, In 1876, the -cleinand for his inventlye , talents was so great that he built, equipped and staffed a factory at Menlo park, N.J. for the sole purpose ofproducing inventions. It would be interest- ing to know what the tall grey- haired man supervising the erec- tion of the building thought of the young genius who was employing him. it was no other than Sam Edison, the father who thought him stupid as a young lad and who frequently had•thrashed him in public. ' The inventor worked his staff relentlessly, but he led them -- not drove them. If the "Old Man" (he was 29) was on to something, they could expect to work night and day, he cursed and cajoled. But the staff accepted the work lo41 willingly, being in- fected by his enthusiasm. Edison's methods were labor- ious. Still shunning mathematics, he preferred to test his ideas by trial and error, and by a process of elimination. His financial system, too, was unique and haphazard. When he set up his Electric Lamp Company across the tracks from the Menlo Park invention factory, the company declared a dividend every Saturday night during a poker game. Part of Edison's salary was a weekly box of cigars. Legend has it that he invented the incandescent lamp. He didn't. At least five people had intro- duced different types before Edi- son, including a young Toronto medical student named Henry ...Woodward whose patent Edison later purchased.• But Edison's lamp, with a filament, or burner, of No. 9 Coates cotton covered with lamp black, could stay aglow for ,40 hours and that was the best that had been developed up to that time. When demonstrating his bulb, Edison would show, after awhile, that by turning a screw the light would dim and go out. He knew that if he didn't the lamp would burn out anyway! While developing the incan- descent lamp, Edison worked to reduce the fierce glare of the existing arc lights, with the hope that they could be adapted for home use. His vision included homes supplied with electricity generated from a central 'station of dynamos. He saw the Rome of the future equipped with fans, electric cookers, irons -- the dream was unending. But Brush arc lights had been on Broadway since September 1878. The bankers were"skeptical 'of Edis-on's system in spite of the New York Herald's description of his light on December 21, 1879 as being "like the mellow sunset of an Italian autumn." Edison's solution was to or- ganize large-scale demonstrat- ions and install attractive dis- plays at Menlo Park. These attracted' huge crowds and, as intended, newspapermen. He got the publicity he was looking for, and gradually the financial back- ing: On September 4, 1882 Edi- son began to illuminate parts of New York from .a generating stat- ion of Pear). Street; The system employed direct current and the wires were placed underground. The money moguls were now attracted to the utility business by Edison's success. Manufac- turers of electrical apparatus (Continued on Page 9) and set 5800 MONTHLY I a INCOME Guaranteed during Training Period for Qualified Personnel "A client at ours dealing in financial planning. services requires mature, personable individual who is interested in entering , the sales management field. This position could lead to executive management with exceptional earnings. Previous selling is helpful but not essential. For interview and personal analysis of future sales position please contact Robert P. 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