Kitchen - Edison and Electricity and the History of Appleton and America
Appleton was transformed because of Henry Rogers and electricity.
Thoughout the eighteen eighties and eighteen ninties, Appleton had more buildings with electricity than any other city in the world... more than New York, Chicago, or London. Henry had electrified all the middle class homes and the mills along the river. Appleton had the first hotel, the Waverly, with electric lights in every room. It even had the first college building anywhere in the world with electricity - Ormsby Hall, on Lawrence campus, which still stands.
This new utility attracted people to the city who wanted to use this revolutionary source of power to invent new labor saving devices. In a very real sense, Appleton and the "Paper Valley" became a center of invention, not unlike the "Silicon Valley" is today.
Appleton became known as the birthplace of the "Second Industrial Revolution." Instead of water power and steam power, which drove the first industrial revolution, now it was electricity that was driving the change.