Library - Rogers and Electricity
In 1882, electricity was in its infancy.
Only three homes in America had any form of electric lights – the mansions of Henry Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan in New York City, and that of John Doane in Chicago. Each had just installed in their homes what were essentially toy systems: Small generators powered by little steam engines. Importantly, the lighting, confined to just one or two rooms of their residences, was used solely as entertainment, a novelty to be shown to friends. In fact, as soon as their guests would leave, the hosts would turn off the electric lights and go back to using gas light, kerosene lamps, and candles.
Henry Rogers was thinking orders of magnitude differently. In June of 1882, he was the first major customer of the Western Edison Electric Light Company in Chicago. Without ever seeing an electric light in operation, Rogers purchased the equipment needed to light - not just his home - but all of Appleton Wisconsin, a city of 8000 people. He bought not one but two huge dynamos and all of the wiring, switches, and other equipment needed to generate and distribute electricity across the city.
Further, he also was not going to use steam engines to run his generators. He had a better idea. Henry was already familiar with the power of the Fox River. He was a paper baron and was using waterpower to drive the waterwheels which supplied the mechanical energy to operate his papermaking equipment in all of his paper mills. So Henry made the simple but profound decision to do the same with his first dynamo. He attached it to the waterwheel that drove his pulping operations in the mill just below the house: While he was making paper, he was also making electricity.
With this act, Henry Rogers invented the idea of commercial scale hydroelectricity by lighting his home, his Appleton Paper and Pulp mill, where the dynamo was located, and the adjacent mill owned by Kimberly and Clark. This makes Hearthstone the “Birthplace of Green Energy” anywhere in the world.