New York State History

Meanwhile another line of evolving engineering skill was making its con­tribution to electric progress. The great industrial surge of the nineteenth century was made possible by the steam engine, and it was inevitable that sooner or later steam should be made to lend its strength to the production of electricity. As early as 1881, William M. Whitney had installed a steam-powered dynamo in his Albany store basement to supply current for three arc lights, and on the basis of this slender experiment the Albany Electric Illuminating Company was formed later that year.

 It was not until Thomas A. Edison's operation of a central station in New York City that the large-scale production of electricity by steam power was proved feasible. When all of the available electric production from the hydro plants be­came insufficient to supply the ever mounting industrial and other demands, a proven ally of water power was at hand. Almost within sound of Niagara a giant steam-electric generating plant was started in 1916, and by 1917 had generating capacity of 60,000 kilowatts. Today the Charles R. Huntley Station, on the outskirts of Buffalo, has been expanded into the largest power producer in the Niagara Mohawk System and one of the largest in the world.