The Electric City: Energy and the Growth of the Chicago Area, 1880-1930 Review

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The Electric City: Energy and the Growth of the Chicago Area, 1880-1930 ReviewThis book was a great reading experience for me. Part of my job is to teach electric utility system operators. I always try to give them some background in the history of the business and how their job evolved through the years. Professor Platt used Commonwealth Edison and Chicago for his model of how electricity changed life in America. Chicago was on the cutting edge more so than other cities because of the Great Fire of 1871. The downtown area had to be totally rebuilt so this offered an open-field opportunity to try the new electric technology.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in American urban development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though the book focuses on Chicago, the same pattern would hold true for other large American cities. Professor Platt has done an outstanding job of research. This is a treasure trove of charts, graphs and other data that show how the industry grew from several independent lighting companies competing against each other in the 1880s, into the beginning of an interconnected super-power system by the 1920s.
The author provides a lot of material on Samuel Insull, the unsung hero of the business. Insull was the Henry Ford of electric power mass-production. He had the vision and financial genius to set up the model for the industry that existed until the 1990s when deregulation came around. It is largely thanks to Insull that we have the system we take for granted today. Insull was involved in scandal late in life. He made powerful political enemies by donating huge sums of money to favorable candidates, in one case over $125,000 to a U.S. Senator-elect from Illinois. This would-be senator was denied his seat in the Senate when it was revealed how Insull had helped him get elected. Insull was eventually indicted for mail fraud for which he was acquitted, but not before it ruined him financially. One cannot study the history of the electric utility business without studying Insull.

The book is not a dry read by any means. The writing is brisk and moves at a good pace. Because of my unique interest in ComEd history, I was constantly pausing to make notes in the margins or to just reflect on how certain installations still existing today got their start. I'm sure I'll be referring to this book many times to research questions about the history of the business.The Electric City: Energy and the Growth of the Chicago Area, 1880-1930 Overview

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