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The Daily Item from Sunbury, Pennsylvania • G3
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The Daily Item from Sunbury, Pennsylvania • G3

Publication:
The Daily Itemi
Location:
Sunbury, Pennsylvania
Issue Date:
Page:
G3
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

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54 between Danville Elysburg Hours: Sat. Noon Twin Ponds Engine Service The Daily Item Sunday, September 11, 2011 Page G3 History By Cindy Inkrote Thomas Edison installed and successfully tested his three-wire system in Sunbury, in the former City Hotel, now the Hotel Edison, on July 4, 1883. It was the first time the system had been installed and tested anywhere in the world and it happened right here! Sunbury Experiment, the three-wire overhead system, was the foundation for modern electrical service. It was a more practical and efficient lighting method than the earlier two-wire underground system which required about 60 percent more copper. system was an economical alternative to gas lighting.

Northumberland County offered an abundance of anthracite coal, an inexpensive fuel source needed to produce electricity. Edison established three illuminating corporations in the county. The first was in Shamokin, on Nov. 29, 1882, but it struggled to raise the required capital. Meanwhile, two agents for Edison, P.B.

Shaw of Williamsport, and Charles Story of New York, came to Sunbury to raise funds for a similar corporation there but they, too, struggled to find investors. Sunburians invested only $700 of the initial $25,000 required for the plant. Shaw raised the rest in Williamsport where businessmen involved in lumber and manufacturing saw opportunity in idea. The Shamokin plant began operating Sept. 19, 1883, and the Mount Carmel plant opened Jan.

22, 1884. Most of the investors in those facilities were businessmen; some were involved in the coal industry. Would people use it? Edison was only in Sunbury for several weeks but what he did here changed the world. He boarded at the City Hotel for a day or two at a time when he came to town by train to supervise the construction of the Central Station, located on the east side of North Fourth Street at Vine Street. The Central Station was a 30- 8-foot frame building powered by one Armington and Sims steam engine and two dynamos.

The preparation for the testing on July 4, 1883, had some tense moments. In all the excitement, someone forgot to oil the engine sufficiently and one of the babbit bearings burned through, requiring great effort to get the engine running for the next test. On the evening of July 4, the electricity initially failed to run along the overhead poles but after close examination, a worker resolved the difficulty by checking and repairing the feeder wires. Though Edison was successful in lighting the City Hotel, he feared his biggest problem would be to get people to use electrical lighting in their homes and businesses. Mechanical problems at the Central Station interrupted service in the early years and competition from the local gas company was fierce.

In 1885, the power plant relocated to a brick structure on South Fourth Street and Raspberry Avenue and operated there until 1891. Homes built in the early 1900s often had gas and electrical lighting systems installed to ensure a constant source of light. In 1907, the company merged with neighboring gas and electric companies to form the Northumberland County Gas and Electric Company, which became part of Pennsylvania Power and Light Company in 1914. The Northumberland County Historical Genealogical Library and Historical Research Center is located at 1150 N. Front Sunbury.

For more information call 286-4083. OnCe On A TI In nOrT Ber And COUnTy Thomas Edison changed the way of life Thomas Edison Newspaper coverage of Thomas Sunbury Experie- ment was limited. The July 6, 1883 issue of The Northumberland County Democrat ran this article: electric light was put in operation in the Central and City Hotels and at the works on the night of the Fourth. It worked satisfactorily. The lights in the hotels were 12-candle power lamps, while at the works there was one lamp of 100.

The light was very The Northumberland Public Press printed the following on July 13, 1883: turned over a new leaf on the Fourth by introducing the Edison electric light. And to make the event more interesting, the distinguished inventor, Mr. Edison, was present himself and mingled among the Thomas Edison, proud of what he accomplished here, returned to Sunbury in 1922 for the unveiling and dedication of the plaque on the front of the Hotel Edison during the Sesquicentennial. The Northumberland County Historical Society will host a Heritage Dinner at the Hotel Edison in Sunbury on Oct. 18 beginning at 6 p.m.

Louis Carlat, of the Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University, will present a program on Sunbury Experiment and how his work in the county led the way for electricity to become an efficient and widely used method of illuminating homes and businesses around the world. The dinner, featuring a variety of favorite foods, is $35 per person. Reserve seats by calling 286-4083 before Oct. 10. McCLURE Zachary Robert Klingler, son of Rob and Janell Klingler, of McClure, was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout on June 8.

His rank advancement was celebrated and he was awarded his Eagle Scout pin at an Eagle Scout Court of Honor on Aug. 20. The ceremony was witnessed by family, friends, and the Scouting community. Jan Mohapp and Kassidy Klingler were guest speakers. Sen.

John Gordner and County Commissioner Malcolm Derk presented two of numerous citations. Zachary is a member of Boy Scout Troop 408 in McClure. Zachary set a goal for himself as a first-grader when he emphatically stated, I want to be an Eagle During his speech at the ceremony he told guests, rank of Eagle Scout is not a pin, or an award, or a certificate to hang on the wall. It is a way to live my life. Thank you all for guiding, directing, and inspiring me through the years and for teaching me to live the Scout Oath and the Scout For his Eagle Scout Project, Zachary organized construction of a sitting area at Potters Field next to the Geisinger Medical Group in Lewistown.

The sitting area is dedicated to the memory of those laid to rest. The sitting area provides a quiet place for visitors to reflect while at the cemetery. He designed the plan and funded the project with donations from friends and community businesses. He appreciates the support of Rich Wagner, Dallas Klingler, Rickenbaugh Building Supply, Beavertown Block, Klingler Construction, TNC Trophies, Doug Folk, APM, Danny Manbeck, and the Klinglers. Zachary joined the Boy Scouts of America as a Tiger Cub in November 2001.

As a Boy Scout, he has successfully earned 22 merit badges. He was initiated into the Order of the Arrow in August 2007 and the Brotherhood in August 2008. He has also served as Senior Patrol Leader. A senior at Midd-West High School, Klingler is a member of East Juniata Tigers football team and plans to join the MWHS wrestling team. This year he is attending SUN Area Technical Institute to study advanced precision machining.

After graduation he plans to attend Pennsylvania College of Technology to continue his studies in advanced precision machining. Klinger acheives new rank award Zachary Klinger By John Timpane The Philadelphia Inquirer PHILADELPHIA Looking back at the arts over any 10 years is a forbidding task all the more so if the topic is the arts since But if any decade deserves such an effort, this one does. What if the undeniable horrors of drove the arts more toward reality? And yet at the same time pushed them more toward fantasy? What if we were simultaneously running away from the world and into their arms? Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock says there was a turn toward reality, in what artists created and in what audiences wanted: certainly fed a hunger among people to know About everything. Jolted awake, we saw we were part of the world, part of history, and we hungered to know both better. Poet and scholar Nathalie F.

Anderson of Swarthmore, sees it differently, as era of fantasy, of magical realism, of emphatic refusals of the reality-based speaking of poetry and literature, but also of popular culture. This was the decade, she notes, of the record-shattering books and movies and Real or imagined? Truth or dream? Terrorist or werewolf? Ten years of both. decade What if the explosion of reality TV stoked our desire, know to immerse ourselves in the real? TV, especially when it first came out, fed a new interest in regular says Spurlock, the documentary celebrity who directed Size (2004) as well as this Greatest Movie Ever said, people can be interesting, have interesting stories, just as compelling as scripted He thinks this was, in part, spurred by U.S. reality TV had been around since 1992, with Real (still around). But with (debut: May 31, 2000), a floodgate of shows was loosened, until the genre dominated the major networks and cable channels.

It was also the decade for a more straightforward kind of nonfiction the documentary film. Maybe it was that newly whetted hunger for the truth, whatever it was. Documentaries enjoyed newfound popularity, as did auteurs such as Spurlock and Michael Moore for Many documentaries, like Alex to the Dark addressed and its corollary history, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But they also took on a world of topics, as with the Oscar-winning Into or Spike the Levees Why documentaries? wanted to find honesty not driven by corporate or advertiser Spurlock says. been incredible to watch the increasing audience documentaries have been able to He hosted Current recent series Documentaries to See Before You in which 31 of the films post-dated Fantasy and fiction We swing from reality to fantasy.

If Potter and Lord of the enough, this was also the decade that brought you and Prejudice and What if too much truth made us yearn for escape? For, say, hobbits? Author Erik Larson says movie and TV fantasy often took an apocalyptic turn in the 2000s: cultural reverb might be this bizarre focus on apocalyptic alien films and TV: of Los and kind of like the science-fiction and horror films of yore that all seemed to tie in or somehow be triggered by our fear of atomic weapons Planet Giant Perhaps the reality of was too much for literary fiction. Writers often turned to itself, but results were mixed, says Kevin Grauke, associate professor of English at La Salle University. far as the novels that have grappled with Grauke says by email, few can be considered successes (with either critics or readers). still waiting for the novel to be written. Who knows if it ever will be? Many people expected Don might be that novel, but it Eyes wide open But the 2000s were a time of nonfiction that put fiction to shame.

Books such as own in the White used the tools of creative writing to tell true stories. To be sure, many books were written about terrorism, Iraq, and Afghanistan, notably Thomas E. and George At a time when many asked, did we get writers hazarded answers. Perhaps the trauma of drove writers and readers to reexamine great lives and events, to reevaluate the truth. That may be why this was a decade of revisionist biography, offering mind-changing bios of everyone from Cleopatra to Mickey Mantle to William Shakespeare (as in Stephen in the In much the same truth-at-any- price fashion, it was an era of memorable memoirs, such as Joan Year of Magical or the rock roll memoirs of Patti Smith and Keith Richards.

Some said brought on a clash of civilizations, of cultures, of religions. In the shadow of the arose, a debate over the oldest question of all, with books arguing vigorously against belief (Sam End of or for it (Karen Case for In moving among essential truths, poetry is often nonfiction. Though poetry took no single direction, Anderson acknowledges a decade of verse that tells true stories, including the work of Jake Adam Yorke, who, in Murmuration of Starlings and Persons explores the lives of Americans who worked for civil rights. And two of the best-regarded epic-length poems of the decade address events from history, with frank looks at the struggle for full rights, and the violence at the heart of this nation: David (about the 1914 Colorado mining massacre) and Russell Children of the Children Keep (about the Underground Railroad). Ground Zero everywhere Sculpture and painting, as always, went in many directions.

Sculptor Steven Siegel whose work has explored geology, biology, and environmental issues says, art found a new subject and grabbed it, but art in general remains so pluralistic it is hard to see any shift in direction 10 years Much painting and sculpture paralleled the escapism of books, films, and TV. But the call of the real was strong. Many works gestured toward (as with Ellsworth Ground Zero collage) or offered memorials to the victims. Some works caused controversy; Eric sculpture depicting a woman in free-fall, was withdrawn from display more than once, including at Rockefeller Center. Some artists pushed the reality basis as far as they could, making artworks from ground zero debris itself.

Controversy often greeted them when they were shown, as with Noah Savett and John Van By scheduled to be installed outside the City Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., but now homeless. City council says just too big, but some ask: Is it just too real? In New York, Makoto Fujimura and other members of the International Arts Movement set up galleries immediately after the attacks. Fujimura sees art as always reality- based, in what it depicts and what it does. For him, after art became a powerful way to repudiate the evil of that day and evil and suffering throughout the world. I consider the effect of on my life and my Fujimura says, must say that almost all the works and efforts had been to articulate a type of lament toward culture, not just of the ground zero I have lived in, but of the expanding conditions in the We turned toward the real.

Then turned away. Sometimes one, then the other. So often, the last 10 years faced us with truths we turn from; so much truth made us wish we could. Both turns, toward and away, after all, are realitybased: We faced the truth to know it, turned away because we knew. All along, the arts stood by to transform and witness, in the service of memory, protest and healing.

Fujimura sees those functions as the enduring gifts of art: legacy of he has written, not have to end in death and wars, but in the sacred process of a life of creativity being passed on from generation to John Timpane: jtphillynews.com More reality, but also more fantasy IN THE arTS.

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