This primitive central station in Pearl Street was a converted warehouse of brick construction, four stories high, and it was separated in two parts by a fire wall. One of these parts was used for the storing of underground supplies, while the other was occupied by the generating machinery, for the support of which a special foundation of steel and concrete was provided. The necessary steam boilers were accommodated in the basement, while the second floor was occupied by six generators of 125 horse-power each, nicknamed “Jumbos.” Simple as sounds this original Edison equipment, it nevertheless represented years of research and experimenting on the part of Edison and those associated with him. Edison and the Electric Light. In 1878 Thomas A. Edison, at his experimental laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he had already invented the carbon telephone transmitter and many other things, undertook the task of devising a general system for the generation, distribution and utilization of electricity for lighting and power purposes. The first marked accomplishment in operative detail was a lamp with a platinum wire burner of high resistance, protected by a high vacuum in an all-glass globe, and with the leading-in wires sealed into the glass by fusion. Such a lamp necessarily had a small illuminating power compared with that of the arc light, which was the only electric light then in commercial use. [Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._ “THE GREAT WHITE WAY” Times Square, New York, at night, with Broadway on the left, a curving ribbon of white light. Here every night in winter thousands upon thousands of people throng to theaters and cafés.] The next step in the development of Mr. Edison’s electric-lighting system was taken on October 21, 1879, when he discovered that if a carbonized cotton thread were substituted as a burner for the platinum wire of his earlier lamp, the slender and apparently frail carbon was mechanically strong, and also durable under the action of the electric current. The announcement of the invention of the carbon filament lamp was first made to the public in December, 1879. [Illustration: STEAM DYNAMO IN EDISON’S OLD STATION]