THIS MONTH IN ENGINEERING | September 4, 1882, The Switch That Changed the World

On a late summer afternoon in 1882, Thomas Edison flipped a switch at J.P. Morgan’s Wall Street office and a single light bulb flickered to life.

It was powered by the world’s first central power station, the Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan. For the first time, a city district was illuminated by electricity generated and distributed from one location.

The station's six steam-driven "Jumbo" dynamos supplied 110 volts of direct current to 59 customers, lighting 400 lamps across a half-square-mile of New York’s financial district. By the end of the year, more than 500 buildings were connected. The Pearl Street experiment didn’t just prove electric light could work, it transformed how power itself was conceived and delivered.

The success of Edison’s system marked the birth of centralised power generation, a model that would shape every electrical network to follow.

It also created an entirely new profession: the electrical engineer. What began as an experiment to replace gaslight became the foundation for the modern city.

Today, that same principle of reliable, connected power underpins every projec, from low-voltage distribution and standby generation to smart metering, renewable integration, and energy monitoring.

At Goldfish & Bay, our electrical engineers continue that legacy, designing systems that deliver safe, efficient, and intelligent power for the built environment.

While Edison illuminated Wall Street in 1882, Australian engineers were not far behind, with Melbourne’s Eastern Market and parts of Sydney experimenting with electric arc lighting the very same year, marking the dawn of electrification here too. And more than a century later, Edison’s once-contested direct current has found new life in high-voltage DC systems that transmit renewable power across continents, and across Australia from the Basslink cable to the planned Marinus Link connecting Tasmania and Victoria.

Everything we design today stands on the shoulders of these moments.

Understanding where engineering came from helps us design smarter, safer, and more sustainable systems today. #ThisMonthInEngineering #ElectricalEngineering #BuildingServices #PowerGeneration #EnergyInfrastructure #EngineeringHistory #SustainableDesign #SmartBuildings #AustralianEngineering #GoldfishAndBay