The sun sets

Magic Lights

The sun set. The evening closed in on Melbourne, and the lights of the city buildings began to dominate the skyline. It was 1859 and Charles Jardine Don, champion of the eight hour day cause, and the first Labour representative in an Australian parliament got up on the stump, in Williamstown to do what he did best; to speak in public and champion the labour cause:

Look at yonder city, illuminated by its magic lamps. Its windows glittering with wealth, a city with palaces worthy of kings and temples worthy of gods, which labour has placed there in the short space of a quarter of a century… and by whom has the change been affected? By the rich, the wealthy, the kid gloved, fine handed gentry? No; by the horny-handed sons of toil… would you have him toil until his heart breaks under the burning sone of the colony?[1]

Charles Don was speaking, of course, of oil and gas lamps. Shortly after, in 1867, to be exact, the magic lamps shone like never before, and it was that new stuff called electricity that was causing it. Flashing arc lamps powered by a series of chemical batteries were draped over the Post Office, the Telegraph Office and Parliament House to celebrate the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit.[2] An Age newspaper writer put his thoughts into print: ‘We see little value in electricity yet… though it may have some future potential.[3]

Ten years on and the Apollo Stearine Candle Co. installed a Gramme dynamo machine to supply electricity to a single arc lamp lighting some of its factory for night work. By appointment, the management would conduct a tour of the fascinating new technology, believed to be the only example in Australia. [4] Two more years saw Ned Kelly’s gang strike at Jerilderie and the Melbourne Cricket Ground illuminated by battery and arc lamps for night Australian Rules football.[5]

These arc lamps, though, were not efficient. When batteries supply the electricity they’re large and expensive and last only a few hours, and the arc lamps they supply give off intense light rays that hurt the eye at some points and cast dense shadows elsewhere: the technology was still little more than a novelty.

However, the English physicist Joseph Swan had invented an incandescent lamp, a filament in a glass bulb. The American inventor Thomas Edison came up with his version of the same idea and, in competition, they developed a design of lamp that eliminated all the failings of the arc lamp. Not to be slow on the uptake, Melbourne exhibited these flash new lamps for the first time at the Athenaeum Hall in 1882. They were so impressive that the Opera House Co. ordered 120 of them to light up the auditorium of the Opera House.[6]

Suddenly the potential the Age writer so astutely wrote of was realised. Electricity was being generated and sold in a way that made it cost effective and efficient. There was merit in electricity; but its lethal potential was yet to be experienced.

Electric supply companies popped up like mushrooms, cashing in on the chance to make a bob with this new and exciting technology. Poles were erected along city streets with transformer boxes and wires hanging from them. Not only were jobs being created, but also this new technology was demanding new labour skills: a new trade was being born. The bigger names among the electric supply companies were the Australian Electric Light Co, formed in 1979, followed by the Union Electric Co. in 1881’and the A.U. Alcock Electric Light and Motive Power Co. Ltd in 1886.[7]

Then it happened. An unsuspecting man got an electric shock from a fallen wire in Lonsdale Street. 2000 volts up his leg and he was dead. People were suddenly eyeing the wires, poles and little boxes with a newfound caution. They warned their children not to lean against the poles or they too may meet with some fearful injury from the unknown bogey. What confused people were the birds that perched on the wires and yet did not instantly drop dead. People shook their heads in wonder, and said they could not understand it at all.

So, what must they do when a wire fell from the pole? The advice given by The Australasian Journal was not to touch it unless it was lying in a dangerous position. That being the case then they should push it into a gutter with a walking stick or glass bottle, they being non-conductors… And if a dog could be trained to move the wire of his own free will then well and good, but it would take a lot of training as he would not be too sure once he had experienced the sensation following putting his nose on the naked wire.[8] In reality, one the mutt got a jolt of 2000 volts through him it truly would have been a case of the tail wagging the dog.

Then just as this electricity began to show its worth, the decade of the 1890s brought the onset of a depression that spread over the new industry like a fire blanket. Many of the electrical supply companies folded or were seriously weakened.

The Melbourne City Council consolidated, however, and constructed a new power house in Spencer Street and by March 1894 twenty General Electric dynamos supplied 3000 volts d.c. to a network of lighting with some sixty miles of street cables criss-crossing the city. Another of those astute writers penned his thoughts; ‘Gas, so far as public work is concerned, has had its day.’[9]

Electricity was now so technical it needed those who worked with it to be educated in its theory and trained in the skills of working safely with an energy source that has the power to kill, and does kill when treated with ignorance. In a short time the supply and use of electricity had gone from two wires, a battery and a lamp to a sophisticated grid of electrical power generation and supply, and there were 175 electrical men working within this new industry.

Some young men saw a future in electricity, and were keen to embrace its technology. One such young lad approached the Melbourne City Council hoping to further his future electrically. He wrote;

Dear Sir,

Having completed my course in Electrical Engineering at the Ballarat School of mines and being desirous of obtaining employment in the City of Melbourne Electrical Lighting Station I beg to apply for the position of electrician…

Isidore G. Wittkowski.[10]

He got the job and four years later, as Melbourne switched over to the new century, there were more than 2000 factories in Melbourne and 133 of them using electricity. The number of electrical light works, however, had been cut back, by amalgamation, from ten to seven and the recognised electrical workers were being reduced to 147.[11]

There was a feeling of vulnerability, particularly by those employed by the Melbourne City Council. They’d established themselves as electrical tradesmen, and they valued their trade, their way of earning a living. The industrial climate was demanding that they organise themselves.