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Re--Rochester History. Several times in the past, I inquired as to if there were a history thing in Rochester, and finally, I read in the paper that there is at long last one being formed. I was born and raised in Rochester, left there about 40 years ago, but still have a platonic interest in the old town. This letter will be about "Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger". I have done a lot of traveling in my eighty some years, and in many little towns I have seen statues, and memorials to native sons, who were not one two three in importance with the above named electrical engineer. I remember Mr. Shallenberger quite well, played with his children. My father was his attorney, and as such, often guided George Westinghouse to my father's office. If you can get the book my father wrote in 1899, for the Rochester Semi Centennial, you can find a lot about Mr. "S". I have a very good picture of the wonderful stone mansion that he built on West Madison St., and would lend it to your committee, but some one will have to leave his right arm as security. Once I possessed one of Mr. Shallenberger's first Watt meters, and foolishly lent it to the electrical union, where some patriotic member stole it.
Mr. Shallenberger was graduated from Annapolis and spent some time in the navy. I think it was in Marseilles, France that he talked with an old man, who foresaw the future of alternating current, and he spent the next two years figuring out all kinds of formulae, for the construction of various transformers. He did not invent the transformer, it was invented by one William Stanley in 1885, but it was only a laboratory play thing. Shallenberger made the first Watt hour meter, and it has now been improved since he made the first one. He took his ideas to Edison, but Mr. E. would have nothing to do with electricity unless it was direct current.
General Electric threw him out.
He got nowhere with the Western Electric, nor any other of the then electrical manufacturers. So George Westinghouse was making electric railroad switching equipment, so he went to see George. He put his drawings on the table, and talked for a half hour, then Mr. Westinghouse said, Son, I don't know what you are talking about, but I'll give you (Hypothetical) say five hundred a month salary and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to work with. That was the beginning of the Westinghouse Electric Co. He made a city lighting system with all lamps in multiple, and if one burned out, the extra load that put on all the rest was compensated by a floating transformer. He made the first enclosed arc light, which would not burn out carbons over night. Then he worked on generation. It was necessary to have a power house every few blocks, as it was not feasable to make a generator too large, and they tried to hitch several generators on the same shaft, but if one was a thousandth of a revolution out of step with another, they would burn each other up. Shallenberger came up with a circuit that controlled one generator from another, even though one was in Pittsburgh, and the other was in Rochester, and his invention of this synchronization, really put electricity all over.
In the twenties, Westinghouse developed the welding rod, with a built-in flux. I was with Duquesne Light at the time. Now there has always been some kind of an association between the Westinghouse Co. and Duquesne Light, and all the Light Co. engineers were invited to the Westinghouse plant to watch the demonstration. I was working with the Light Co. at the time, but I was not an electrical engineer. But I went along, and got a free meal out of it. Now A W. Robertson had been president of the Light Co. and had been transferred to the Westinghouse outfit. So, since many of the Light Co. engineers knew Mr. Robertson, we all went in his palatial office and above his desk was a large painting of Shallenberger. I cut in, and told Mr. Robertson that I knew that man. He would not believe me, but when I named him, giving all three names, "Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger", and told him my father had been Mr. Shallenberger's attorney, the demonstration was a half hour late. Mr. "R." wanted to know all about the man in question. I told him how Mr. "S." would send up a balloon on the fourth of July, with timed fireworks thereon, and that hundreds would come to Rochester to see it go up. Often he would take me with his own kids for a drive, matched horses, black drivers with uniforms, and we would go to the Hostetter place for the visit.
His health failed, and as it was too hard to commute to and from Pittsburgh, Westinghouse built a laboratory in Rochester at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Reno Street, the building which housed the Retzer printing firm for many years. According to a Carnegie textbook, Westinghouse made a workable X-Ray in their Rochester plant, but it was never put into production.
Shortly before Mr. Shallenberger died, George Westinghouse came down, and my father went with him, and Oliver said he had some notes and drawings in a bureau drawer, and to take them. If they were no good, to throw them away, but if they were useful, to give his widow fifty thousand dollars. My Dad said it was the three phase transmission system used today all over the world.
I remember one of his workmen made a little small street car, that ran around on a circular track, and it was demonstrated in the R. M. Cable grocery store window. But the big loss for Rochester was the death of the famous electrical engineer at the age of 38. His widow, Mary, lived to be 91.
Now, why does Rochester not have a monument to this wonderful man? Make a park somewhere in the town, and a replica of the laboratory, which right now is falling down? Here is something for your history members to think about.