“I am not claiming any great originality for the Lake County Experiment [on rural electrification in 1910]. If I had not hit upon it somebody else would have, but it is rather an interesting sidelight that even the opponents of private ownership, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, by their work have put the stamp of approval on such matters….”
– Samuel Insull, The Memoirs of Samuel Insull (1934), p. 97.
[Ed. note: This post is taken from the author’s Edison to Enron (2011), chapter 3, pp. 105–108]
“The way Insull’s utility managed Chicago’s power load,” noted one technological historian, “is comparable to the historic managerial contributions made by railway men in the nineteenth century and is as interesting as the widely publicized managerial concepts and policies of John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford.”…
Continue ReadingUpon assuming the editorship of the Objectivist magazine Navigator, Robert Bidinotto wrote the following tribute to outgoing editor Roger Donway. Having worked with Roger over the last decade of my book projects, as well as many smaller things, I am pleased to republish Bidinotto’s salute.
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I cannot take the helm of this magazine without first paying tribute to the helmsman who has steered it so far, and so true.
I first encountered the name Roger Donway during the late 1960s, in the pages of The Freeman. His potent articles on political topics jumped out at me—not just for their rare clarity and logical rigor, but because he was one of the few among the magazine’s many authors who was clearly influenced by Ayn Rand. For a young, philosophically isolated, wannabe writer like me, Roger’s articles felt like an encouraging pat on the back—reassurance that someone, somewhere, was already able to do what I only aspired to do.…
Continue Reading“The private sector’s push for rural electrification would be forgotten as electrifying the countryside became a political issue during the New Deal, specifically with the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935.”
– Robert Bradley, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies (2011), p. 165.
“Next to their ability to pump water mechanistically, small wind turbines are best known for their ability to generate power at remote homesteads…. During the 1930s, when only 10% of U.S. farms were served by central-station power, literally hundreds of thousands of [“home light plants”] were in use on the Great Plains…. [This industry] collapsed quickly after the introduction of electricity by the Rural Electrification Administration during the 1930s.”
– Paul Gipe. Wind Energy Comes of Age (1995), pp. 125, 131.
The New Deal’s policies toward oil and coal in the 1933–39 era were hardly succeeded from anyone’s perspective.…
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