Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1845
Comments on the last couple of days images
Doug Wynne:
Years ago, when I worked for Associated Industries of Massachusetts, someone from AT&T told me that the pattern on these manholes represented a cross-section of telephone cable. Not sure if he was telling the truth, but it made sense to me at the time.
Judy Neiswander:
Edison Electric Illuminating Company – their building was (& still is) at 25-39 Boylston Street, constructed in 1906 by Winslow & Bigelow and Bigelow & Wadsworth.
Paul Kenney:
EEI does stand for Edison Electric Illuminating Company. However the manhole cover which you show here has the words BELL SYSTEM on the cover which would imply that it is a Telephone Manhole. The radio station, WEEI, was originally owned by Edison.
Paul Cass:
I remember when I attended Boston Tech High School in the Back Bay in the late 50’s the clocks were AC because it was hard to keep accurate time with DC. The rest of the school was DC including the belt driven machine shop where all the lathes were driven by one large DC motor with a large belt loop system. With DC it is a lot easier to control the speed of motors but DC required carbon brushes which had a lot of maintenance and put a lot of carbon dust in the air. I do believe DC is used on the high transmission lines ( envision the electrons going back and forth with Alternating Current or flowing one way only with Direct Current) because their is less resistance to the flow. With all the electronics today DC is changed to AC with a inverter. The most efficient systems have a inverter which changes AC to DC and the speed can be controlled totally and thus be more efficient. Batteries are DC but you can change it to AC by plugging the inverter into the cigarette lighter. This day and age we use both AC and DC with ease depending on the use.
For today we have a photo of a medallion in a set of concrete stairs, showing the pride of the company that installed them: Hind of 19 Milk Street, Boston.
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