Before 1948 , there was something amusing about the Southland ’s electricity . Plug in a clock from New York and it would fall back 10 minutes every hour . Spin a platter on a turntable from San Francisco and it would fathom deep and drowsy . Some gadgets would n’t exploit at all .
The problem ? southerly California ’s power power system ran on a differentfrequency . Like the rest of the U.S. , the neighborhood was wire for 120 volts , but its alternate stream pulse out of power industrial plant and into electrical sockets at a slower rate—50 cycles per 2d ( or 50hz ) versus than the national 60hz standard .
That criterion had not yet emerge in 1893 , when the Southland became home to the nation ’s first three - phase , alternating current hydroelectric plant : the Mill Creek plantoutside Redlands , California . As General Electric workers were installing the source , it was leave to the oversee technologist on site , Louis Bell , to determine the frequence . GE ’s challenger , Westinghouse , was then designing equipment to operate at 60hz . Bell could have keep an eye on suit , but instead he chose the 50hz favored by his company ’s European affiliate , AEG .
With his determination , Bell inadvertently locked Southern California into a 50hz frequency . General Electric switched to 60hz just one twelvemonth later , and as three - phase AC power came to more regions , the nation ’s power grid began to pulse in harmony . As an former adopter , however , Southern California was left behind . With so much equipment built for compatibility with Mill Creek ’s 50hz , switch over to the come forth 60hz standard was plainly price - prohibitive . ( Incidentally , the Mill Creek plant and its peculiar legacy wasa product of the region ’s “ Orange Empire,”built to power an ice manufactory and keep the region ’s prized citrus tree crop fresh for market . )
For decades , then , the Southland was a sort of electrical enclave . Though its borders were unmarked in prescribed atlases , crossing those invisible lines had very real consequences for manufacturers and consumers alike . Some electric appliances shape at both frequencies , but for oftenness - raw products manufacturing business create special 50hz models just for the Southern California market . And when newcomers moved from outside the region , they paid to have their onetime devices converted , or just bribe newfangled ones that would work on the 50hz control grid .
In 1945 , Southern California Edison — the area ’s large electric public-service corporation — lastly decided to harmonize its grid with the rest of the nation ’s . Consumers were buy too many frequency - sensitive appliances , industrial customers were having trouble finding 50hz equipment for their manufacturing plant , and the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light had already converted in 1936 to accept live with power from Boulder ( Hoover ) Dam ’s 60hz generators .
Conversion , alas , wasn’t as simple as flipping a switching . Edison rolled out the new 60hz alternating - current frequency to its 765,000 customers in nine stage over three year , taking upkeep that its supplying of the two absolute frequency always matched the requirement . It retrofit its transmission equipment . And it define up “ clock commutation depots ” across the region where client could bring their old 50hz appliances for free modification and exchange . ( The concluding tally : 475,000 redstem storksbill , 380,000 lighting fixtures , and 58,000 refrigerators . ) All told , the conversion from 50 to 60hz cost Southern California Edison $ 34.4 million — more than a third of its one-year egregious taxation — but on October 27 , 1948 , the Southland finally pulsed in unison with the relief of the U.S.
Top simulacrum courtesy of theUSC Libraries – Dick Whittington Photography Collection .
Southland is made possible by a partnership among Gizmodo , theUSC Libraries , and the phallus assembling ofL.A. as Subject . write byNathan Masters , the serial explore the urban past tense of Los Angeles , including the lost landscapes and bury infrastructures that remain to influence the metropolis we make love today .
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