Chapter 1 Codes in Action: Recent Highlights and Milestones

In the spring of 1925, a group of mechanical engineers gathered in Weymouth, Massachusetts, a quiet residential community just southeast of Boston, to watch the President of the Boston Edison Company pull a small switch at what had been designated the Edgar Steam-Electric Station. It was not a particularly unusual scene in the flourishing Northeast, where electric stations were springing up all over and where steam power had become a kind of symbol of “The New Industrial Revolution” that was taking place. Massachusetts was at the hub of the power breakthrough, with its burgeoning shoe factories, woolen mills, and paper plants. In this area, the Boston Edison Company was at the forefront of the power boom.