Nikola Tesla, when power came to Colorado
Nikola Tesla
Something happened near Telluride, Colorado, in the late nineteenth century that is forgotten to all but a few of the most committed seekers of historical fact, an event of such magnitude it would change the society of our world forever; and it was brought about by a simple need for a better and less expensive way to do business. Oh, I’m not talking about the Hole in the Wall Gang and Butch Cassidy’s first heist of $24,580 from the local bank, I’m talking about the advent of commercial Alternating Current power that took place high in the Rocky Mountains of Southwestern Colorado. In 1891, from a wooden shack in the short-lived mining camp at a place called Ames, high above Telluride, modern electrical Alternating Current was first generated and transmitted for commercial use.
By the 1880’s, Colorado’s mining boom was in full swing. Fortunes were made and backs were broken mining the rich veins of gold, silver, lead, copper and zinc from deep within the hard-rock mountains. Light, air and water were provided to the mines by Direct Current generators that burned wood as fuel; and for this fuel, men had cleared the land of trees for fifteen miles around Telluride. With the wood gone, the only other option was coal, which soon cost $75 ton. This dirty fuel caused a smog that we in this present-day, slowly-heating world of massive pollution could scarcely imagine.
Exterior view of the L .L . Nunn power station, Ames, San Miguel Count y, Colorado, shows a side gable structure with lean-to additions, board and batten construction and uneven board roofline. A large stack of lumber is piled in front of the power station below the Gold K ing mine.
The coal, brought in by rail to a siding several miles from Telluride, was then hauled on the backs of mules up to the mines to fuel the generators. It wasn’t long until the combined railroad freight, the mule skinners and the mules doing the hauling, cost each mine owner upwards of $2,500 a month and many could not pay the price to keep the generators going. Without the generators to provide lighting, air and water, the mines soon shut down.
In 1881, a lawyer named Lucien L. Nunn walked into Telluride, and not long after that inauspicious beginning built a fortune. By the time the mines shut down, he had accumulated an enormous amount of raw gold, owned a copper mine, and also owned the local bank that held loans to several of the largest mines. If the mine owners couldn’t pay their debts, Nunn would lose every thing he had built; however, he was not a man to stand idly by and let his fortune dwindle to nothing.
He formulated a plan to harness the energy of falling water of South Turkey Creek to power the mines. The only way to use electricity at that time was with Direct Current, a system that required a generating plant ever y two miles or less in order to overcome transmission losses. The system also required lots of copper for the many circuits required to loop back to the generating station.
To power a mine’s generators with DC current, at the distance and at the voltage Nunn proposed, would require cables eight inches in diameter that stretched more than three miles across the most rugged mountains in Colorado. Even though he owned a copper mine, the stuff wasn’t free.
He had heard of a new technology called a alternating Current that just might solve his problem. George Westinghouse, who invented air brakes for trains, had in his employ the brilliant Croatian engineer, Nikola Tesla. Tesla had designed a complete Alternating Current system that could easily meet the needs of Lucien Nunn for the Gold King mine. In theory, a generator could be built that would enable electric current to move rapidly from positive to negative in a balanced oscillation that would send enormous amounts of
Pinheads
power through small, aluminum conductors with comparatively low losses. Lucien Nunn asked his brother, Paul, a trained engineer, to learn as much as he could about this new system and gather together some men to help with design work. Lucien himself would do the surveying for transmission lines. The young men they gathered together for this monumental task (some of them from way back East) called themselves “The Pinheads” and they are honored to this day by the Smithsonian/Telluride affiliation known as “The Pinhead Institute.”
The cost of building a prototype of Tesla’s AC system and the task of approaching Westinghouse’s Board of Directors were then the only obstacles remaining to Nunn’s plans for regaining his fortune. So, he set out for Chicago by train. Upon arrival at the Westinghouse offices he was forced to sit in the waiting room for several days before being admitted to the boardroom for a hearing. He was a persuasive speaker and to add drama to the end of his presentation, he spilled out upon the conference table a bag of gold nuggets and spread them before the amazed directors. “Gentlemen, I am prepared to wager one million dollars on the venture.
What do you say? ” The board agreed to the project and in 1891 Nunn built the world’s first commercial Alternating Current power plant at Ames, Colorado. The Pinheads, pioneers in this technical field, had to devise ways and means of safely operating the system. Without the benefit of modern switches and clutches, they had to bring the drive motor up to the correct speed using a Tesla induction motor, then couple the stamp mill (a giant, piston-type rock crusher) to the motor shaft across the miles to the generator, all the while keeping every thing in synchrony.
Tesla designed a simple, matched system for the Gold King Mine. A 3,000 volt, single-phase circuit connected the generator to a motor at the mine. Today, this type of thing is in general use around the world, but for the Pinheads it was a monumental challenge. In the first matched, dual-speed system, the motor spun at the same speed as the generator, based upon the transmission frequency used. Tesla’s choice was 8,000 to 10,000 cycles per minute (133 1/3 Hz to 166 2/3 Hz) compared to today’s common system using 3,600 cycles per minute, or 60Hz.
Shortly thereafter, Telluride became the first town in the world to become electrified with Alternating Current generated by falling water. Each room in the local hospital boasted a fifty-watt light bulb. Streetlights were free. Nunn’s project in the San Juan Mountains was the first application of what would become the global paradigm for power across the next century and beyond. Lucien L. Nunn, Paul N. Nunn and the Pinheads, utilizing the brilliance of Nikola Tesla, the unsung hero of the world of electricity, brought Telluride into the modern world.☼
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