Electricity

Electricity is so much taken for granted in modern city life that we rarely think twice when turning on the light, when waiting for the traffic lights to change, or when using the many household devices that surround us. We rarely bother to think about this “wonder” of modern science until something goes wrong.

In the summer of 1959, something did go wrong with the power station that provided New York with electricity, so that for many hours normal life ground to a halt. Electric trains refused to move, the people in them being forced to sit helpless in the dark. Lifts in skyscrapers left their occupants stranded between floors for hours, or otherwise they had to walk down hundreds of stairs in the dark. Broadway and Fifth Avenue in an instant became gloomy and uninviting, and people couldn’t leave their homes for fear of being robbed in the dark streets, for although the police had orders to stand by in case of emergency, they were just as isolated and confused as everyone else.

Meanwhile, in the homes, disorder prevailed as well. New York can be stifling in the summer and this year was no exception. Cool, air-conditioned apartments became furnaces, cakes and joints of meat remained uncooked in cooling ovens, and people sat impatient and frightened in the dark as if an unseen enemy had arrived from Mars. The only people who remained untroubled by the darkness were the blind. One of the strangest things that happened was when some fifty blind people led many sighted workers home from the factories. When the lights came on again, hardly a person in the city could have turned on a switch without reflecting how great a servant he had at his fingertips.