A Holiday Tradition: Driving the Neighborhood to See Decorations
In the midst of all the holiday chaos, many Americans still set aside an evening to load the family into the car and drive around to see the neighborhood holiday decorations. From a rooftop Santa and sleigh to a complete Santa’s workshop that covers an entire front yard to a religious scene with a crèche, most communities have well-known neighborhoods where the homeowners go all-out for the holiday.
No entity could be happier than the power company about neighborhood holiday decorations, which inevitably use a wide variety of lighting. It is only fitting that one of the early locations that pioneered outdoor displays was a lighting company in Cleveland, Ohio that was started in 1901.
General Electric: Vying for Dominance
As with more recent technologies (think PC vs. Mac or Betamax vs. VHS) there was a power struggle for what company’s socket and bulb would win dominance. General Electric (formed in 1892 by merging the Edison Electric Company and the Thomson Houston Company) was aggressively investing in smaller lighting companies to increase the market penetration of their sockets and bulbs. General Electric invested in the National Electric Lamp Company in Cleveland, and soon they owned 75 percent of it, which led to a court-mandated division of the company.
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1. We all consider July Fourth to be “our nation’s birthday,” but given the number of steps it took to be a free country, it’s good to be reminded of what the day actually signifies:
Tonight people from around the world will pack into Times Square in anticipation of being at the “center of the universe” for the countdown to midnight. In addition to the one million people expected to be there in person, an estimated audience of one billion people around the world will be viewing the climactic moment when the ball descends into New York’s Times Square to mark the beginning of a new year.
