The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
The manufacturing of electrical equipment has been a spark plug of the Guelph economy since early in the 20th century.
Elsewhere in Wellington County, though, this industry has never been a significant factor.
Oldtimers will recall the transformers manufactured for a few years by Elora Industries before its bankruptcy in 1954. And there was the Rockwood battery factory, covered in this column about a year ago.
Far more obscure was the Dominion Electrical Manufacturing Company, which operated briefly in Fergus in the 1890s. This short-lived firm resulted from a chance encounter late in 1890 between William H. Cone, an American engineer, and George Beatty, the Fergus manufacturer.
Cone came to Fergus as part of the crew employed by the Reliance Electric Light Co. of Watford to install the generating equipment for Dr. Grove’s electrical plant. George Beatty, the surviving brother of the Beatty Bros. firm, was struggling to keep the business solvent during a period when sales of his farm implements had slowed to a crawl. Beatty had much excess capacity in his factory (now the Fergus Marketplace) and Cone, working almost directly across the river at the Groves property, had a desire to manufacture his own equipment.
Talks between the two men resulted in the Dominion Electrical Manufacturing Company in December 1890, with George Beatty as general manager and Bill Cone as plant superintendent and engineer. Cone had worked in the electrical field since 1882, making him a seasoned veteran in the rapidly advancing industry. He had some ideas and designs for dynamos and arc lamps, probably pirated from American patents.
Most new industries of that period approached municipal councils for financial aid or tax relief. Beatty and Cone spent their time fitting up part of the Beatty factory to manufacture components for the small electrical systems then being installed in most of the towns and villages of Ontario.
Beatty reassigned some of his existing employees to the new work, while Cone used his contacts to attract a handful of experienced electrical men from elsewhere.
The new business was up and running quickly. Cone completed his first generating system in January 1891, and used it to power a demonstration system in the factory, consisting of 150 bulbs of 50 watts each. The special feature of the system was the dynamo, which produced a constant voltage regardless of the load connected to it.
The firm negotiated its first sale in Alliston, for the equipment for that town’s first electrical system. This equipment went out at the end of February, and worked flawlessly from the beginning.
Dr. Groves provided the second order. His original equipment, which began service at the end of November 1890, provided power for streetlights and stores using noisy, sputtering arc lamps. These produced illumination from a spark between two carbon rods. They were unsuitable for domestic use. To answer requests for domestic lighting using incandescent bulbs, Dr. Groves ordered a second generator from Cone to provide a lower voltage for home lighting, to be distributed on an entirely separate system from the arc lamps.
Arc lamps were temperamental and noisy. The spark quickly eroded the carbon rods, which had to be trimmed and readjusted frequently. Bill Cone had some ideas to make them more efficient and less troublesome. He produced a design in which the rods were self-adjusting, and enclosed to prevent stray sparks and hot bits of carbon from splattering. Unfortunately, no drawings have survived, so it is not possible to determine whether these were Cone’s original ideas or simply techniques adapted from lamps already on the market.
Beatty and Cone had big plans. Besides the dynamos and arc lamps that kept the men busy in early 1891, they planned to manufacture storage batteries, motors, door bells and annunciators for hotels, and electrical equipment for the telephone industry.
There were also plans for equipment for the medical profession. To most people in the 1890s, electricity was still a new and mysterious phenomenon. Medical men, both legitimated and quacked, attributed all sorts of curative powers to electricity. A huge market developed for electro-shock devices and machines that healed through coils and static electrical charges.
Based on the success of the Alliston plant, the firm sold lighting systems to Tottenham in March 1891, and to Creemore a month later. After that, Cone was unable to make another sale in a field overcrowded with competitors.
Production of most of the planned lines never commenced. It appears that Beatty and Cone had a falling out during the summer of 1891 that resulted in Cone leaving the firm. After a six-month life, Dominion Electrical passed into history.
Bill Cone did not give up on the area. A short time later he had a new partner and location. David Potter had been struggling to keep the Elora Foundry afloat after a fire destroyed much of his business in 1889 (the old Kiddie Car Factory was originally part of Potter’s factory complex). Together, the two established a partnership, the Potter & Cone Electrical Manufacturing Co.
Potter already had a well-equipped machine shop and a foundry. Cone came from Fergus with several of his key men and plans to carry on the business established with George Beatty.
Despite his best efforts, Cone was unable to secure any major contracts. From the beginning, Potter & Cone relied exclusively on repair and rebuilding work. With so much one-of-a-kind equipment in operation, there was a great demand for shops that could repair and rebuild equipment quickly and efficiently. As well, the firm began picking up older dynamos and motors. These they refurbished for resale on the second-hand market.
Bill Cone, apparently, was a difficult man to deal with. As with George Betty, he soon had a falling out with David Potter. They dissolved their partnership in February 1892. After barely 16 months in the area, two manufacturing firms, and reams of plan and ideas, Bill Cone left the area.
During its short life, Potter & Cone hired John Connon, the Elora photographer, who would later become one of the county’s most renowned historians. Connon had been working for a photography supply firm in New York in the 1880s, but returned home in 1889 to help look after his ailing parents. A man of great intelligence and technical ability, he quickly picked up a practical knowledge of electrical equipment.
After the health of his parents improved, Connon, who was then in his early 30s, had planned to return to New York City, where his former employer was anxious to have him back.
But John liked Elora, and had become fascinated with his new work. Following the departure of Bill Cone and his three or four loyal employees, Connon had the best ability in working with dynamos and motors. Over the next couple of years he laid out and installed electrical lighting systems for Monkland Mills in Fergus, and for the mill at Winterbourne, among other projects.
If Connon had visions of a brilliant career in the electrical business, he was disappointed. The work was intermittent at best, and in 1895 it ended forever when Potter declared bankruptcy.
Though Bill Cone’s time in Elora and Fergus was short, it had major repercussions. His involvement with George Beatty bought time for the ailing Beatty firm. George managed to struggle until a bankruptcy in 1896. The reorganized firm, soon under the direction of the second generation, eventually dominated Fergus.
His Elora partnership kept John Connon from returning to New York, and gave him the opportunity to take more pictures, gather a huge collection of local artifacts, and write a history of the village.
Bill Cone’s electrical equipment has long gone to the scrap pile. Nevertheless, he left an important legacy to Wellington County.
*This column was originally published in the Wellington Advertiser on March 8, 2002.
