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Photos Courtesy of Joe Tedesco

Thanks Joe!

They'd sure be the low bidder, and would probably be awarded the contract.

"Electric fixtures as low as 70 cents"

I just payed $70 for a light bulb...S

Electure:

Why 70$ for a lightbulb? I get 4 packs of 130 volt/60 watt Type As for a dollar .

Wow....neat stuff....any idea when these advertisements were printed?

Wow....neat stuff....any idea when these advertisements were printed?

The fine print in the second ad reads, "Prices of Electric Lamps Reduced-- Effective April 15, 1914."

A significant aspect of these ads is that they were placed by an electric utility (in St. Louis, I think), rather than by a contractor.

This was an era when power companies were especially eager to "build load", and the sale and installation of lights and appliances - and the wiring to supply them - was an important means of doing that.

I would be interested in learning whether the actual work was done by utility employees or a contractor.

Ahh, thanx for pointing that out...dunno why I didn't see that....

I gotta wonder what the finished work looked like when these guys came out and wired your home....I'd guess probably conduit and externally mounted junction boxes on an already completed home?

Also they say in one of the ads "4 ceing outlets and one wall outlet"....I know alot of older homes I've seen will have only 1 outlet per room....I wonder if that's why?

One receptacle per room was also very common in the U.K. when homes were wired in the 1920s/30s.

Sometimes the wires were fished inside the walls.....or hidden behind wooden strips (like the wiremold raceways we use nowadays).

I guess you could always do what some still do to this day: Staple #16AWG lamp-cord to the wall....and use surface mount bakelite sockets.

Wow! $17.95 and 12 months to pay.

What would that be in today's dollars?

Nice ads, obviously the utilties were pushing this, but they had to. What's the point of generating and networking electricity if there are no end users?