Almarian Decker was one of the most influential engineers in the development of modern power generation and transmission systems. Because of his innovations, modern three-phase motors powered the last half of the industrial revolution and provided lighting in homes and businesses. And indeed still does today!

Yet due to his premature death, the highly visible and competitive General Electric and Westinghouse rivalries and the rapid pace of power generation at the end of the 1800’s, Decker was obscure in his day and nearly unknown today.

Decker’s genius sought to solve the entire electrical power mystery, which until solved kept electrical power a very expensive and novel toy for the wealthy. A single system that could power both electric lights and efficient and convenient electric motors across great distances had still eluded the likes of Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla.

Decker did utilize advancements of alternating current and induction motor concepts attributed to Tesla as well as transmission concepts demonstrated in Germany. But Almarian Decker was the first to actually create the entire system for the Redlands Light and Power Company in 1893, three full years before Westinghouse completed the Niagara Falls power plant. So obscure is the tiny Redlands Light and Power Company that many including the PBS website attribute modern power generation and transmission to Tesla even today.

His Life
Almarian Decker moved to Sierra Madre, California from Cleveland Ohio in 1891. He was born in Turnbull County, Ohio in 1852 and married to Kate Lockart in 1883. The reason for moving this family to California was a condition of “consumption” or tuberculosis. As many had done, tuberculosis sufferers moved west to the drier, warmer climates. He would live only two years in California, but the three major projects he engineered, set the standards for modern municipal power generation and transmission.

His earlier years include a precocious period where he had toyed with electrical matters as early as twelve or thirteen. He would tire of each new creation and move to the next. He traded a little electric motor to a jeweler in Cleveland for a set of drawing instruments. The motor was left in the window of the jeweler for many years after. By the age of twenty he was an accomplished electroplater, a new technology at the time. Employed by the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company, in charge of the electroplating department, he registered several patents as a chemist and electroplater.

He then worked for the Union Metropolitan Telegraph of Cleveland. Here he produced telegraph instruments advanced enough to be exhibited at the Centennial Exposition where his former employer also exhibited Decker’s work in electroplating. With experience installing the first telegraph and telephone system in Cleveland, he then worked for Charles F. Brush.

Charles F. Brush just three years older than Decker, had improved the “dynamo” or generator in 1877. His interest in arc lighting was now possible having solved the power requirements.1 Brush became perhaps the most active promoter of the arc-lighting system founding the Brush Electric Company in 1880 with his backer the Telegraph Supply Company of Cleveland.

During this period Decker registered a series of patents relating to safety devises for use on passenger elevators, as well as an electric wood rule marker. He then was hired as superintendent of the Forest City Electrical Works of Cleveland, where he had direct contact with electrical engineering.2 Given the small community of electrical promoters in the late 1870’s it is likely that connections in Cleveland’s arc lighting and electricity drew Almarian Decker to Brush and others in the city. Decker was undoubtedly aware that only four months following the first Brush arc-lighting demonstration in Cleveland, that San Francisco had installed a Brush plant holding the distinction of the first central station concept in the country.3 This was September of 1879. Decker may also have been aware of early experiments in arc lighting by early land developer George Chaffey at his Etiwanda Ranch, west of Riverside and San Bernardino in 1882. On New Year’s Eve, 1882, the Los Angeles Electric Company had installed a Brush system and three arc lights.

The level of early electric activity on the west coast began to take hold as Decker brought his family to Sierra Madre in May of 1891. The rail boom of the mid 1880’s brought many from mid-western and eastern cities for business, retirement and health. Decker may have wondered how he would support his family. But before the year was out he was engaged to engineer the new San Antonio Hydroelectric Power Plant.

Pomona- San Antonio Power Plant
Cyrus G. Baldwin, President of the Pomona College, had noticed the abundant water in San Antonio Canyon above Pomona, California. The first hydroelectric power plant in California had been completed in Highgrove, between Riverside and Colton in 1887. An additional plant was completed by the same organization in San Bernardino by 1888. Both of these plants utilized small flows of water. Dr. Baldwin may have correctly seen the advantage of a higher water flow and much greater grade to create water pressure in a river draining the Mount Baldy area in the San Gabriel Mountains.

It is here that Almarian Decker would test his ideas and ultimately solve the nations power issues. The Journal of Electricity, Power and Gas in 1903, recounted the achievement a decade following its completion. “Even as far back as 1890, [Mr. Decker] advocated the use of a three-phase, 10,000-volt transmission strenuously, particularly in view of the fact that it would be impossible to deliver power service by any single-phase transmission; but the absolute refusal of any electric company to build three-phase machines forced him to recede from his stand and to accept a single-phase standard generator.”

Decker was so far ahead of his contemporaries that Westinghouse refused to be a part of any alternating current three-phase system. In-deed no one would build to it his specifications. Decker reluctantly used single-phase alternating current generators. But this AC power would be of little use, accept for lighting. Alternating current however would prove his first premise, that he could increase the voltage sufficiently high enough to efficiently transmit power large distances. He invented oil filled transformers to do this, and ultimately demonstrated that he could transmit power 29 miles to San Bernardino, the world record at the time.

Mt. Lowe- Incline Railroad
In fact Decker had plenty to do in California. Thaddius Lowe and David Macpherson joined talent and money to build the famous Mt. Lowe Incline Railroad. Macpherson had come to Sierra Madre due to tuberculosis as Decker had. However, Macpherson and his mother had survived his five siblings deaths, Decker would not. Undoubtedly these two engineers were fast acquaintances with much in common, both living in Sierra Madre.

Macpherson was a civil engineer and so needed the expertise of an electrical engineer like Decker. Together several innovations would be required to build what was the thrill ride of the times, and the world’s first mountain trolley line.4 Of Decker’s accomplishments, John Harriagan, engineer and park official states, “In my book, Mt. Lowe Power, I go through Decker’s calculations for the Incline and Trolley system running on batteries and water power, and found that it would have worked well. Brilliant Man.” http://www.mtlowe.net/Harrigan.htm

It is said that Decker was so sick near the end of the Mt. Lowe project that he was carried in a stretcher by laborers to review and give the final instructions for completion. The railway opened in July, 1891, Almarian died August 3rd.

Mill Creek #1
The seeds that were planted with the San Antonio hydropower project were harvested with Decker’s final project, Mill Creek No.1 built by Redlands Light and Power Company. In 1892, H.H. Sinclair, marine shipping line owner and grower rancher in Redlands, brought financier Henry Fisher of Redlands to invest part of his oil fortune in the new electric industry. Perhaps driven by the prospect of economic efficiencies that were becoming apparent and their successful business careers, they began in earnest to capture the natural resources of Southern California to develop hydropower in quantities that might return profits. The first real businessmen to enter the business, their experience combined with Decker’s brilliant engineering concepts would set the standards for eclectic power around the world for the next century and the foreseeable future.

Sinclair had real business to be preformed. The Union Ice Company (of Crafton between Redlands and Mill Creek) made ice for the growing citrus industry and ice box refrigeration as far away as Los Angeles. Compressors were expensive to run as wood had to be hauled from the mountains in horse drawn wagons. Electric power could reduce the cost to run compressors substantially. The Union Ice Company, would grant a long-term contract for a reliable source of power. But Union Ice officials knew that maintaining single-phase AC motors was a labor-intensive process. Single-phase motors had to be started (synchronized) with the generator, a prospect that had serious issues when they were miles from each other.

Decker, now armed with substantial funds, as well as the influence of its directors, built an engineering plan that would combine new concepts with proven ones to complete the entire power grid. He again specified alternating current (AC), three-phase asynchronous generators. He would use his transformer plans to setup the voltage for transmission and step down the voltage for use in homes and businesses.

To accomplish this task the three-phase generator (and by default the three-phase motor) had to be engineered. Turned down earlier by Westinghouse as “Unpracticable,” the newly formed General Electric Company was desperate to enter the AC power business. Edison had fought for direct current (DC) systems but lost to Westinghouse’s and Tesla’s AC systems. With Westinghouse patents covering most of the AC equipment, General Electric could patent its own three-phase equipment and get back into the game.

Decker’s plans were followed exactly by General Electric, and when completed, became extremely profitable for the Redlands group. Almarian Decker died before the project was completed. Had he survived, he would see his plans and the Redlands Light and Power Company set the California standards for municipal power generation. Eventually nearly the entire world would follow!

Fisher and Sinclair would immediately form the Southern California Light and Power Company. They used Decker’s concepts for a much larger Santa Ana Power Plant, which would form the foundation for Southern California Edison power to Los Angeles.

Almarian Decker’s first successful commercial power generating and transmission system set in motion several major businesses. The Redlands Light and Power Company and Southern California Light and Power Company was merged into what became Southern California Edison. H.H. Sinclair would become a central figure in its next decades, including the early plans and location for Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. General Electric Company would eventually dominate the municipal power equipment and motor business. Using power generated by his Redlands Light and Power Company, Henry Fisher electrified the local city railway company. It was later sold to Henry Huntington, the Southern California Rail magnet.

Page Foot Notes
1. http://www.lafavre.us/brush/brushbio.htm by Jeffrey La Favre.
2. The Journal of Electricity, Power and Gas, Volume XIII-No.1, January 1903
3. Iron Men and Copper Wire, A Cente4nnial History of the Southern California Edison Company, William A. Meyers
4. http://www.mtlowe.net/history.htm

Acknowledgements:
Ronald L. Burgess, Author
John Harriagan for important research sources including the The Journal of Electricity, Power and Gas, Volume XIII-No.1, January 1903, Transcriptions of Decker’s only daughter Masrian Decker Shaw, and his work on Decker’s engineering at Mt. Lowe.
Charlie Basham of the Southern California Edison Company for providing many photos and research materials.