Our continuing series of looking at the news from one hundred years ago. The first issue of the Reporter newspaper for January 1917 featured a large ad from the Goodrich Falls Electric Company offering to wire six rooms for $35. (see ad below).
The price included a Tu-For-Wun plug, made by Benjamin Electric Mfg. Co. of Chicago, Illinois.
Before wall sockets were common and plugs were standardized, there was a bewildering number and variety of methods for plugging lights and appliances into the electrcial supply system. The Benjamin used the same screw type method for both their plugs and their bulbs so they were interchangeable. Many of these are now collector’s items and now sold in specialty antique shops
While the office for the Goodrich Falls Electric Company was in the Pitman Block of North Conway, the actual waterfalls where the power was generated was in Jackson, NH. For many years, the falls had served both a practical purpose as a sawmill and an aesthetic purpose as a tourist attraction with its image being captured by both painters and photographers.
Another big news feature was the Small murder trial held at the Carroll County Courthouse in Ossipee. It was the first murder case in the then new courthouse. “A telegraph office has been temporarily placed in the basement of the buildling and from it the operators are keeping the wires busy in sending out to the broad world the evidence as fast as it is produced. Even a barber shop has been placed for the convenience of all concerned.”
It is not until page six, after all the gossip and social society news that we get a summary of the war raging in Europe.
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