Exploring GE's Abandoned High Voltage Lab - Vintage Electrical Tech!

today's episode will be a special one a true journey into the unknown to discover a piece of History that's been hidden away for decades in this hobby of urban exploration there are thousands of people constantly searching for the next great location to explore and when something is discovered news tends to spread fast it's become increasingly rare to have your own moment of Discovery but when it does happen it's the most rewarding this hobby ever gets our story today begins in Chicago several years ago this was the high voltage laboratory in the Crawford Generating Station photograph of my friend Edwin constructed in the 1920s this lab would have been used for experimentation and validation of numerous electrical components a remnant of a time when electricity was a new and rapidly progressing industry despite its significance it was unceremoniously demolished in 2019 just a few weeks before Brown and I eventually made it there this lab fascinated me more than any other abandoned room that I had ever been aware of and it was beginning to eat at me that I just missed seeing it by a matter of weeks I decided that if there was anything else like this still out there I was going to find it the real search began when I discovered archive.org and their vast catalog of decades-old trade journals the string high voltage laboratory returned thousands of results even after narrowing the search to us-based periodicals published from the 1920s through the mid-century it soon became a nightly ritual of mine to find mentions of these Laboratories and articles and advertisements and then attempt to confirm their current status one of the first things I learned is that high voltage Laboratories were far more numerous than I originally expected the largest and most advanced facilities were located at General Electric and westinghouse's plants but utility companies universities and other private Industries also made considerable investments into their own Labs despite all these leads finding a vintage voltage lab that could potentially still be intact proved elusive ge's Pittsfield lab demolished westinghouse's East Pittsburgh lab demolished Westinghouse Trafford it's batting cages Ohio brass long gone but wow this one was built out of an old mansion and the result looked like pure science fiction still empty-handed the incredible images that was coming across only heightened my curiosity and spurred me to learn about these Laboratories in more detail high voltage Labs first came into use in the early 20th century when electrical transmission systems begin using increased voltages and more effective insulators were required at this time lightning also wreaked havoc on electrical equipment and the need to study and develop protective measures was growing when lightning strikes an overhead power line the insulators may be flashed over wooden poles may be split another damage may be wrought by high voltage invisible traveling waves that move at the speed of light in 1921 the man working for General Electric by the name of Charles Proteus stimets developed the first artificial lightning generator while existing Labs were already capable of extremely high voltages Steinmetz device was the first to discharge an electric pulse of high voltage and high current in a fraction of a second replicating the characteristics of real lightning equipment was scaled up and soon artificial lightning was able to rival the power of natures high voltage testing equipment began to be shipped off to new Laboratories across the country by manufacturers such as GE Westinghouse and Alice Chalmers two West Coast voltage Labs at the universities of Stanford and Caltech were particularly noteworthy built in the 1920s in partnership with local power companies the lab at Caltech opened first and was housed in a beautifully ornate building the main entrance was adorned by two figures of Mythic stature grabbing a cable with bolts of lightning emanating from it Stanford's lab opened a few years later in a more humble structure but capable of producing the greatest man-made voltages in the world at the time 2.1 million volts its opening day was marked by demonstrations of electrical arcs crossing a 20-foot Gap these Labs were instrumental in developing insulators and other long-range transmission technology which were needed to bring power to California's cities from distant hydroelectric plants in the mountains perhaps the peak of high voltage excitement occurred in 1939 at the New York World's Fair when GE revealed their show stealing Steinmetz Hall demonstrations of a 10 million volt machine thrilled millions of visitors to the Pavilion [Applause] [Music] this description of the show from one of ge's own pamphlets gives a good idea of what it would have been like to be in attendance the appearance of the demonstration Hall in which the big generator performed with the lights lowered the red signal lamps glowing and with the tall forbidding stacks of black and fermium glittering evilly was enough in itself to Quicken any Watcher's pulse and the odor of ozone which pervaded the atmosphere as a result of the past demonstrations served to increase this feeling of tension and uneasiness during the 15 seconds required for the big lightning generator to reach its full charge the ominous hum of the apparatus but nerves on edge lost up to full Voltage [Music] you have just seen the most powerful lightning bolt ever created by man it was at this point after days of research that the lead I was waiting for finally smacked me in the face an advertisement for a baltimore-based insulator company known as Locke proudly featuring a full-page image of their voltage laboratory my pulse began to pick up as I quickly realized Not only was the laboratory Still Standing but the factory it was part of was currently abandoned and headed for demolition would there be anything left inside would it even be possible to get in there was only one way to find out 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will receive a huge discount plus four bonus months for free it's risk-free as every purchase is protected with nord's 30-day money-back guarantee just go to nordvpn.com proper people or click the link in the description block insulator Factory in Baltimore opened in 1922 after moving from a location in Upstate New York founder Fred M Locke devised his own improvements to insulators while working as a telegraph operator and soon started his own company his company became the first in America to mass produce and popularize Porcelain insulators as opposed to the widely used glass insulators of the time upon moving the operation to Baltimore General Electric became involved with the company purchasing a significant stake the lock facility would go on to become one of the foremost manufacturers and developers of insulators in the world much to the credit of their high voltage Laboratory now unfortunately we don't have any footage of the very first time we entered the lab the first time we went in was just a scouting run and we went in with no cameras and no gear but what you're about to see is the second time we visited the lab and the first time we went with our cameras rolling on The Scouting run getting in proved difficult and our second visit would be met with similar complications as you're about to see so we formulated a plan not sure it's a good plan but it's a plan it is basically Frank Carson here is going to drive us past security we're going to hop out and he's gonna drive off and hopefully security won't notice that people have been dropped off I mean don't maybe dug down it's gonna be hard we're a little tight outside this looks really weird are you sure they are there yeah oh they don't have any lights on big weird Poland as far back as you can to the thing like trying to make noise in the doors though I know I know right here this is as far as you can go and they see us from here no I don't know let me turn around this way all right we'll all get out this door okay here we go get down video foreign plan is in motion now what if we can't get in there and he's gone we're like we have to have them come back somehow you can't like get to the place we need to get to you know what I mean I'm coming back here let's go yeah we're in pretty plain view of the car hey make sure your screen stays off on your camera okay we need to stay down here on these rocks okay that's my bitch we're gonna have to do it all right I have no idea no way in the property exactly there you go in the property outside the property literally exactly where we need to go inside the fence are that side effects I don't know but it's right where we need to go I just had a thought so you know how there was a vehicle in the parking lot before and we thought that that was Securities personal vehicle that one's gone right there was no other car there so maybe this is the new security guards personal vehicle Maybe which would mean they're not in it it's a risk do you think that's a security too I think that could be their personal card they park there and they're in the security car yeah yeah that would be that let's spy on the truck for a minute and see if we see any lights inside like a phone screen or something okay yeah all right it's impossible to really see anything with that truck because the floodlight's in a perfect spot to Blind us and give them a clear view of us is not ideal it's really hard to tell should we Shining Light on it no the hell no so we've came to a decision we're gonna send it and risk it what if the the truck opens its light to just bail out if he turns on his lights if we are obviously seeing we just need to start leaving they're going to ask us what the fuck we're doing though wrong because I don't think anyone's in the car I just know when you avoid the security car up there behind the truck no in front stay on the shore because there's nobody in the truck I don't think that's what we're banking on okay I'm gonna follow you anywhere foreign foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] wait is this second sticker new no all right I don't think so that's the logo we were like comparing it to whoever we're saying that's not the logo that was on the trucks it is though isn't it no Wolf's security oh okay these are like some kind of Lathe maybe yeah I have no idea these look like polishing wheels this whole shelf is still stocked it's all porcelain ceramic making stuff foreign big mixing pots or something [Music] with the lights turned off voltage lab is closed last time okay this looks exactly the same right nothing has moved no wow let me get you for scale over there thank you got a control panel here of some kind everything's caged in to act as a faraday cage a really old looking meter there General these three Transformers formed what's known as a Cascade set and were the backbone of the lab the secondary windings of one Transformer would be hooked up to the primary of the next gradually stepping up the voltage the light blue posts the Transformers are sitting on our insulators and they grow in height with each successive unit to properly insulate each one from the ground they are massive yeah that's tall ginormous I think the slab was capable of over a million volts maybe two millions the impulse generator also known as a marks generator was the most formidable piece of equipment in the lab it was essentially a group of capacitors that were charged in parallel with DC voltage to a predetermined value each capacitor was separated by a spark gap and when triggered an electric Arc would form between them connecting them all in series the result was a pulse of up to 3 million volts reaching Peak amplitude in just one and a half microseconds this man-made lightning would be used to test the effects of power surges such as those caused by real lightning on various components found on the electric grid given the fact that lock was an insulator Factory most of the tests performed here were done to learn the breakdown properties of insulators under various conditions however the lab also performed Consulting work for outside companies who were interested in testing all types of equipment in order to obtain high voltage DC current a set of kinetron vacuum tubes was used to rectify the alternating current from the Transformers the kinetron set may have been removed from the lab at some point as I don't recall seeing it the next important pieces of equipment in the lab are the sphere gaps they could serve various different purposes but one of the primary uses was for measuring voltage given the uniform surface of the Spheres an arc bridging a gap of constant distance would also be at constant voltage plus or minus three percent therefore for any given distance between the two spheres the voltage of a spark between them would be known check out this falling chair and this piece of equipment on it that falling chairs gotta be old 1950s maybe even older I understand that okay today we're gonna explain tell us all about it where do I start he's a fraud there's all kinds of old equipment in here jeez it's fully stocked we got a little control panel here as well look they have a meter for sphere Gap spacing what date is this fire extinguisher from 1981. that gives you an idea of this desk when it was used yeah even though the factory only shut down recently I don't think they used the lab for a very long time the catalog people have all their different kinds of insulators in there look at the drawing on it it's pretty sick it's pretty old all right come on can we see some drawings porcelain insulators it's just okay here's your eyes [Applause] cover's cool right here inside yeah that's okay this cabinet's completely rusting out so here's the motor generator um I believe this front part here was the generator yeah this was the motor looks like the motor was actually replaced with something more modern generator looks original these look like some really old huge multimeters they had bird safe devices that would not Arc if a bird happened to complete this circuit or something with another Minion Slater so this is like a big movable staircase they could use to service stuff foreign looks like you were allowed to smoke in the lab until 1995. Road capacitor stack assembly [Applause] 1984 calendar on the thing a bunch of books about aluminum modern Plastics encyclopedia Handbook of chemistry and physics Ohio brass they were basically a competitor to lock if I remember correctly made the same type of equipment ehv electrical high voltage foreign there's an arc flashover so that's basically what they were testing in here at what point when their insulators flash over let's see if there's any other little pictures [Applause] you get the idea just lots of pictures of transmission towers found something bingo historical photo of the lab it looks way better with those colors yeah I mean we can't really tell the colors but that is stupid yeah um let's find a place I can put this down and pop it open pictures of substations foreign [Music] there it is this is here this thing has definitely been here for a long time the impulse generator I'm trying to find a photo of that room with something parking and you can clearly see it's that room that would be so yeah continuing upwards yeah there's a control panel here this is definitely the master control panel this is where the guy controlling the show would be nice scissor switch right there that's where you pull the lever and activate everything I don't know looks like it though just notice there's a huge Gantry crane in this room makes sense for all the stuff they'd have to move it's crazy how big this room is without this light on in the corner the Shadows they make are pretty cool over here there that is sus it's the vent up there yeah it is [Applause] it's really windy oh this is just storage over here files which looks like paperwork sales boring shit old paperwork oh this is the view right here should one of us stay here and the other goes in for scale sure also check out that Doritos bag in the corner right behind you oh it's an old one it's like a drawing of an insulator lab coat foreign following this visit we managed to make one return trip to the lab this time photographing it in the daylight there were only a few unsealed windows but the equipment looked even more captivating under the soft natural light The Echoes of a thunderstorm outside provided a very fitting atmosphere unfortunately since the filming of this video the high voltage laboratory at lock has been completely leveled to make way for housing [Music] electrical infrastructure like transmission lines and substations are such a common sight in the landscape that they're almost invisible however since visiting the lab I've begun to view them with a new sense of Fascination always checking out what kinds of insulators are being used the power of historic places like Locke is that they can show us the lineage of technological breakthroughs that most of us now take for granted their monuments to the Decades of human progress that led us to where we are today saddens me that the Locke laboratory a place likely unmatched by anything else still in existence has been lost to time this story is not yet over however and the ending is not as Bleak as I may have led you to believe at the final hour before demolition a man by the name of Jeff behari was able to negotiate the rescue of some of the lab's equipment most notably the impulse generator and the sphere gaps Jeff is determined to not only preserve this equipment but to get it up and running again for all to see and enjoy he's already been running a museum featuring a wide range of vintage electrical apparatus but in order to house and operate the equipment from Locke he's going to need a bigger building he's recently established the museum as a non-profit at considerable expense to himself and now needs help covering the cost of shipping the equipment down to its new home in Florida getting to see this equipment come to life again is something I never thought was a possibility when I first entered the lab and it would be an amazing end to the story to see it preserved and inspiring the public for many years to come I'll include a link to his GoFundMe below for anyone who would like to help out [Music]

Channel: The Proper People

Views: 385,294

Keywords: abandoned, urban, exploration, urbex, exploring, proper, people, theproperpeople, abandoned places, baltimore, general electric, locke insulators, electrical engineering, impulse generator, marx generator, electricity, high volgate lab

Id: YGE0Qtf_G-g

Length: 37min 53sec (2273 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023