Rochester Gas & Electric lantern slides
Biographical / Historical note
Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) is a utilities service company serving 378,500 electricity customers and 313,000 natural gas customers across nine counties in Western New York State, centered in Rochester. The company is a subsidiary of AVANGRID, which owns other similar utilities companies across the American northeast.
The company was originally formed as the Rochester Gas Light Company in the mid-1800s (between 1834-1848), and in 1892 joined with the Rochester Electric Light Company and Edison Electric to form the Rochester Gas and Electric Company. Edison Electric was among the first of the American power utility companies to install underground electric wiring as an alternative to aerial power lines, and also the first to use meters to track electricity usage. In 1904 the merger with the Rochester Railway and Light Company formed the Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation, under which all the region's power utilities were united. The railways were transferred away in 1919, and the company became completely independent some thirty years later in 1949.
The company grew rapidly as the demand for electricity and gas power grew after WWI, and was one of the few companies which did not have to ration its supply to its customers during WWII. In 1952, after the discovery of rich natural gas deposits in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, RG&E switched to natural rather than manufactured gas, which was made from refining the fumes from burning coal. By 1956 the company served some 150,000 customers.
Scope and Contents
The Rochester Gas & Electric lantern slide collection consists of nineteen boxes containing approximately 500 glass lantern slides with photographs taken by RG&E from approximately 1932 to some time in the 1960s. A twentieth box includes black and white photos and newspaper clippings. The images have not yet been fully described.
Writing included on the original slide boxes often identifies RG&E workers and staff who may have commissioned or taken the photographs, or used the slides in their work, as well as the dates and subject content of the photographs. Topics include the Inner and Outer Loop (Interstate 490, which serves the Rochester area), street lighting, natural gas flames, electrical workers and work, equipment and machinery, residential streets and buildings, dams, presentation slides, drawings and cartoons, maps and diagrams, and portraits of people, including some contemporary with WWI and the Victorian era.
Many of the original lantern slide boxes are included, showing that the slides were produced by the Eastman Kodak Company. There are both early "gray" Eastman-Kodak lantern slide boxes and the later "yellow" Kodak lantern slide boxes included.
One binder of additional non-slide materials include photographs of company events, including award ceremonies and the company's baseball team (undated), negatives of photos which may have been part of lantern slides at one point, and a collection of newspaper clippings from 1932 with articles about the company.
Creator
- Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation (Organization)
Dates
- Creation: 1932-1960s
Language of Materials
English
Extent
20 box(es) (19 lantern slide boxes and 1 2.5" letter box of photographs and newspaper clippings)
Access
Rochester Gas & Electric Lantern Slides is an unprocessed collection. If possible, RBSCP allows provisional access to unprocessed collections. For more information, please contact RAREBKS@library.rochester.edu.
Use
Reproductions are made upon request but can be subject to restrictions. Permission to publish materials from the collection must currently be requested. Please note that some materials may be copyrighted or restricted. Materials related to the Seneca Nation may become restricted upon future review or request. It is the researcher's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other case restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the collections. For more information contact rarebks@library.rochester.edu.
Preferred Citation
[Item, title, item date], Rochester Gas & Electric Lantern Slide Collection, D.604, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
Arrangement
At the current time, the finding aid is organized by archival box number. The lantern slides have been removed from their original Kodak plate boxes and individually cleaned and sleeved. Dividers have been placed in the archival boxes to keep the contents of each plate box together, but each archival box contains between four and five plate boxes' worth of slides. As further detail can be added about the individual slides, an improved organization which groups together pertinent images can be instituted.
Genre / Form
Geographic
Topical
Processing Information
As the majority of the 500+ images in the Rochester Gas & Electric lantern slide collection are undescribed, the materials were selected as a good candidate for digital imaging and outreach to the community for identification. In 2020, student Evelyn Pineda undertook a pilot project to build the digital project website, where the cleaned and imaged slides can be viewed. At this time, only two of the nineteen boxes of slides have been imaged and described. While delays due to Covid and the pandemic climate have set the project back, the intention is still to complete imaging and making the slides accessible via the website. Identification and updated details suggested by community members who recognize the contents of the images will be added to this finding aid as possible.
- Title
- Rochester Gas & Electric lantern slides
- Status
- Unprocessed
- Author
- Lev Earle
- Date
- September 2022
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Library Details
Part of the Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation Library
