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One Dog. The morning after, the Eastern seaboard experienced a huge hiccup in its usually well-ordered flow of commerce, industry and communications. Both the New York and Amer ican Stock Exchanges delayed their openings 65 minutes. New York's Commodity Exchange, Inc., could not open at all, and disappointed copper-futures traders had to sit on the sidelines while Rhodesia declared independence, a development that otherwise would have sent the volatile metal soaring—and did at the next session.
Mountains of unsorted checks piled up in banks where computers that can process 200,000 checks hourly had whirred to a halt. Equally mountainous were the 50 million pieces of mail—one-fifth of the U.S. total daily volume—that piled up, causing some West Coast deliveries to lag as much as two days.
In Manhattan, Macy's and Gimbels finally agreed: business was down drastically. Some 12,000 theatergoers missed 21 Broadway shows (one off-Broadway production went on before seven adults and a dog). Overall, the loss in business and time was estimated at $100 million, with New York City alone accounting for some 4,122,000 man-hours down the drain, equal to $8,454,000.
Dunlop Tire's Buffalo plant lost 1,700 tires (worth $50,000) when power failed during the critical curing process. At the Tonawanda, N.Y., Chevrolet plant, 350 engine blocks had to be junked because high-speed drills froze while boring piston holes. Ford's huge Mahwah, N.J., auto assembly plant, eagerly awaiting power, was only number two on the list. When the Rockland & Orange Light & Power Co. got on stream again, Vice President Dean Seifreid overruled the auto plant in favor of West Point. "Those cadets," he said, "have to study tonight." The Ford plant was turned on shortly afterward. Bakers saw their profits flatten along with their loaves; 300,000 were spoiled in New York State alone.
Herculean Task. In the mortified aftermath, utility companies faced a herculean task in getting one-sixth of the nation moving again. When a steam-driven dynamo closes down, the power to restart the heavy machine—up to 30 tons—in most cases comes initially from electricity. Moreover, once a steam turbine stops, its shaft cools and shrinks; it must be brought up gradually to generating speed, or it will not have the proper relationship to its bearings and may "freeze." In a hydroelectric system, by contrast, sluice gates can simply be cranked open to let gushing water turn the great turbines by gravity. Thus Ontario Hydro-Electric, with 60 water-powered plants, managed to restore its first current to Toronto in less than an hour. Rochester Gas & Electric used three small stations where generators could be powered by the Genesee River to actuate two of its larger plants; the lights were on again by 11 p.m.
Restarting Boston Edison Co.'s South Boston steam plant was a far more tortuous process. Workers broke up the scaffolding of a powerhouse under construction and used the wood to stoke an auxiliary furnace to heat fuel oil. Once the oil was sufficiently warmed, it was ignited to build up a pressure in the steam system of 200 Ibs. per sq. in.; that pressure, in turn, enabled auxiliary electric units to heat the heavy bunker