The best and most interesting summer job was between my junior and senior year at Cornell. I was lucky to get a job at the Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) an electric power generating station by Lake Ontario. In order to get the job I had to be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI! Why? If anyone wanted to do a dastardly deed, one of the best places to do the most damage is to attack a power generating plant. This was a coal burning plant. Coal was delivered to the plant from Pennsylvania or Ohio by railroad. There were scores of loaded railroad coal cars in the rail yard. The railroad cars were bottom unloaded and moved by conveyor inside the plant where it was "fed" to four huge furnaces. The burning coal heated the water that was pumped into the station via large pipes from Lake Ontario. The heated water was converted into steam. The steam was piped to four huge turbines. The steam was forced into fan blades on the turbines which turned the turbine shafts. The revolving turbine shafts were connected to the four generators. The generators produced the electricity. The electricity was directed to an outdoor grid system that distributed it via transmission lines to Rochester and the greater Rochester area. Sounds simple but you would not believe the miles of piping and the hundreds of pumps and compressors that were an integral part of turning those turbines and generators.

I hope from all of this that you have a greater appreciation of what goes on behind the scenes when you flip on that light switch.