town of $55.20 a month.

Nick Britton traded his town properties, consisting of his saloon(present liquor store), Phelan blacksmith shop and Heinen marble works (present Linderbaum repair shop and the next lot west), to Harry Bullard in exchange for Dakota land. The electric plant was constructed on the rear of the latter property.

Ordinance no. 75 revised the contract with Bullard to the equivalent of 56 lamps with forty watts luminescence, these to include 13 of 120 watts and 27 of 40 watts. The town agreed to an annual payment of $772.80 for this lighting.

On Sept. 11, 1913, Ossian celebrated "electric light day" with many attractions, including a street carnival, a merry-go-round and a baseball game between the Boosters and the Chicago Union Giants. Mayor Schmitz addressed the assembled throng and gave the signal that activated the street lights for the first time. The Bee office was the first business, and Ward Allen's residence, the first home to receive electricity.

A controversy arose by 1915, Bullard Electric began purchasing their power from the Upper Iowa Company's plant, northeast of Decorah. Their transmission lines were poorly constructed of fragile materiel, and every storm caused interruption of service, sometimes for several days. The Town Fathers demanded better service from Mr. Bullard, but without success. The city's payments to Bullard Electric were made under protest and so noted in the clerk's report.

The Catholic school was wired for electricity by A. F. Dessel late in 1916. Editor Schmitz suggests that the church building receive the same treatment, and offered a ten dollar donation for this purpose.

Ordinance no. 80, passed in 1917, set new rates reflecting the official's disgust with the oft-interrupted service. Mr. Bullard secured a court injunction barring the town from enforcing the new price scale. He charged that these rates are arbitrary, unreasonable, unfair, unjust and not remunerative.

In 1918, Mr. Bullard sold his utility to Andrew O'Rear. The suit against the town, brought by Bullard Electric, was dropped with O'Rear paying the court costs.A new contract was signed, calling for the corporation to pay 6¢a kilowatt for electricity used for pumping water and a flat fee of $772.80 per year for lighting the streets.

The Upper Iowa Power Company was first organized in 1906. They suffered large financial losses when their power dam was undermined and destroyed. They reorganized in 1909 under the name: Upper Iowa Light and Power Company. Two dams and generating plants were completed by 1912. The company was purchased by the Midcontinental Utilities Company. This organization was re-incorporated under the name, Interstate Power Company. Although we find no confirmation in the records of Interstate Power, this company had evidently absorbed the interests of O'Rear by 1921. A new 33,000 volt transmission line was constructed from Postville by 1923. This line greatly improved the service to Ossian. We find it of interest that the 6¢ a kilowatt rate for pumping water, established in 1918, has presently been reduced to 4.430¢ for the first 100 kwh with 3.09¢ for excess.

THE EARLY AUTOMOBILE

The first mention we can find concerning early automobiles was an item of 1895. It read: "A horseless carriage, the greatest invention of the century, will be exhibited at the Howard county fair. This attraction was obtained at the great expense of $200."

An automobile, manufactured by the Winton Carriage Co., created a local sensation by chugging up and down the streets of Ossian in September of 1900. This fascinating machine was described as, "fine and substancial, weighing 1755 lbs."

The first automobile owned in N. E. Iowa was purchased by James Markley of Waukon in 1902. This machine, an Oldsmobile one-seater, came in several packages, and had to be assembled by the buyer. Instructions directed that two drops of oil must be squirted into 14 separate oil holes, located on the car's transmission, after every five miles of travel. Thirteen of these points of lubrication were