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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 6 |
| 1877 | 5 |
| 1878 | 1 |
| 1879 | 1 |
| 1882 | 3 |
| 1883 | 8 |
| 1885 | 9 |
| 1886 | 9 |
| 1887 | 5 |
| 1888 | 5 |
| 1889 | 16 |
| 1890 | 2 |
| 1891 | 19 |
| 1892 | 42 |
| 1893 | 32 |
| 1894 | 47 |
| 1895 | 52 |
| 1898 | 3 |
| 1899 | 16 |
| 1900 | 1 |
| 1903 | 14 |
| 1904 | 12 |
| 1905 | 1 |
| 1908 | 8 |
| 1909 | 28 |
| 1910 | 2 |
| 1911 | 4 |
| 1914 | 5 |
| 1915 | 7 |
| 1916 | 10 |
| 1917 | 9 |
| 1918 | 1 |
| 1923 | 4 |
| 1924 | 3 |
| 1925 | 1 |
392 stories matching wire
- Three Wires Over the Pend Oreille
Newport's phone company suspends steel wire across the river to the Fidelity mill, clearing steamboat stacks by 50 feet.
- A Squall Tore Through Seattle—and a Husband Saved His Wife from the Bay
A sudden storm knocked out telegraph and telephone wires, smashed windows, flipped wagons, ditched a shingle train, and nearly drowned a mill worker and his Native wife in Elliott Bay.
- The Great Wire War: How Seattle’s Electric Giants Tried to Buy Their Way Out of the Underground
When the City Council threatened to bury power lines underground, Union Electric and Consumers’ Electric screamed ruin. But the real drama wasn't the wires—it was the council dodging a crowd of gamblers and churchgoers demanding saloon closures.
- A High-Wire Act Above Fourth Street
A building mover narrowly escapes death after being swept off a roof and left dangling from telegraph wires.
- The Man Who Stopped the Sparks: Seattle’s Invisible Safety Net
When a fallen trolley wire killed two horses on Front Street, local engineer W.D. Gordon built a mechanical brain to save lives—and it worked every time.
- Power Company Wires Block Ships on Thea Foss Waterway
When high-voltage wires blocked a sailing ship from the city dock, a newspaper reporter dropped the story the moment they learned who owned the infrastructure.
- A Ten-Inch Snowstorm Buries Seattle and Stalls the Cars
The city's streetcars, telegraph wires and outlying districts struggle under a heavy January snowfall as Portland reports three feet and the weather observer warns of more to come.
- The Storm That Snarled the Wires: Seattle's First Snow of 1895
Three inches of snow fall on the city in a single evening, telegraph lines between Portland and Tacoma go dead, and the streetcar companies send out their plows to keep the tracks clear.
- The Hello Girls of Seattle: Inside the City’s First Telephone Exchange
A rare architectural tour reveals the inner workings of the new Bell Building on Third Avenue, where thirty young women manage the city's voice network through a complex web of wires and switchboards.
- The Peril of Water and Wire
Electrical engineer A.L. Kasson warns that firefighters face a hidden danger when spraying water on high-voltage power lines during city fires.
- The Great Telephone Switchboard Fire
A tangled mess of high-voltage arc light wires sends fireworks cascading through the central telephone exchange, nearly incinerating the entire plant.
- The Electrocution of a Lineman
A routine day for a Seattle Electric company worker ended in a harrowing, public death that left his body suspended over the city's Sixth Avenue for fifteen minutes.
- Seattle Says 'Hello' to Spokane, and the Whole Northwest Listens
Seven hundred and ninety miles of hard-drawn copper connect Puget Sound to the Inland Empire, and the mayors of the two cities mark the occasion by orating about destiny, empire and a population of two million.
- Fatal Surge on Pacific Avenue
High-voltage electricity crosses wires at a construction site, claiming the lives of two local workers and endangering several others.
- Walla Walla Tells the Gas Company: Put Your Wires Underground — and Pay Up
A 25-year gas and electric franchise goes before the council tonight, rewritten to bury every wire on Main and Alder and to hand the city a grand total of $7,750 by 1928.
- Fatal Currents: City Under Fire for Electrocution
Electricians question the city's management after two men died from a high-tension wire grounding failure.
- The Midnight Alarm at Pioneer Place
A construction mishap at the Yesler block causes a spectacular electrical failure and a city-wide false alarm.
- Copper Thieves Risk Electrocution for Profit
A wandering laborer is arrested in Pasco for allegedly stripping high-voltage lines, part of a spree of thefts terrorizing local utilities.
- The Copper Wire Bandits
Two ex-linemen were arrested in Tacoma for stealing 5,000 pounds of copper wire from dead poles and selling it.
- The Converted Burglar and the Wire That Carried Him to Seattle
A Salvation Army convert walked into the Post-Intelligencer office to tell how he crossed the Kansas penitentiary wall hand over hand on an electric-light wire. This week a Kansas keeper came to take him back.
- A Wet Rope, a Live Wire, and a Boy on a Bricklaying Crew
Reed Crews was coming down from a tin roof when a wet rope touched a power line. The accident left him dying and exposed the everyday lethality of 1909 work.
- Seattle’s Wire War: Why the City Can’t Wait for Electric Companies to Dig
As corporations drag their feet on burying overhead lines, a local editorial warns that procrastination is a corporate scheme to defeat the public will.
- A Tragic End in the Wire
A well-known Seattle man is found dead in a field near the Orphan's Home, his body tangled in barbed wire.
- The Unkept Promise of Walla Walla's Telephone Wires
City council is urged to enforce a year-old franchise agreement requiring the telephone company to bury its unsightly street-level wires.
- Seattle's Early Electric Power Wars
As rival power companies rush to wire the city, a price war breaks out, forcing residents to choose between competing arc-light contracts.
Also about this, in other words
- Death on the Wire: The Perilous Walk of Snohomish’s Bridge Builders
While politicians scheme in safe offices, local workers are laying footbridges over the Skykomish River at dizzying heights, performing a feat described as 'the most dangerous part of the grand work.'
- The Price of a Live Wire
A local man faces a life-threatening complication after a horrific electrical accident.
- Whispering Wires: The High-Tech Telephone Line
Engineers build a metallic copper circuit to link Seattle and Portland, hoping to eliminate 'induction' and allow for quiet conversation.
- A Live Wire Takes a Trimmer's Foot
An electric-light worker pays a brutal price for a fall across Tacoma's city wires.
- The Wire War: Railroad vs. Telegraph
A legal standoff erupts between the Postal Telegraph Company and the Northern Pacific Railroad along the tracks between Tacoma and Kalama.
- The Copper Wire Heist
Four laborers are taken into custody after allegedly stealing 50 pounds of copper wire from local transit facilities.
- The Wire Comes to Aberdeen
A town finally speaks to the outside world, instantly shortening the distance between the harbor and the rest of the globe.
- The Perils of Amateur Wiring
A Coulee City man survives a terrifying fall from an electric light pole.