In 1831, San Jose was the first electrified city west of the Rockies. James Jerome Owen, editor of the San Jose Daily Mercury, came up with a grand idea to illuminate the streets of San Jose - a huge tower rising over the intersection of Santa Clara and Market Streets. Using his newspaper's influence, he obtained $4,000 in funding (from early venture capitalists?) and constructed a tower 237 feet high with a 30-foot flagpole on top. Six carbon arc lamps shone down from the top. It was an interesting idea, but Owen's ability to raise money far exceeded his knowledge of physics. The bright light from the arcs faded too quickly to adequately light the streets below. The tower proved irresistible to drunks, though, who wanted to climb it, and farmers complained that its glow disturbed their chickens. By 1884, the tower was mostly abandoned and lit only for special occasions.
But the story doesn't stop there. In 1889,eight years after San Jose's tower was built, the Eiffel Tower was built in Paris. Some hinted that the tower's design was stolen from San Jose. Did the French really steal it? They may have had access: Pierre de Saisset, the French consul in San Jose in the late 1800s, was heavily involved in the company that owned the light tower and the French journal La Lumiere Electrique featured an article about the San Jose tower. Was Eiffel influenced? Did someone steal the plans? We'll never know for sure.
In 1989, the San Jose Court of Historical Inquiry, whose sessions are intended to address controversies involving events of the past, while having as much fun as possible along the way, set out to find out. The city of San Jose charged the city of Paris and the Eiffel estate with copyright infringement and demanded all profits France had gathered from its copy of "our" tower. The mud-slinging began in earnest during the trial, with Gustav Eiffel called a crook, his tower called "a trace job" and San Jose's tower described as a " poor clown's hat of a design". Eiffel's reputation received a blow when it was revealed that two of his employees were in fact the designers of his namesake tower. In the end, California Justice Marcel Poche ruled that it was merely a case of two people coming up with similar ideas independently. Paris can still call its structure the Eiffel Tower and San Jose can continue to call the spot where its tower fell the Owen Tower Land.
In 1915, the 15-ton tower was felled by a windstorm. A half-sized replica now stands in San Jose's Kelley Park. Compare them and decide for yourself.
