On November 15, 1896, in Niagara Falls, the switch was thrown on an important scientific experiment that settled the debate of direct versus alternating current and created the world’s first modern utility. In the process, Buffalo became the world’s first city to be lit with electricity. Six years later, a local man while working for Buffalo Forge, Willis Havilland Carrier, invented air conditioning. The region played a pivotal role in the lives and careers of three US Presidents, all in a span of four years: Former Buffalo Mayor and Erie County Sheriff Grover Cleveland finished his second term in the White House in 1897. Four years later, Cleveland’s successor, President William McKinley, while visiting Buffalo, was assassinated. His vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, came to Buffalo to take the oath of office as 26th president of the United States. In the middle of all that was a world’s fair, the Pan-American Exposition, which featured a dazzling illuminated array of buildings by Thomas Edison. This is how a Buffalo visitors guide described the area then: "The City of Buffalo has, by the census of 1900, a population of 352,387, standing eighth among the cities of the United States. It leads the world in its commerce in flour, wheat, coal, fresh fish, and sheep, and stands second only to Chicago in lumber. In cattle and hogs, only Chicago and Kansas City exceed it….Its railroad yard facilities are the greatest in the world, and are being increased rapidly…In marine commerce, although the season is limited to six months, Buffalo is exceeded in tonnage only by London, Liverpool, Hamburg, New York, and Chicago…The climate in summer is delightful, and it is one of the healthiest cities in the country, with a limitless supply of pure water…Coal and food supplies are so low in price it is one of the cheapest of the large cities in which to live..…in flour, grain, and coal alone equals ten percent of the yearly foreign trade of the entire United States." In the late 19th century, the area’s largest newspaper was run by one of America’s greatest writers, Mark Twain. Twain arrived in Buffalo, in 1869, a bachelor and left, in 1871, married and a father. In 1874, the Chautauqua Institute was founded and, since then, has hosted a constellation of luminaries including Presidents Grant through Clinton. Elbert Hubbard founded the utopian Roycroft community of arts and crafts in East Aurora. In 1898, Edmund Fitzgerald moved his family, including son “Scotty”—that’s F. Scott Fitzgerald—to Buffalo. The Fitzgeralds lived in Allentown and young Scotty attended Nardin Academy. It was here in 1883 that one of the towering figures of the 20th century was born and lived, the most decorated soldier of WWI, the father of the CIA and American intelligence agencies, and the “Last American Hero” according to President Dwight Eisenhower—William Donovan.