from Electrical Engineer, 1890

(page 143)

The following remarkable occurrence is reported from the central electric lighting station at Pontevedra in Spain, a report of which has been communicated by Sen. E. Cabellero, manager of this station, to the Academy of Madrid. On January 2nd, at 9:15 in the evening, with a clear and serene sky, a globe of fire, of the size of an orange, was all at once observed to fall upon the electrical conductors which radiate through the town; it was impossible to say how it fell or whence it came. Along this path it progressed with a relatively slow motion to the central station, destroyed the distributing apparatus, and raising the armature of a circuit-breaker, it struck the moving dynamo. Under the eyes of the engineer and the terrified workmen, it rebounded twice from the dynamo to the conductors and from the conductors to the dynamo, then fell, and burst with a loud noise into a multitude of fragment without producing any accident, or leaving the slightest trace of its mysterious nature. During its evolutions the lights wavered in the town, which would have been plunged into complete darkness if the coolness of the electricians had not allowed them to put everything in order again in a few seconds after the vanishing of the meteor. Several persons had seen the ball of fire before it penetrated the station.