He set up an experimental steam heating system at his home in Lockport in 1876. Holly ran an underground pipe from his house to a steam boiler away in the backyard. Through this wooden pipe he ran steam and found that there was little heat loss. He repeated the experiment with a 100-foot pipe to a neighbor's house. The experiment was successful and he convinced others of the possibility of wide-scale central steam heating. Holly formed a company of investors interested in his steam concept of central heating with a capital of $25,000. He merged the new company with the Holly Manufacturing Company to establish the Holly Steam Combination Company in 1877. Its goals were to commercially distribute heat from a central station and develop district heating for towns and cities in Canada and the United States. Holly's district heating system used a large boiler at a central plant and provided steam to a group of town buildings in a surrounding city district through a circuit of insulated water pipes that distributed steam and returned it as water after being condensed. The pipes were insulated to reduce heat loss. The serviced buildings were metered with a steam quantity recorder invented by Holly. The consumer was charged for the heat consumed from the steam supply in accordance with coal comparison rates. Holly designed and invented all the necessary control regulators and measuring devices to run a heating system for a city district. He patented 150 inventions in his lifetime. He was a friend of inventor Thomas Edison, who asked Holly to become an assistant at his research laboratory in Menlo Park. Holly refused, as he wished to concentrate on his own businesses instead. Unrealized plans Holly dreamed of constructing a nineteen-story skyscraper. He thought that Niagara Falls would become a tourist attraction someday, so he proposed the idea of building a structure on Goat Island near the falls for viewing. The plan was never realized due to a lack of finances; he was unable to gather enough investors for such an expensive and highly speculative project. Although Holly's skyscraper was never built, the Skylon Tower, measuring high from the bottom of the falls, was constructed near the proposed site. The concept of similar heights for skyscrapers became popular in New York City shortly before Holly's death in 1894, but did not originate from his architectural designs. Works The following are some