Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World

The preliminaries

• Electricity in the late 1800s was still considered a wild unknown—a wondrous and mysterious “fluid.” Electricity in the home was fraught with the peril of electric shock.
  • For years, scientists and inventors all over the world tinkered, mostly unsuccessfully, with a practical indoor electric light—some kind of enclosed glass globe that could safely and brightly glow.
• With direct current (“DC,” championed by Thomas Edison), electrons are spaced evenly and flow steadily. With alternating current (“AC,” championed by Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse), the electrons cluster, advancing and retreating in fits and starts.
• During this time, people were deeply concerned with the rise of a plutocracy that used monopolies, money, and amenable politicians to control the US.

Thomas Edison

• In the late 1870s, Thomas Alva Edison was already famous for improving the telegraph, as well as inventing the talking phonograph and the incandescent light bulb. He was a disheveled, widely beloved genius who minced no words, lived off apple pie, and was a favorite amongst reporters.
  • Edison saw electricity as a way to bestow more hours to the day for work or play, and to make life easier for people.
  • Edison’s Menlo Park in New Jersey was America’s first invention factory.
• J. Pierpont Morgan partially bankrolled Edison’s dream of creating the first US incandescent electric lighting system.
  • Morgan was a conservative financier who was deeply uncomfortable with the chaos and competition of industrial capitalism. 
  • As his power grew, so did his need for control, and it dictated much of his strategy in the bitter struggle over electricity.
• In 1879, Edison boasted that he had a workable incandescent light bulb, and would create an entire electrical power system.

• He established the Edison Electric Light Company to conduct business.
• But, his new light only lasted an hour, and was still far from commercially viable.
• Edison worked feverishly, seeking a long-burning filament, the properly shaped glass, and the perfect atmosphere within that glass.
  • Edison decided that the only way to diminish the horrific cost of copper wire for transmission was to run low currents through thin copper wires.
• One of his workers, watched by Edison, placed a plain carbonized cotton-thread filament in a vacuum glass bulb. It burned for 14.5 hours. 
• Edison applied for a light bulb patent that catapulted him to even greater fame.

• Edison’s unique access to big corporate money gave him an enormous advantage over his rivals. He created a new relationship between corporate capital and scientific creativity.
• In 1882, he created a successful “central station” on Pearl Street in Manhattan by manufacturing and installing 14 miles of underground distribution cables and wires. In the end, over 100 incandescent bulbs glowed on the street and in nearby offices. In the coming months, another 2,000 in additional buildings were lit up.  
  • This was the first true incandescent electric light network.
• All these early services operated on very low voltage. So, the wires might cause a shock but would not electrocute a passerby.
  • But, this system was efficient only within a half-mile radius of the generator.

Nikola Tesla

• In 1882, Tesla was a tall, slender, 26-year-old Serbian engineer exploring Paris as a junior engineer at Edison Electric Light Company’s Paris branch. 
  • Tesla’s father was an Eastern Orthodox minister and his highly inventive mother devised many handy household items and tools.
  • While in school, he saw a dynamo (an electrical generator) in action.
    • A Gramme machine, which used the dynamo, could also serve as a motor. He noticed that it had commutator brushes that sparked badly.
  • He never stopped wrestling with how to design a motor that did not awkwardly scoop up electric current with a commutator and brush.
• Tesla envisioned an AC induction motor, involving a magnetic field, that would obliterate life’s tiresome chores and burdens.
  • Tesla’s motor operated on AC’s undulating electrical rhythms. AC’s swift back-and-forth reversals, which advanced along conductors (versus the steady, forward-only movement of DC electrons) were pivotal to his polyphase (designed to supply or use simultaneously several alternating currents of the same voltage and frequency but with different phases) vision.
• Tesla began explaining his wonderful AC induction motor to people at work, but polyphase AC was difficult to grasp.
  • Tesla already had a working model, and seeing how he was so restless and ambitious, Edison officials urged him to go to NY to work with Edison himself. 
• He landed in NY in 1884. The US was urban, industrial and exceedingly rich, its gross national product soaring from $9.1 billion to $37.1 billion, its per capita income tripling during this time.
  • He met with Edison, and later said that the meeting was a memorable event in his life. Tesla was amazed at this wonderful man who, without scientific training, had accomplished so much.
  • Tesla soon proved his worth, as he fixed a passenger steamship that was stuck in the dock because Edison’s on-board lighting system had broken down.
• At one point, he and Edison discussed the AC system, as Tesla pointed out that a central station based on AC dynamos could liberate electricity from the one-mile shackle.
  • Edison said that he was not interested because AC was deadly. (Also, Edison didn’t invent the AC generators; he took enormous pride in having invented every aspect of his DC system.)
• Tesla labored for Edison, designing 24 different types of machines, and Edison had promised $50,000 upon completion. But Edison reneged, and Tesla quit.
  • He and Edison were amused and annoyed by each other. Tesla found Edison’s method inefficient, for immense ground had to be covered to get anything done unless blind chance intervened. 
• In 1885, Tesla created the Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company. He received his first patents—a commutator for a dynamo, an electric lamp, and a regulator.
  • Before long, he was cheated out of his company by two investors.
  • He then spent many days working for labor gangs. In 1887, one of his foremen introduced him to a high-level engineer, who hired Tesla; Tesla soon had enough to establish the Tesla Electric Company and set up a lab.

George Westinghouse

• By 1884, at 37, Westinghouse had already assembled a formidable empire and fortune in the unpredictable world of railroads and had invented several useful railroad advances.
  • By the early 1880s, he owned several companies, mostly in Pittsburgh,
  • To the press, Westinghouse was somewhat bland, though in private he was compelling, forthright, and charismatic.
  • Westinghouse remained a tremendous idealist, dedicated to making the world a better place through engineering and machines.
• Westinghouse was much admired by his workers.
  • He tried to build corporations that employed many people and paid living wages, larger even than what other manufacturers paid or what the market necessitated.
  • His companies were pioneers in worker safety, disability benefits, and pensions.
• In 1885, while he read about an AC system, he realized it was a revolutionary new way to economically transfer electricity over long distances.
  • Westinghouse bought parts for an AC system, but upon realizing that much of it was nonfunctional, he reassembled most of it himself; most notably, he created the first modern transformer.
  • Soon, much of Great Barrington, MA was connected to electricity via this new system. Here, for the first time in the US, high-voltage electricity had been generated, transmitted, and then reduced in voltage (“stepped down”) for domestic consumption.
  • Generating stations could be located far from cities, closer to their sources of fuel, and their electricity dispatched quietly in great wire grids.
• Meanwhile, Edison was incensed to learn that Westinghouse, a formidable rival with immense achievements, was invading the field of incandescent lighting.

The War of Electric Currents Begins

• In 1888, death by wire became a great preoccupation.
  • Westinghouse, after one year in business, had constructed 68 AC central stations. Even Edison’s people considered buying an AC system.
• The small world of NY electricians began to buzz with rumors about Tesla. He was allegedly filing a stream of patents related to an AC system.
  • He had created all the necessary components for three complete AC systems: single-phase, two-phase, and three-phase.
• Tesla traveled to Columbia College, where the American Institute of Electrical Engineers was convening.
  • He gave a lecture, declaring that the presence of commutators and brushes on existing motors to redirect the naturally produced AC into DC were unnecessary.
    • He used two alternating currents that were out of step with each other (polyphase). The magnetic fields pushed the rotating shaft of the motor around. By using more than one set of currents, he ensured that there was always a strong current to power the motor.
• This catapulted him to instant fame in the engineering world; Westinghouse heard about the landmark lecture and visited him in 1888.
  • Westinghouse inquired about purchasing the patents, and Tesla agreed.
  • Tesla admired Westinghouse’s qualities as a businessman. Like Edison, Tesla wanted great wealth not for the sake of it, but so he would be completely free to think, invent, and develop his ideas. An ardent idealist, he saw himself as bestowing a great gift on the world.
• In 1888, Tesla served as a Westinghouse consultant. By granting his new all-important AC induction motor to a rapidly expanding electrical empire, Tesla eliminated the one great remaining advantage of Edison’s DC system.

• Edison and his camp were serious about their war against AC—he published a furious diatribe against AC and Westinghouse.
  • Westinghouse responded, pointing out that none of Westinghouse’s central stations sustained a single case of fire, whereas Edison’s had several. 
• Ultimately, Tesla’s AC induction motor did not, as Westinghouse hoped, mesh well with Westinghouse’s AC model.
  • In 1889, Tesla left Westinghouse, feeling that his advice about his own invention was not accepted. To do creative work, he wanted to be completely free.

Death by Electrocution

• In 1888, Edison received a letter from the NY State Death Commission, asking him for his opinion on using electricity for electrocuting condemned criminals.
  • Edison said he opposed capital punishment on moral grounds. A month later, sensing a business opportunity to associate AC with death, Edison said that the most suitable apparatus was Westinghouse’s alternating machine.
  • At the same time, Harold Brown, an obscure NY engineer, called for outlawing all AC above 300 volts to prevent the risk of human life. (He wrote this in the Evening Post, owned by Henry Villard, soon-to-be president of Edison Electric).
  • Brown was determined to make sure AC was used for electrocution.
    • He submitted dogs, calves, and horses to multiple electric shocks, killing them with wires before horrified crowds.
  • The NY legislature established electrocution as the new means of capital punishment. 
• In 1889, William Kemmler was sentenced to electric death for brutally axe-murdering a woman that he was living with, Tillie Ziegler.
  • During this time, the electrical company Thomson-Houston, run by Charles Coffin, was engaged in talks with Villard about a merger with Edison Electric. 
    • Coffin began secretly helping Brown buy used Westinghouse alternators for three prisons. Edison’s side then had their man-killing Westinghouse AC machines.
  • When the warden flipped the switch, the doctor declared Kemmler dead. 
    • But he started breathing even though his body was limp, foam seeped through his mouth, and his clothes caught fire. In the end, he was roasted to death in a terrible spectacle.
    • Edison blamed the doctors for misplacing electrodes. Westinghouse said that the manner of killing completely vindicated his claims. Harold Brown disappeared from public sight.

Financial Troubles

• In 1890, Baring Brothers & Company, the greatest banking house in the world, went bankrupt, and economic disasters rippled across the US.
• In 1891, Tesla (now wealthy and living luxuriously) was aware that Westinghouse Electric was in severe financial condition.
  • Westinghouse asked Tesla to forgo his patent royalties. Tesla declared that Westinghouse had been his friend and believed in him when others had no faith, so he gladly tore up his royalties contract. Tesla saved Westinghouse’s company, sacrificing millions in possible future profits.
  • Thanks to this move (and several others), Westinghouse emerged stronger than ever and still fully in charge.
• Meanwhile, Edison was struggling as well, and Edison Electric’s president, Henry Villard, kept suggesting mergers, which Edison angrily dismissed.
  • Villard was secretly talking to Chalres Coffin, whose business brilliance had steadily forged Thomson-Houston into a major electrical power.
  • JP Morgan eventually supported the consolidation of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston. Morgan realized that Coffin produced twice the profit of Edison’s company, so the companies consolidated and Coffin was placed in charge. It was the nation’s second-largest industrial merger.
• They renamed the company General Electric—JP Morgan erased Edison’s name out of corporate existence; Edison was infuriated and heartbroken.
  • GE controlled ¾ of the nation’s electrical business and wanted AC patents. And JP Morgan, now a firm GE backer, preferred a tidy monopoly above all other industrial arrangements.

The World Fair

• In 1892, Chicago was planning its great World Fair and Westinghouse wanted its biggest electrical contract. He saw it as an unparalleled opportunity to display, for six months, the true glories and possibilities of AC electricity.
  • He had become the darling of the Chicago newspapers, far more preferred than the knaves of the GE electrical trust. 
  • GE submitted one extortionate bid after another, demanding sky-high rates, while Westinghouse submitted far lower bids.
• Ultimately, Westinghouse won the much coveted prize.
  • He created a special stopper lamp, one that could be almost entirely machine made, and thus cheaper than Edison’s lamp.
  • The Westinghouse engineers were now building from scratch the biggest AC central station ever installed, capable of powering 160,000 lights.
  • The fair generated and used three times as much electricity as Chicago.

Niagara Falls

• In 1886, Erie Canal engineer Thomas Evershed sought to create a canal water wheel power system. The water would be siphoned off and surge into a long canal that would diverge at factory and mill sites to feed hundreds of water wheels.
  • Tesla joined Westinghouse in the Niagara bidding effort, competing with GE, to convince them that AC truly was ideal for creating and distributing power.
  • In 1893, Niagara Falls Power Company chose polyphase AC.
• In August 1895, Niagara power was harnessed for full-time commercial use.
  • This was Tesla and Westinghouse’s electric dream: the revolutionary delivery of cheap electricity to entire cities and regions, from just one locale.

Westinghouse – The Later Years

• In the early 1900s, he focused on a hugely ambitious new AC locomotive project, and brought bigger sales.
  • Soon, though, his companies went belly-up.
• When the electric company emerged from bankruptcy in 1908, he was no longer the supreme ruler. NY and Boston banking interests gained majority control of a company they had long coveted.
• By 1910, the new directors pushed him off the board entirely; it was a disappointment from which he never fully recovered.
• At a time when many viewed industrialists and financiers as robber barons, Westinghouse was an exception: an honest businessman who sold the best product for the best price, relished competition, and valued his workers.
• He passed away in 1914 in Manhattan.

Edison – The Later Years

• After GE’s formation in 1892, Edison was little involved in the electric power field. For a while, he focused on iron ore, but he lost too much money and went back to his laboratory to focus on batteries.
• The public viewed Edison as the loveable man who brought them many wonderful things that profoundly changed their world. He died in 1931 at the age of 84.

Tesla – The Later Years

• Tesla had become a NY societal darling, who was steeped in the most abstract electrical science but also widely read in the best literature of Italy, Germany, and France, as well as most of the Slavic countries. He was a man of distinguished sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force.
  • For a while, Tesla focused on sending messages without any wires; he built a small radio transmitting station.
  • In 1895, Tesla’s lab burned to the ground. All his specially designed dynamos, oscillators, motors, and vacuum bulbs, newly developed radio transmitters, were destroyed.
    • Edison set aside his competitive instincts and offered temporary working shelter to the grieving Tesla.
• Then, Tesla worked on building a powerful electrical transmitter and moved to Colorado Springs to experiment. 
• Eventually, he fell into more financial difficulties and Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, worried about the bad publicity of an elderly, impoverished Tesla, paid him $125 a month, which was a pittance, considering he forfeited so many millions to save the company long ago.
• In 1943, Tesla died in New York at 86.

• The beginnings of the discovery of electricity, from ancient Grecian philosopher Thales, Stephen Gray, Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta of Pavia, and Michael Faraday
• The tense drama of William Kemmler’s various trials regarding the constitutionality of death by electric chair
• The complicated back-and-forth of the Niagara Falls deal, involving betrayals and shady business dealings
• The technical details of alternating current, direct current, and exactly how electricity would transmit through many complicated pieces—and their related patent disputes
• Many stories and anecdotes about the three men, including their interactions with JP Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, and Mark Twain