Later Projects and Lasting Impact

Hello, American Historyteeller listeners. I have an exciting announcement. I'm going on tour and coming to a theater near you. This live show is a thrilling evening of history, storytelling, and music, with a full band accompanying me as we look back to explore the days that made America And they aren't the days that you might think. Sure, everyone knows july fourth, seventeen seventy six. We'll be hearing a lot about that date this year But there are many other days that are maybe even more influential. So come out to see me live. More shows to be announced soon. So for information on tickets and upcoming dates, go to Americanhistorylive. com. That's Americanhistorylive dot comot Come see my Days that Made America tour live on stage. goo to Americanhistorylive dot com Welcomeom Audible Originals, I'm Lindsy Graham and this is American Historyteellers Our History, Y story few figures in American history reshape daily life as much as Thomas Edison The world he was born into in eighteen forty seven was lit by candles and oil lamps for most Americans, and gas lit for the wealthy few But by the time he died in nineteen thirty one, electricity flowed through homes and businesses across the country. Edison and the research teams he organized played a major role in that transformation. Over the course of his life, he was granted more than a thousand US patents, but his legacy extends beyond invention Edison helped pioneer the very idea of organized innovation, building some of the first modern research and development laboratories in Menlow Park in later West Orange, New Jersey In the process, he established a model for how the modern world would go about the business of discovery To help us understand the man behind the myth, I'm joined today by Dr. Paul Israel, director and general editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University an author of several books about Edison, including Edison A Life of Inention conversation is next I'm Leon Nayfox. What happens when only fans becomes more than just a side hustle Only fantasy is an in depth look at the world's newest professional how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten onine Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes of Only Fantasy, ad free, only on Audible Whether you are exploring your fascinations or discovering new ones, Ottawa has stories that will introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy romantasy series. Know how true the latest blockbuster movie stayed to the sci fi story it was based on, or find unexpected reveals through an exclusive trrue Crime podcast However you listen, Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating. Select any audio book every month, plus exclusive podcasts. pllans now start at eight dollars ninety nine c. Audible. Be fascinated, be fascinating Paul Israel. Thankks for joining me today on American History Tellers My pleasure. So Thomas Edison was a tinkkeerer from a young age, but where did his curiosity come from Well, I think that kids tend to be naturally curious and some retain that and others become less curious over time So Edison retained his curiosity. I think part of that was in fact, his education and the environment that he was in. So the nineteenth century It was easy to be not just curious about technology, but to learn it pretty easily since most Tchnology was mechanical. You could literally see how a piece of machinery worked. And then Edison's own education was pretty informal. He was first in a private school when he was about seven or eight And then for a variety of reasons, including possibly the family not being able to pay for this private school in Port Huron where he grew up. He was born in Milland, Ohio And so his mother began to teach him by focusing on reading and reading a lot of the books in his father's library. That's one of the reasons why Edison was sort of imbued with The ideas of Elightenment philosophers, especially Thomas Payne And his father was an entrepreneur. So one of the things he began to understand was how entrepreneurship worked. And so between his parents developed a love of learning through reading and sort of understanding how one could move from one project to another being worried about setbacks, figuring out how to move forward. And I think all those things were really important to his education You mention Edison's getting used to setbacks. This became integral for his innovative approach this iteration, this tireless perseverance. How did Thomas Edison get involved in scientific inquiry like this? How did he begin to learn how to innovate Edison as a child and then as a young boy, is surrounded by an environment where there are very exciting technologies happening. So When they move to Port Huron, it's a lumber town, but there's also shipbuilding going on there Edison's first experiments were when he was a kid briefly attended the new public school in Port Huron And that's where he encountered his first science book, Parker's natural philosophy There was a lot in there about electricity and chemistry. In fact, the funest piece of the book was the telegraph system And he and a friend experimented with their own telegraph line Edison began to think about chemistry since batteries, for example, were Chemical batteries, right So Eddison began to learn about electricity and about the telegraph from this experience, and then he decided that he didn't really enjoy working on his father's truck farm out in the hot sun And so he got a job on the local rail line. There was a new line, the Grand Trunk railway between Port Huron that moved down the line to Detroit, which was south of the town he grew up in. And he sold newspapers and magazines and candy and things like that. And over time, he began to collect a little chemical lab buying materials in Detroit The Detroit Free press editor gave him a little printing press and he actually printed a little newspaper for a while on the train And so even as a newsboy on the train, he was beginning to experiment. And then there was this event going on at the same time he was doing this, the Civil War That was obviously a major concern to all the people living in that area, especially when family members were in battles and there was one major battle where Edison knew that a lot of the people from the local area were involved in battalion And so he got the Detroit Free press editor to give him extra papers. And as he went down the line and the number of papers dwindled, his price went up. And so he was learning some business values and entrepreneurial values from beyond the train He also grew even more interested in telegraphy from his time working with the Grand Trump Railway. He became a telegraph operator in his teens Why don't you discuss a little bit about the wild world of telegraph operators then and how it might have shaped Edison's life of invention The teelegraph was still a relatively new technology at this time. The first line was established in the mid eighteen forties, and the telegraph slowly spread through to the Midwest by the time Edison was a young boy The telegraph was something that was also crucial for the trains often This is what was alerting stations ahead that there was a train coming and a way to prevent trains from running into each other if there was a single track And along the way were telegraph operators, Edison would visit their offices and talk to them about telegraphy And then he got his first job as a telegraph operator in the port Hon office, which was in a jewelry and clock repair shop And then shortly thereafter, he got a job as a railway telegrapher on the Port Huron railway Over the next four or so years, he literally was a itinerant telegrapher moving from place to place in the Midwest And he became very skilled as a press wire operator. The Associated press began as a telegraph wire service And operators like Edison would take the stories down overnight and then deliver them to the newspaper office the next day And as well, during these years, he experimented with the technology itself Let's talk about those experiments. What were some of Edison's first inventions made, I guess while he was a telegrapher Right, So probably his first invention was a little practice telegraph where he could As the signal came in, he could slow down the message so he could practice his receiving skills And this particular design, he would later adapt to his experiments in what was known as automatic telegraphy, which is a way of recording at very high speed And then the recording could be played back at a slower speed One of the main things he experimented on is what were known as repeaters. So the United States is a very big country and Battery power allowed you to send a signal about two hundred and fifty miles. If the signal had to go further, then an operator had to retransmit it And so what people began to develop were repeaters. And Edison had a lot of designs for repeaters, including one that was actually featured in a book on Tlegraphy Peter that could be set up in an emergency situation. And then he also was experimenting on things like ways to send more than one message over a single line. And Edison moves from the Midwest to Boston where he begins to work on his first important inventions, in particular, a stock printer that was used to report gold prices. This along with his double transmitter bring him to New York, where he's involved with the Goldenstock Telegraph Company. and develops improvements in stock ticker technology used not just on the stock exchange, All market exchanges, gold, silver prodrouce, oil, cotton, This connects him up to Western Union in part because he's also working on ways of sending two messages at the same time and he invents something called the quaduplex allows four messages to in each direction And this and other inventions of the telegraph industry lead Edison to begin to develop a small laboratory in Newark And by the end of the year, eighteen seventy five, he decides that He wants to get his family out of the city, which is becoming increasingly polluted. So then in eighteen seventy six, Edison graduates to setting up his workshop in Menloow Park, New Jersey, his most famous location. He was only thirty years old Describe the place for us So he finds some land just off the rail line between Newark and Philadelphia in Central New Jersey And that's where he sets up this new laboratory It's a wooden building. It has a machine shop in the bottom half of the building Upstairs is an electrical and chemical lab And by this time, he is working for Western Union He convinces the company to provide him with one hundred dollars a week to help support the work of the machine shop and the machinists that are there He only has five people, three machinists, tells you how important the machine shop is for iterating. Designs, Eddison could come up with a design. machine shop could make it, they could experiment with it and then modify it. and two experimenters And he's working on additional telegraph technologies One of those becomes what we know today is a telephone at that time is called a speaking teelegraph. Edison doesn't invent the first telephone a guy named Alexander Graham Bell does. and in eighteen seventy six at the Centennial exxhibition in Philadelphia It becomes one of the big things, right the demonstration of the telephone there. And Western Union is increasingly interested in having Edison work on this new technology And one of the things that comes out of his work on the telephone is a way to record telephone messages because Adison thinks about it like a telegraph and recording and playback would be important. And this becomes An entirely independent invention called the phonograph, the first ever system for recording and playing back sound What impact did the phonograph have on Edison's work at Menloow Park? The phonograph changes everything. It's what makes Edison famous It attracts investors associated with the Bell company, who set up the Edison Speaking phhonograph compomany. He begins to hire more experimenters and more machinists. And so this is in eighteen seventy eight that Edison gains this new fame And by the end of the year, he's beginning to think about something called electric lighting If the phonograph makes him famous, it's the electric light, research and development transforms mental part from what one reporter called an invention factory to really the first industrial research and development laboratory in the United States In October of eighteen seventy eight, Edison is driving to the press that he thinks he's solved the problem of creating an electric light system and providing small incandescent indoor lights. And people connected with the telegraph industriry, especially Western Union are the first to invest in this and they set up a company called the Edison Electric Light Company And one of the things that happens is the Mentala Park Laboratory grows been maybe about a dozen men at Millow Park by the end of eighteen seventy eight, he begins to hire new researchers any hires a German scientific instrument glass blower And they set up a small little building For the glass blower, there's a carpenter's shve Machine shop And the number of experimenters expands. He's got twenty five then thirty And then as they finally reach a point where they have a basic lamp design and a basic generator design, By the fall of eighteen seventy nine, Edison exhibits his new lamp and he actually sets up a pilot station in Melo Park on the model of what he wants to build in New York Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has all the stories that'll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a Sucy romantasy series, become your friend group's sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation, or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral trrue crime podcast However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated, so you can be just as fascinating. All in one easy app, with plans now starting at eight dollars ninety nine cents, you'll get access to over one million audio books and podcasts, including trending bestestsellers, the hottest new releases and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else. Sign up now to become a member and get any audio book every month Plus exclusive podcasts. pllans now start at eight dollars ninety nine cents A. Be fascinated, be fascinating Hello, I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And we're the hosts of British Scandal. Yes we are, and our new series starts with a loud, lovable woman from Bermondsey who becomes one of the most famous people in Britain. This is the story of Jade Goody, the reality TV star who built a fortune just by being herself. and then lost everything in one of the most public racism scandals Britain has ever seen. It's a story of fame and a change of the conversation around cervical cancer forever Follow British sccandal wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Audible Before the electric light, the phonograph was Edison's most famous invention. And as I think about it, until the electric light All of his work was in communications and kind of auditory communications, but he had hearing loss How might that have influenced his invention in innovation? Yes, this is one of the ironies of Edison's career is how much someomeone who had some hearing difficulties. It was progressive, it got worse over time how much he was involved in technologies that involve sound So he used to say that he saw his hearing difficulties as an advantage. So when he was a telegraph operator It allowed them to focus on the dots and dashes of the telegraph instrument because he wasn't hearing other noise in the room, right And then as an inventor of the phonograph of improved telephone technology In some respects, his hearing was treated as a test instrument his ability to hear something that it was both articulated and loud enough that it should work in a commercial setting So we know that Eddison kept copious records of the work underway at Menlo Park and his other lab at West Orange This wasn't just because he liked to take notes though Talk a bit about how he was savvy in applying for patents to secure and promote his innovations One of the things that Edison learned very early in his career as a telegraph inventor. The fellow who was the president of the Golden Stock Telegraph Company, which was the main company using those small printing telegraph stock tickers for various market reports. took Edison to his patent attorney And the patent att turning had Edison write down all the things he was working on at the time. And the last page of the book has this very interesting notation that he clearly was told by the patent attorney Hereafter I will keep a complete record of all inventions, right In the US system, it's not first to file, which is what it was in many European countries, such as England In the US, it was first to invent. And so part of that was proving that you invented something before a competitor did And one way to do that was to keep a very good record of your experimental work And's how Edison learned this lesson And that's why there are about four thousand notebooks, not just Edisononss, but everybody that worked for him kept notebooks And we don't even have all the notebooks that were kept by all the other researchers. Some of them walked off with theirs So this is why we have a great record of the experimental work that went on In Newark in Menloow Park and then at West Orange. Edison understood the value of these records But he also learned and in part this was because he was in the telegraph industry where people like the head of Golden Stock and then later the president of Western Union began to see controlling the technology through patents was a way to prevent competitors. from entering into the industry, right It didn't always work, but it gave those companies an advantage. And this is something Edison learned And so one of the things he did was he patented variations on an invention realizing that he could use that to protect his patent position and that of his companies So after the phonograph, after the light bulb and with the race to electrify entire cities now underway, this is the introduction of Nikola Tesla He went to work with Edison Machine Works and there's this I guess popular image of Edison as a savvy businessman best at patenting things as we just described But Nicola Tesla is a genius who's just overrun by men like Edison. How accurate is this story So here's how I like to describe the difference between Edison and Tesla. Edison was somebody who was very good at understanding how to move new technology into a commercial phase. How to do the development work not just the inventive work, but the development work to move it from the laboratory out into the real world and how to continue process of innovation to make it work From the start, Edison has never really alone inventor. It's always collaborative, right So he has experimenters that he works with very closely. They work closely with machinists to design and improve the instruments, to test them basic applied research rather than basic scientific research designed to gain insights into nature, more to gain insights into the technology itself and the sciences around it, like electromagnetism, for example Tesla was more a kind of idealist inventor. This actually comes out of the work of W. Bernard Carlson at the University of Virginia Bernie wrote a book about Tesla that was published in twenty thirteen and he points to the way in which Tesla was happy to reach a state where he could demonstrate that his idea could work in the laboratory but was much less skilled at figuring out how to bring it out of the lab into the real world. And so oftentimes The technologies that Tesla had, he spent years working on themib and. they never reached a commercial phase The one technology where TesL was successful was with his alternating current motors And then later the polyphase alternating current distribution system Alternating current worked on higher voltages than Edison's direct current. You needed fewer stations. you could distribute electricity over a much greater area with very high voltages and then step those voltages down so they'd be safe once they reached into buildings The reason that Tesla's work in this area succeeded because the Westinghouse company employed its own inventors and engineers who were able to take Tesla's ideas and figure out how to make them commercially viable Tesla told this story about his motor about how He knew it would work and would wear well over time because he ran it in his head over and over, imagining the wear and how the motor worked Edison did that in practice with real devices, and that's what the Westinghouse engineers did as well So there's this sort of difference between Tesla, the sort of idealist inventor and someomeone like Edison, who's really more an inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator. So it seems the real rivalry then was between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse who backed Tesla So what was their rivalry like When Westinghouse established his first alternating current station, he had a number of very skilled inventors and engineers working for him who developed that system. and they drew also on work that was going on in Europe at the same time. So in eighteen eighty six, the first Westinghouse Station appears in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Edison begins to pay attention to AC and does some investigation And there are a couple of things he's very concerned about. One is The AC system works at these very high voltages and that can be unsafe if not dealt with by the way in which the system is developed and designed And so Edison writes this memo about AC in which he says, sooner or later, Westinghouse is going to electrocute somewhat And one of the things you have to understand at this very moment is that the higher voltage arc light systems that were used for street lighting in American cities were strung along the streets. the wires were strung along the street right next to telegraph and telephone wires. and there were occasional accidental electrocutions of linemen from telegraph and telephone companies whose lines crossed with an arc light And so this fear of the electrical system was real on the part of many people. And Anddison was concerned about this. The other thing was the AC system had these transformers and other elements that Eddison thought would add to the cost Now, what he didn't recognize is that the advantage of AC is that you could build larger central stations that could distribute power over longer distances It meant you didn't need a station every couple of miles in a city like New York So between the Pearl Street station that has' built in lower Manhattan And then another station around twenty third, another station a little farther north of that in order to power bottom half of Manhattan the AC system could build one larger station and distribute that power And this was especially important as you begin to get the electrification of the suburbs, which are growing at this period You don't want central stations if you live in a nice suburb because you have steam engines and the smoke from them and the noise And so AC had some real advantages. And Edison never really recognized that those advantages would make his DC system less desirable for central station It doesn't mean that DC disappeared. In fact, DC was used for what were known as isolated plants for individual buildings. In fact, more people in the nineteenth century experience incandescent lighting from a building that had its own power station than from central stations It's really not till the nineteen twenties that you really begin to get the emergence of what would later become the modern grid And a lot of those were DC stations. And in fact, the last DC station decommissioned by Con Ed was decommissioned in two thousand seven, it was running motors that drove elevators up and down apartment buildings because those kind of motors work better as DC than they do AC. And in fact, even today, DC is what powers all of our laptops and phones and other small electrical devices. And now increasingly what they're discovering is high voltage DC is actually better for long distance distribution than high voltage AC DC actually still has a place in our electrical system But even ultimately, Edison's own company switched over to AC at the time That must have been a big deal for him Yeah it was So what happens becausecause the Eddison company resists and it's really Edison because there are people in the company saying we need AC Edison resists that and There's a second company, Thompson Hston that is also developing AC technology at this time And the two companies had discussions about merging at various points. And in eighteen ninety two, early in the year The investors in Edison Electric, which had become Edison General Electric and the Thompson Huston Company. decide to merge. And what happens is that the people who are running Thompson Hston take over the company and this new company is called General electric. The Edison name disappears Edison is put on the board of directors, but really has nothing to do with the running of the company. After that, he goes on to many other projects over the last forty years of his life But what's significant is that This marks the transition to AC for central stations. And in eighteen ninety three the Chicago Columbian exposition General Electric and Westinghouse compete. Westinghouse wins the award. and then two years later, Westinghouse uses Tesla's Polyphase AC distribution system to win the award for a new power station Niagara Falls or the electricity is sent down to Buffalo And suddenly the potential of AC to create a much larger electrical grid that can power a much bigger area becomes evident And this marks the transition from small central stations and individual plantans for buildings. to the growth of the grid that we all use today Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audaible has all the stories that willll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy romantasy series. beccome your friend group's sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation Or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral true crime podcast. However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated, so you can be just as fascinating. All in one easy app, with plans now starting at eight doll ninety nine cents, you'll get access to over one million audioobooks and podcasts, including trending bestsellers Hottest new releases and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else. Sign up now to become a member and get any audiobo book every month plus exclusive podcasts. Plans now start at eightll ninety nine cents. Aible Be fascinated, be fascinating I'm Leon Nefo best known as the co creator of Slowburn and Fiasco I had of course heard of O fans, but always with a distant and quiet skepticism. A silent judgment, you might say Who is actually using this platform? U I am Hi, I'm Oly Fans creator and comedian, Gracie Kanan. I work from home now I'm on Oly Fans and In case you guys don't know what Only Fans is, ask your husband. My journalistic curiosity got the best of me when I found out that my own sister had started an OnlyFans account. I'm met his sister, just to clarify. It turns out a lot of what I thought I knew about Only Fans was wrong. I felt like wasted three point five years for something that wasn't real What happens when connection comes with a price tag? Listen to Only Fantasy wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes of Only Fantasy ad free right now, only on Audible. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible app or on Apple podcasts. So then here we are with Edison fundamentally losing the war of the currents. AC is ascendant His name is removed from his company He moves to a new workshop facility at West Orange. What is he doing now after this period Well, he built Wes Orange in eighteen eighty seven and opened it in eighteen eighty eight. He was still in the electrical industry at the time. fact It was the R and D facility for the Edison General Electric Company. Once GE is formed Edison decides that he's going to move on to other projects. He had some that he was already working on Biggest one For the period of the eighteen nineties is an effort to use electromagnetic separation to be able to take low grade iron ore from the plate out iron mines of the east coast reduce iron for the steel mills project a fully automated mining operation and processing operation Tchnically successful, it fails because a huge new iron deposit in Lakes region of Lake Superior is discovered the Masabi range. So it fails. He takes the technology they' been using for rock crushing and applies it to production of sand for cement investigates the cement industry and designs new technology, including a much improved rotary kiln that becomes the industry standard. He develops an automated plant out in Western New Jersey The original Yankee stadium is built with Edison portal and cement Two other projects of the eighteen nineties The phonograph became a commercially viable technology And Edison helps to found the modern sound recording industry And through the eighteen nineties and into the first three decades of the twentieth century Edison's photograph is a crucial part of that technology. Now there are competitors such as the Victor compomany, Eddison competes with his cylinder against the Victor disk. Eventually, Victor wins out as the shift is made to electric recording with the development of vacuum tube technology and electronics And then the other technology that he spent a lot of time on beginning in the eighteen nineties throughrough World War I is the motion picture industry. Eddison develops the first commercial camera and viewing system. Later this becomes a industry that grows, Edison is in the industry until World War one and then he gives it up. He's never really quite sure what the market is for motion pictures. And so his company kind of fades away in a sense And then also in the first decade of the twentieth century, he develops the first alkaline storage battery. electric automobiles. There were actually more electric automobiles in the first few years of the twentieth century than internal combustion cars and They ultimately lose out as Henry Ford develops his mass production system for automobiles that drives the cost of internal combustion cars down But also World War O where electric vehicles are not useful on the battlefield and all the companies shift to production of gas powered automobiles. There are still a few things like delivery trucks that use batteries, but Electric cars don't really re emerge until the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies and we're still on the the cycle of the development of that industry as it re emerges more or less disappearing during Eddison's time So these are the technologies Edison continues to work with. He builds a huge Factory complex in West Orange, New Jersey has another one a few miles away that includes this chemical laboratories And so Edison is both a inventor, entrepreneur and increasingly a captain of industry In this period of losing out to AC and losing his name off his company, was Edison personally bitter So the question of whether Edison was bitter is One that I think, you know, there's some uncertainty about what his initial reaction to this was. There are conflicting news reports, some saying Eddison favored the merger, others that he opposed it