What is it about the complicated legacy of Thomas Edison, inventor, savage businessman, bitter rival that keeps us interested? Perhaps it was the secret machinations to tank his enemies, or his willingness to electrocute animals in public to prove a point. Maybe it was his stickler manner of shutting down any enterprise that infringed on his patents. Why do we love to hate him, and what do we attribute his prickliness to?
We are told that this is the cost of ambition, of progress. What it takes to light the world. Does anyone care about the perspectives of those casualties?
I do.
* * *
Your first word was “light.” I believe you when you say you retain memories from infancy and that before you could speak you understood that word. Your first speech came from curiosity about what light is, where it came from. Born to be a physicist.
You can explain to me what babies dream about. Of course I fell in love with you.
Now you live in what was once Edison’s Menlo Park; we’ve changed the name of the town to just “Edison.”
You have a strong preference on lighting, regarding the kind of bulb, the wattage, the coolness or warmth.
In practice it means you stand for long times under the outdoor lighting systems of synagogues or city parks, bemoaning the lighting choices made—too bright, too cold, too ugly. It means you won’t fully close the curtains at sunset, because the rays are so perfect. Even if we are undressing, you let them in. Modesty is the one cost you don’t mind when it comes to warm and ideal light.
* * *
We have Edison to thank for the motion picture camera, to capture an image that would have been lost forever, and instead loop, replay, keep and share it. He also improved upon the telegraph, making it possible to send multiple codes at once, in different directions. Whatever may have been distasteful about his business practices or personality, Edison changed the way humans communicate, share their experiences, and interact with the past.
He did not invent the lightbulb, but in the 1880s he dominated the industry of refining, manufacturing and installing incandescent light along the busiest streets in Manhattan and the homes of the city’s millionaires.
This is what brought him to Menlo Park—a remote location to build a lab and then factories. Apparently he would return to the area after time in New York, stand at the railway platform and declare that he was looking at the Prettiest Spot in New Jersey. The move to remote New Jersey was calculated and useful.
* * *
You are here for a short time and then you will leave. That’s the academic life—you expect to make long geographic moves for funding, or tenure track. You try not to acquire any new furniture or anything too bulky, because after the three-year Post-Doc you are definitely getting out. No material attachments—another cost of devoting your life to studying ideas, to painting a clearer picture of the universe.
You live here now but you didn’t grow up here, as I did. (You’re proud of that fact—oh, the New Jersey jokes comes easily.) You don’t speak Edison’s name with hometown familiarity. The shadow is cast long, but it doesn’t seem to hit you as hard.
You don’t know what it’s like to have your baby brother come home from a 2nd grade field trip at the museum in West Orange, once His house, to reveal, “We saw the bed Thomas Edison died in. I didn’t know you could die in your bed.”
This place means nothing to you, and you love reminding me of that. It’s just a stopover, maybe a stepping stone, for you to set up shop for a while and leave when something better comes along.
Thomas Edison’s lab and home in Menlo Park made Christie Street the first street in the world to be lit up by electric lights. When Edison moved, nothing that he built was preserved. The world returned to darkness as if he’d never been there at all.
* * *
Newspaper headlines read, “The War of the Currents.” Thomas Edison installed Direct Current dynamos underneath city streets and stately homes, while George Westinghouse developed and distributed Alternating Current generators (using designs by Nikola Tesla).
The competition rankled Edison. He was determined to prove that only Direct Current was safe or viable for development. In 1889 Edison published an essay bound with a red cover and titled, “WARNING!” In it, he claimed fear for public safety anywhere Westinghouse was installing Alternating Current generators. He was being a good citizen, trying to stand up against these dangerous Westinghouse developments.
There were secret attacks as well. When Edison was asked by a dentist named Dr. Southwick from Buffalo, NY to consult on developing a way to use electricity to carry out the death penalty, Edison declined at first. He did not support capital punishment, he said. But then he had a revelation: this could be the best possible application of Alternating Current. Only this volatile electric force would be appropriate for executions.
William Kemmler was on death row in New York and selected as the first human to have a state-sponsored electric death. On August 6, 1890, the electric chair was introduced. It was to be a gruesome disaster; Kemmler survived the first round of shocks, wheezing in front of the auditorium as he lingered between life and death. The second round of shocks ended his life, and also set his jacket on fire.
Still, Edison took a particular glee in trying to turn Westinghouse’s name into a noun, meaning “to be put to death in the electric chair.” That criminal should be westinghoused, was a phrase he hoped would catch on.
* * *
You aren’t an inventor and you’ll never be a businessman. You’re just that kind of half-sleeping academic who would find a kindred spirit in Nikola Tesla. Both overwhelmed in the world and in peace in your heads.
Me, I admire George Westinghouse, the Pittsburgh electricity magnate and sanguine rival of Edison. His is a playbook I can commend: Build an empire, sure, but play ball with unions and pay workers a living wage. Entertain guests, show affection to the wife. Why flagellate yourself to give birth to safer electric lighting for the public?
That’s the problem with me, I don’t believe in absolutes. I believe that we can live the lives we want and not lose anything, pay out anything, get weighed down by cost. I am alone in this, apparently.
We are respectful and modern, so there is no phrasing this like, “You never acquire new furniture, but you did acquire me.” Come on. We are separate and fully human and inconveniently in love.
I promised to tell this story from the perspective of the causality. Though I hate it, in this story, that would be me.
I’ve read the same biography many times: Up until the middle of the 20th Century (if I’m being optimistic), Visionaries of Science took wives and treated them like glorified secretaries. The wives entertained guests and delivered children, but never in ways to distract from the Work.
When you leave New Jersey, what if you brought me with you so I could butter your toast in the morning, organize your correspondence, curate your papers when you’re dead and gone, keep your legacy alive? Yeah, right.
In this Post-Modern version, you leave without me. I suppose I teach you a lesson about loss and love, and you’ll be better for it. (You’re welcome.) I do my thing, you do yours. If you love something, let it go and don’t follow or change your plans because that would be a weakness, a professional disaster, and far too great a risk.
This, you insist, is how we avoid any hurt, loss or regret. If we’re kind to each other while you’re around and separate when you leave that’s a sure way to peace, right? No possible casualties. You move on from New Jersey, I stay. I am unlit Christie Street.
So you are as nomadic and mercenary as Edison. On my darker days I imagine you are just as fickle in love. Edison notoriously neglected his first wife, Mary Stillwell. She dutifully bore him two children, raised them quietly and died young. While Mary still lived, Edison showed interest in a certain houseguest.
In 1881 Edison’s fame reached beyond the worlds of technology and industry. French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt requested an audience with “le grand Edison” after a New York City performance. She came to Menlo Park and was charmed by the incandescent lighting. Edison guided her on tour by the hand, also ensuring her long, ornate gown did not drag on the floor or catch fire (the dynamos surged underneath the house). Edison recalled Bernhardt’s beauty and amazement at his work often—more than he boasted about either wife he’d take in his lifetime.
I suppose when you bring light into the world you don’t worry that you’ll ever be lonely.
* * *
Wars demand a victor, even if they are wars of invention and ingenuity. There must be a winner and there are sure to be casualties.
Edison was so determined to prove the danger of Alternating Current that he volunteered to execute a dangerous circus animal on Coney Island, an elephant named Topsy. This elephant had killed three men, one of whom was trying to feed her a lit cigarette. In life she was already a casualty. The details are grisly, and involve shackling the elephant in copper wire sandals. 6,000 volts later and the animal was dead, leaving Topsy as one more casualty of Edison’s ambition.
That battle may have gone to Edison but he didn’t win the war. When Westinghouse secured the contract to light the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair using Alternating Current, even Edison could not deny his own defeat. From then on, AC was the industry standard for electricity.
See? We can sacrifice greatly but no one will remember it as noble.
# # #
Laura Eppinger is a Pushcart-nominated writer of fiction, poetry and essay. She graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since. She’s the blog editor at Newfound Journal.
Her full publications list can be seen here: http://lolionthekaap.blogspot.com/p/creative-writing.html
Photo: Gábor Adonyi
