A key hung in the cigar-smoke-thickened air, the peering eyes so focused on the jagged item that the hand holding it might as well have been invisible. The key dropped down to the box, cutting the smoke and silence as it moved. Half the key disappeared with an echoing click. The key turned and then stopped with a second click.
Silence.
Two hands captured everyone’s focus, one hand holding the side of the black box, the other slowly lifting the hinged door, opening it wide.
A deep voice announced that there were two bids.
The captivated eyes around the room followed the hands as they dropped down and disappeared inside the box and then reappeared with two small envelopes.
Nervous chattering and murmuring beat down the silence.
The first bid belonged to General Electric, explained the deep voice—the owner of the attention-grabbing hands, Daniel H. Burnham, the Chicago World’s Fair’s director of works. The middle-aged man looked around the room at the hypnotized audience and then announced the bid, which came in at $554,000.
The nervous chattering returned, along with a few short laughs, as this bid was nothing compared to the first one General Electric had issued less than two months prior. That offer, though, had come when there had been no serious competition. But things had changed.
Burnham made it known that the other envelope contained the Westinghouse Electric bid. With a slight grin, Burnham announced the Westinghouse bid of $399,000, concluding that the contract was awarded to Westinghouse.
Captain Eugene Griffin, second vice president of General Electric, shot to his feet. With balled fists and a set jaw, Griffin reminded Burnham about an important matter: the Edison light bulb patent litigation. As everyone was aware, the injunction was all but certain to be ruled in General Electric’s favor. What wasn’t set in stone was whether the ruling would mandate that General Electric would still be forced to sell its bulbs to Westinghouse and other companies. Griffin made it clear that once the case had been decided, GE would no longer sell bulbs to Westinghouse Electric, making it unwise for Fair officials to award the contract to Westinghouse.
Burnham got lost in a huddle of quick-talking men, all with their heads shaking and hands moving wildly. These fellow Committee on Grounds and Buildings members seized the director of works and took shelter in a locked room to discuss the matter discreetly before committing to a decision.
George Westinghouse caught the eye of his friend Charles Terry. Westinghouse nodded. This was not surprising. At every turn Thomas Edison had thwarted Westinghouse’s sale and promotion of alternating current, and now Charles Coffin—the new president of General Electric—had taken up the same charge. Terry nodded back at Westinghouse. They both knew Westinghouse had made a low and enticing offer, one which would barely—if at all—result in profit. But it was an offer the committee wouldn’t be able to refuse, and it was an opportunity to gain something even more valuable than financial profit: it would allow their electrical system to be seen by all. Not just those in the electric fraternity, and not just those in the US, but people from all over the world. You couldn’t put a price tag on that kind of publicity and exposure.
Confident but anxious, George Westinghouse stood up when the committee reappeared at seven p.m. to inform their eager audience that they would need more time to decide. Burnham told both sides they would be consulting their team of lawyers and would be in touch when they had made a decision, leaving the latest battle undecided. For now.
George Westinghouse nodded again. The World’s Columbian Exposition was meant to signify the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America, and at the same time showcase the industrial and cultural might of the world. This was the perfect setting to display the safe and effective alternating current system, and George Westinghouse was not about to have the door slammed in his face, especially after he had almost missed the opportunity to begin with.
* * *
Less than two months prior, on April 2, 1892, the same iron box had also featured two bids. One had been the Charles Coffin–issued General Electric bid of a whopping $1,720,000, while the other had come from a small Chicago-based businessman named Charles F. Locksteadt, who had submitted a relatively minuscule $625,600 offer on behalf of South Side Machine and Metal Works.
Mere numbers indicated the Locksteadt bid was significantly better than the lofty General Electric figure, but the major hang-up was as substantial as the difference between the two bids: Charles F. Locksteadt was a relative nobody in the electrical field; his name didn’t inspire any confidence that he could actually follow through with such an undertaking.
All along, Charles Coffin knew he had the Fair’s board of directors where he wanted them, as the new Edison-free General Electric “trustification” held leverage over every other struggling business in the field, thanks in large part to the economic panic that had forced Thomas Edison to lose control of his business with the Thomson-Houston merger.
George Westinghouse, in fact, had just battled for more than a year to maintain control of his own company, which was the main reason he had steered clear of putting forth an offer. By the time Westinghouse had held on to his business and established Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, the World’s Fair bids had already been submitted.
Charles Coffin knew Westinghouse had missed the window to compete for the Fair—or so he thought—leaving him more than comfortable to issue such a massive bid. As a sign of how much had changed in the last half year, when the World’s Fair officials had bargained with Chicago Edison in October 1891 for arc lights to use for construction, they had settled on a price of $11.00 per arc light. Now, only six months later, Coffin and the General Electric crew had raised their price tag to $38.50.
When Fair officials had opened the iron box for that first time on April 2, they had begun considering the two offers. No immediate decision was made, which suggested they were not completely sold on either offer. Charles F. Locksteadt sensed he had a chance, and he quickly approached George Westinghouse about teaming up. This was a second chance for Westinghouse—a new window of opportunity had opened for him.
Upon Westinghouse’s acceptance to team up with Locksteadt, World’s Fair president Harlow Higinbotham decided to reset the bidding and begin anew for all concerned, leading to the second reveal of the iron box—a second round of bids that was now going before a team of lawyers, keeping both sides of the war on edge.
* * *
May 23, 1892
Rookery Building, Chicago, Illinois
George Westinghouse set down his black umbrella beside his chair. He ran his open palms over his dark formal suit, making sure he was presentable. He gazed down at the large table, which looked almost identical to the way it had looked a week ago. This time, though, there was no iron box arresting everyone’s attention.
Westinghouse sat down and addressed the familiar company with his eyes. He nodded at his friend Charles Terry just as he had a week prior. The telegram that had beckoned him the day before had led to his half-day journey from Pittsburgh to Chicago aboard his private railcar, the Glen Eyre. Now it was time to hear the verdict.
Chicago World’s Fair director of works Daniel H. Burnham addressed his audience, explaining that after due consideration they had decided to bestow the contract on Westinghouse Electric. But, Burnham quickly added, they were going to split the contract in two.
George Westinghouse shook his head. No, he explained, that would not do. He had presented the lowest bid, and now, he concluded, his “first-class apparatus” should be granted the entire job. He ran his fingers over his signature muttonchop facial hair. Then he made it clear he felt he should be given the entire contract.
Burnham’s eyes moved from one committee member to the next. They were speechless.
GE’s second vice president Captain Griffin smirked, bringing up the light bulb patent lawsuit again. Westinghouse had a strong bluff, but Griffin knew he had the legal threat stashed a
way in his hand. To Griffin, his card trumped Westinghouse’s.
Once again Burnham and the committee retreated to a private room, coming out soon after to ask George Westinghouse a direct and loaded question: Would he and Westinghouse Electric put up a one-million-dollar bond guaranteeing the contract, even if the light bulb matter didn’t fall in their favor?
Westinghouse nodded without hesitation. He explained that they had already moved in a direction that no longer relied on Edison and General Electric’s bulbs. He didn’t show any signs of anxiety about the fact that he’d have to front five hundred thousand dollars for the one-million-dollar bond.
Burnham and the board members met privately again, not surfacing until seven thirty p.m. Burnham announced that Westinghouse had gained the contract as he approached the satisfied man with an extended arm and an open hand. Smiles were exchanged as hands shook on the agreement, with signed contracts to follow.
Captain Griffin and his General Electric representatives rushed to the door. In a huff, Griffin made it clear that once the courts had ruled in their favor, Westinghouse would “not be able to make his own lamps … we will not let him continue his contract.”
Griffin made his dramatic exit and all eyes returned to George Westinghouse for a reply. The confident man didn’t feel it necessary to address Griffin’s threat, saying only that Westinghouse Electric had already come to a resolution for the light bulb problem. Instead of detailing this resolution, he turned to the members of the press in attendance and said, “I shall put in ten or twelve dynamos of 12,000 lamp capacity and furnish a clean-cut, first-class system. I have about 100,000 lamps, either completed or partly so, at the works, and there will be no difficulty in furnishing material. I am required to have between 5,000 and 10,000 lamps installed by the 1st of October. This is an easy task.”
But it wasn’t an easy task, and George Westinghouse knew it. He had secured the cherished contract, but now he essentially had to design machinery for an entirely new system of electrical operation and construct a new light bulb that didn’t infringe on Edison’s patent, and he needed to do this in just over one calendar year.
* * *
May 25, 1892
Westinghouse Machine Shop, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
“How soon may I have four of them?”
That was George Westinghouse’s question to his lead draftsman, E. S. McClelland. The day before, after he had made the journey back from Chicago to Pittsburgh overnight aboard the Glen Eyre, Westinghouse had shared the news with his crew that they would be in charge of lighting and powering the Chicago World’s Fair, which was less than a year away. He had asked his team to design a 1,200 brake horsepower engine that operated at 200 revolutions per minute, 150 pounds per square inch boiler pressure, with splash lubrication. And not to be ignored, one that had to fit in a limited amount of space.
For the next twenty-four hours, McClelland and his team had designed—in sketch form—an engine that met the specifications. And to accommodate the space limitations, they had decided to make it a vertical engine after they had turned the drawing on its side while looking it over.
Westinghouse’s question wasn’t so much a question; it was an imperative handed off to his team. Rephrased, their encouraging yet demanding boss meant: “This will work perfectly. Now get right to it and put four of them together without delay.”
* * *
As the summer of 1892 continued, so too did preparations for the 1893 World’s Fair. At the same time, a collection of near seven thousand workers continued their efforts to transform a swampy six-hundred-acre area of Chicago into a magnificent landscape envisioned by Frederick Law Olmsted. To add to the busy nature of Fair preparations, George Westinghouse was working on the challenging task of lighting and running the exposition with alternating current.
Alternating current machinery, though, wasn’t all that had to be created. No, George Westinghouse also had to prepare as if the Edison light bulb patent was going to be upheld, which meant he needed to design and manufacture over 92,000 bulbs that didn’t yet exist.
Westinghouse wasn’t all bark when it came to his word that he had been preparing as if they’d need a completely new bulb. In fact, for the last few months he had dipped into his old patents and began work on a Sawyer-Man “stopper” light, one that featured a two-piece design that Westinghouse felt would easily differentiate it from Edison’s one-piece bulb. He had purchased the patents from inventors William Sawyer and Albon Man, and he held exclusive rights to manufacture and sell lamps that used the design. But first he had to modify the design to make it practical. Months of experimentation led to small successes followed by ultimate failures. Throughout the process, the Westinghouse team learned from their mistakes and continued to make progress.
Toward the end of 1892, Westinghouse reached the point where the lamp was functional and nearly ready to mass-produce. The design included an iron-and-glass “stopper” that was fit snugly into the glass globe, allowing it to be opened and the filament replaced once it burned out.
Two-phase alternating current
The Edison light bulb patent was upheld on October 4, 1892, followed a month later by a federal court ruling that Westinghouse was no longer allowed to make Edison-style lamps, and then punctuated by the December 15 denial to an appeal, making the litigation final. At long last, the light bulb war had been settled.
But the War of the Currents waged on.
For George Westinghouse, losing the light bulb ruling simply meant his “stopper” lamp had to succeed, which led to his swift decision to transform a portion of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, into a glass and light bulb factory fully dedicated to mass-producing the new bulbs.
General Electric representatives continued their attempts at hindering Westinghouse by filing a last-ditch restraining order that they hoped would prohibit the production of the Sawyer-Man “stopper” bulbs, claiming this new design, too, infringed on the Edison patent.
Westinghouse caught wind of the restraining order and had his lawyers present and prepared at the hearing, and the new year of 1893 brought with it a final, concluding ruling that the Sawyer-Man “stopper” patent was indeed unique, no infringement present.
The courtroom was no longer a battlefield for George Westinghouse. Now all that remained was mass-producing over 100,000 bulbs, all the while designing and then actually building alternating current machinery that was ten times more powerful than anything in existence.
George Westinghouse needed help.
* * *
Nikola Tesla became a regular presence in the Allegheny factory at the beginning of 1893.
Tesla and Westinghouse immediately settled back into their comfortable relationship built on trust and respect, deciding that they should place “two single phase alternators side by side, with their armature windings staggered 90 degrees,” in order to achieve Tesla’s two-phase AC design, which would soon be featured on all Tesla induction motors. When they had completed their work, each piece of machinery had the capability of powering just over thirty thousand “stopper” lamps.
In the January 1893 issue of Electrical Engineer, it was reported that there were twelve nearly completed vertical generators that operated 1,000-horsepower engines weighing seventy-five tons apiece. The article concluded that it would “constitute the largest single exhibit of operating machinery ever made at any exposition, and probably the most extensive exhibit in the Fair.” Of course, there was still much work to be done, but the report assured Fair officials that the exposition was on schedule, while at the same time it infuriated General Electric representatives, who had exhausted their efforts to thwart Westinghouse’s success.
As insurance, Westinghouse decided that each generator would have its own backup generator, keeping the World’s Fair constantly powered. There would be no unexpected blackouts; Tesla and Westinghouse made sure of that. All told, everything would be powered by a massive 2,000-horsepower Allis-Chalmers engine
, and everything would be fueled with oil, eliminating the smoky grime that came with coal.
Work continued from winter to spring, accompanied by glitches and hang-ups. In the end, most of the machinery and all the bulbs were on the Chicago fairgrounds mere weeks before opening day. They’d gotten everything delivered, but just under the wire.
Still, the task wasn’t to simply have the alternating current machinery there. The ultimate goal was to successfully light and power the Fair. Only upon doing so would George Westinghouse have a clear-cut victory in this pivotal battle.
* * *
May 1, 1893
World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois
President Grover Cleveland, casually dressed so as to not steal all the attention on this occasion, stood firm with his hand hovering over a welcoming gold-and-ivory telegraph key. Overhead, glimmering in the suddenly bright daylight of midmorning, the golden dome of the Administration Building sent specks and shards of sunlight in all directions, as if the golden dome were surrounded by a radiant halo.
Map of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, considered the “World Series” of the AC/DC war
President Cleveland spoke with authority, his voice capturing the many anxious visitors in full arrest. He paused, and the spectators housed under the radiant Administration Building umbrella followed suit, barely a breath taken as Cleveland slowly lowered his finger.
As the tip of Cleveland’s index finger met the telegraph key, the silence gave way to a loud and angelic choir who sang “Hallelujah Chorus” with energy that spread from one onlooker to the next. A hum of excitement and wonder rippled over the audience.
And like the energy that spread from the choir to the audience, the impression of the telegraph key spread an electric charge along a long wire some hundreds of feet away to Machinery Hall, where Westinghouse engineers and workers waited much like the crowd had moments before—silent, in full arrest. After all, this was the moment of truth.
The Electric War Page 13