Empires of Light
Page 45
13.
Forbes, “Harnessing Niagara,” pp. 431–32.
14.
Henry G. Prout, A Life of George Westinghouse (New York: Scribner’s, 1926), pp. 152–53.
15.
Page Smith, The Rise of Industrial America (New York: Penguin, 1984), p. 525.
16.
Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers, p. 291.
17.
Thomas W. Lawson, Frenzied Finance, vol. 1 (New York: Ridgway-Thayer Co., 1905), p. 90.
18.
Marc Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (New York: Citadel Press, 1998), p. 130.
19.
Robert Underwood Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays (Boston: Little, Brown, 1923), p. 400.
20.
Seifer, Wizard, p. 161.
21.
T. Commerford Martin, “Nikola Tesla,” Century, February 1894, p. 582.
22.
Arthur Brisbane, Sunday World, July 22, 1894, p. 5.
23.
“The Nikola Tesla Company,” Electrical Engineer, February 13, 1895, p. 149.
24.
Editorial, New York Sun, March 14, 1895, p. 6.
25.
“Mr. Tesla’s Great Loss,” The New York Times, March 14, 1895, p. 9.
26.
Margaret Cheney, Tesla, Man Out of Time (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), p. 107.
27.
Letter from Nikola Tesla to Albert Schmid dated March 22, 1895; letter from Nikola Tesla to Charles Scott dated May 9, 1895. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
28.
Pierre Berton, Niagara: A History of the Falls (New York: Penguin, 1992), p. 167.
29.
Ibid., p. 170.
30.
Adams, Niagara Power, vol. 2, p. 417.
31.
“Niagara Is Finally Harnessed,” The New York Times, August 27, 1895, p. 9.
32.
Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990), p. 76.
33.
H. G. Wells, “The End of Niagara,” Harper’s Weekly, July 21, 1906, pp. 1018–20.
34.
Adams, Niagara Power, vol. 2, p. 336.
35.
Orrin E. Dunlap, “Nikola Tesla at Niagara Falls,” Western Electrician, August 1, 1896.
36.
“Power for Buffalo,” Daily Cataract (Niagara Falls), July 20, 1896, p. 1.
37.
“Yoked to the Cataract!,” Buffalo Enquirer, November 16, 1896, p. 1.
38.
“A Few Cold Facts About Buffalo,” The Buffalo Evening News, January 8, 1897, p. 8.
39.
“Magnificent Power Celebration Banquet at the Ellicott Club,” Buffalo Morning Express, January 13, 1897, p. 1.
40.
Ibid.
CHAPTER 13
Afterward
1.
Guido Pantaleoni, “The Real Character of the Man as I Saw Him,” April 1939, p. 5. George Westinghouse: Anecdotes and Reminiscences, vol. 3, box 1, file folder 8, George Westinghouse Museum Archives, Wilmerding, Pennsylvania.
2.
Henry G. Prout, A Life of George Westinghouse (New York: Scribners, 1926), p. 206.
3.
Ibid.
4.
Maurice Coster, “Personal Reminiscences of George Westinghouse,” November 1936, p. 1. George Westinghouse: Anecdotes and Reminiscences, vol. 1, box 1, file folder 1, George Westinghouse Museum Archives, Wilmerding, Pennsylvania.
5.
Westinghouse Electric Corporation, “George Westinghouse, 1846–1914,” 1946. Box 1, file folder 12, George Westinghouse Museum Archives, Wilmerding, Pennsylvania.
6.
Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 574.
7.
Francis E. Leupp, George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements (Boston: Little, Brown, 1918), p. 209.
8.
Ibid., p. 210.
9.
E. H. Heinrichs, “Anecdotes and Reminiscences of George Westinghouse,” October 1931, pp. 31–32. George Westinghouse: Anecdotes and Reminiscences, vol. 2, box 1, file folder 7, George Westinghouse Museum Archives, Wilmerding, Pennsylvania.
10.
Leupp, George Westinghouse, p. 210.
11.
Strouse, Morgan: American Financier, p. 595.
12.
Ibid., p. 574.
13.
Stefan Lorant, Pittsburgh (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1964), p. 180.
14.
Heinrichs, “Anecdotes and Reminiscences of George Westinghouse.”
15.
Ibid.
16.
Leupp, George Westinghouse, pp. 224–25.
17.
Alexander Uptegraff, “The Home Life of George Westinghouse,” July 1936, p. 4. George Westinghouse: Anecdotes and Reminiscences, vol. 4, box 1, file folder 9, George Westinghouse Museum Archives, Wilmerding, Pennsylvania.
18.
“George Westinghouse,” The New York Times, October 24, 1907, p. 10.
19.
Heinrichs, “Anecdotes and Reminiscences of George Westinghouse.”
20.
Alfred O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1938), p. 278.
21.
Paul Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention (New York: Wiley, 1998), p. 347.
22.
Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 372.
23.
Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention, p. 361.
24.
osephson, Edison: A Biography, p. 378.
25.
Ibid., p. 379.
26.
Ibid., p. 399.
27.
Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention, p. 415.
28.
Josephson, Edison: A Biography, p. 429.
29.
Ibid., p. 430.
30.
“World Made Over by Edison’s Magic,” The New York Times, October 18, 1931, section II, p. 1.
31.
Letter from E. H. Heinrichs to Nikola Tesla dated December 8, 1897. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
32.
John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (New York: David McKay, 1944), p. 81.
33.
Ibid., p. 167.
34.
Marc Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (New York: Citadel Press, 2000), p. 210.
35.
Harry L. Goldman, “Nikola Tesla’s Bold Adventure,” American West 8, no. 2 (March 1971), p. 5.
36.
Ibid., p. 7.
37.
Nikola Tesla, “The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires,” Electrical World and Engineer, March 5, 1904.
38.
Letter from Nikola Tesla to J. P. Morgan dated December 12, 1900. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
39.
Ibid., January 9, 1901.
40.
Letter from J. P. Morgan to Nikola Tesla dated July 17, 1903. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
41.
Letter from Nikola Tesla to J. P. Morgan dated January 14, 1904. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
42.
Ibid., October 13, 1904.
43.
Letter from C. W. King to Nikola Tesla dated October 15, 1904. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
44.
Letter from Nikola Tesla to J. P. Morgan dated December 23, 1913. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
45.
Seifer, Wizard, p. 384.
46.
Letter from Nikola Tesla to E. M. Herr dated October 19, 1920. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
47.
Letter from Nikola Tesla to Westinghouse Company dat
ed January 29, 1930. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Tesla Papers.
48.
“Mr. Tesla Speaks Out,” New York World, November 29, 1929, p. 10.
49.
“Tesla at 75,” Time, July 30, 1931.
50.
O’Neill, Prodigal Genius, p. 317.
51.
Arthur G. Woolf, “Electricity, Productivity, and Labor-Saving: American Manufacturing, 1900–1929,” Explorations in American Economic History 21 (1984), p. 179.
52.
David E. Nye, Electrifying America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), p. 389.
Bibliography
I am deeply indebted to the numerous historians and biographers who have written so well on early electricity, whether their subject was the scientists and inventors who blazed those first pioneering paths or the electrical industry itself.
Many biographies have been written about Thomas A. Edison, but the most recent (1998) and most useful for me was Paul Israel’s Edison: A Life of Invention, which concentrates on the science and business. Paul Israel also coauthored with Robert Friedel and Bernard S. Finn Edison’s Electric Light: Biography of an Invention (1986), which provided wonderful specifics about the momentous and arduous invention of the light bulb. Francis Jehl’s three-volume Menlo Park Diaries (1937) serves up an incredible wealth of engaging detail but is not always reliable. Matthew Josephson’s Edison: A Biography (1959), the first to draw on the large and amazing Edison archives, is a good read and gives a nice flavor of the era. About the time I began work on this book, almost half of the vast Rutgers University Edison archives, a cornucopia of invaluable primary source material, became available on-line.
For Nikola Tesla, John J. O’Neill’s biography, Prodigal Genius, was a great introduction, authored as it was by a science writer who knew Tesla. It was published in 1944 shortly after Tesla’s death. Marc Seifer’s helpful 1996 biography, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, was able to draw on much material unavailable to O’Neill. Other important sources were Tesla’s letters in the Library of Congress and the Niagara Mohawk archives. There are numerous useful published collections of Tesla’s lectures, writings, and patent applications, as well as articles about him, often labors of love by Tesla’s many dedicated fans. Margaret Cheney and filmmaker Robert Uth wrote Tesla: Master of Lightning (1999), an excellent heavily illustrated coffee table biography that is the companion book to Uth’s PBS documentary of the same title.
Unfortunately, no new biography has been written of George Westinghouse since Henry G. Prout’s A Life of George Westinghouse (1926) was commissioned by the Westinghouse Corporation, which apparently felt Francis E. Leupp’s George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements (1918) was inadequate. Anyone contemplating a new biography of the great Pittsburgh magnate would have quickly been discouraged by the incredible paucity of primary sources, a problem even Prout and Leupp complained about. Westinghouse did not, like Edison and Tesla, preserve his personal letters and papers, nor did he make himself available to the press. However, when business historian Harold C. Passer wrote his magnificent classic work, The Electrical Manufacturers, 1875–1900 (1953), he was able to elaborate on many fascinating Westinghouse episodes using what he called the “Historic Westinghouse Archives” at the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters. Tellingly, Passer, a Harvard Business School scholar, appears to be the only historian ever given unfettered access to those archives. Thereafter, all access was heavily vetted. Sadly, when CBS dismantled the Westinghouse Corporation in the late 1990s, the historic archives seemed to disappear. However, fragments remain in a small archive at the George Westinghouse Museum in Wilmerding outside Pittsburgh, where one can find a large and well-organized trove of reminiscences about Westinghouse gathered and organized in the 1930s.
David E. Nye’s Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (1990) was most illuminating on the national experience as light and power spread, while Andreas Bluhm and Louise Lippincott’s Light! The Industrial Age 1750–1900 (2000), a sumptuous art catalog to a 2001 show by the same name in Pittsburgh, provided a fascinating look at how societies and artists absorbed these new technologies.
When writing about New York City, I found Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace’s wonderful Gotham (1999) and Kenneth T. Jackson’s incredible Encyclopedia of New York City (1995) invaluable. For Pittsburgh, I was grateful to find Stefan Lorant’s great work, Pittsburgh (1964). For Chicago, I turned to Donald L. Miller’s excellent City of the Century (1996), and for Niagara Falls, to Pierre Berton’s amusing Niagara (1992) and the Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls compiled by Charles Mason Dow (1921). Other important Niagara sources were Robert Belfield’s 1981 Ph.D. thesis, “Niagara Frontier,” and the archives Edward Dean Adams carefully assembled to document the building of the Niagara hydroelectric power plants. These archives, preserved by the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation in Syracuse (since acquired by National Grid USA Company, Inc.), are a necessary antidote to Edward Dean Adams’s official two-volume history, Niagara Power (1927), which for all its majesty is still often confusing and sanitizes or simply ignores all troubles.
Acknowledgments
In the course of researching and writing this book, I have been helped by many people. First, I would like to thank my agent, Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit, who offered excellent advice every step of the way, and Katie Hall, my editor at Random House, who provided superlative editing and all-around energy and intelligent enthusiasm.
Paul Israel at the Thomas Edison Papers at Rutgers University responded to many questions, helping me and Sarah McKinney of Random House navigate the vast and wondrous Edison on-line archive. He also carefully read and commented upon my manuscript. Both Israel’s excellent biography, Edison: A Life of Invention, and his fascinating work with Robert Friedel and Bernard S. Finn, Edison’s Electric Light: Biography of an Invention, were indispensable to this book. Over at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey, Doug Tarr was most helpful with photographs. At the Smithsonian Institution, Bernard S. Finn, and Harold Wallace at the Museum of American History answered numerous queries and kindly demonstrated some of the early electrical apparatus in their collections.
Robert F. Dischner, Ph.D., of USA Service Company, Inc., stands out for his wonderful enthusiasm for this project and his constant support. He came from Syracuse to serve as a personal guide around Buffalo and Niagara Falls, introducing me to Maureen Fennie, head of the local history room at the Niagara Falls Public Library. The librarians at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society were also efficient and most helpful during my visit to that institution. Dischner provided invaluable access to the original Niagara Power archives and the papers of Edward Dean Adams. National Grid USA archivist Joseph Santore did a yeoman’s job of locating files, letters, and photographs.
Out in Pittsburgh, Edward Reis, head of the George Westinghouse Museum in Wilmerding, arranged for me to spend two days in their archives there, which yielded invaluable material. My daughter Hilary was my first-rate assistant there. Professor Tim Ziaukas of the University of Pittsburgh’s Bradford campus smoothed the way for that trip and then shared what he had found in his own work in the Westinghouse files. He then kindly reviewed my manuscript. Richard Price at the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania performed useful research there on my behalf. In Boston, Debbie Funkhouser carefully combed the historical files of the Harvard Business School’s Baker Library and the Massachusetts Historical Society, looking for Westinghouse material. In New York, Sarah McKinney of Random House spent many hours gathering old newspaper coverage about the electric chair battle and mining the on-line Edison archives for all manner of important documents. Also in New York, Christine Nelson at the Morgan Library provided needed manuscripts from their archives. In Philadelphia, Valerie-Anne Lutz of the American Philosophical Society quickly sent along the Niagara Falls–related papers of Coleman Sellers. Christopher Baer of the Hagley Museum and Library outside Wilmington, De
laware, rapidly answered all queries having to do with the Pennsylvania Railroad. At Random House, Danielle Durkin was very helpful in the final stages of the book.
In Washington, D.C., the librarians at the Library of Congress’s Division of Manuscripts were most friendly when assisting me with the Tesla papers. Filmmaker Robert Uth, whose two-part documentary on Tesla ran on PBS, was very helpful in putting me in touch with the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and other Tesla groups when I was looking for photos. Professor W. Bernard Carlson, who has been working on a new Tesla biography, generously shared an article in draft and had a number of useful discussions as I was getting started. Here in Baltimore, I must once again thank the librarians at Johns Hopkins University’s Milton S. Eisenhower Library for all their stellar efforts, especially those in the Inter-Library Loan Office. I could not write my books without their good-natured, informed help. Also here in Baltimore, I was fortunate to visit the incomparable Light Bulb Museum, where one can see original Edison bulbs and Westinghouse stopper lights.
I would also like to offer heartfelt appreciation to the numerous people who took the time to read and critique my manuscript. They were Paul Israel; Robert Dischner; Tim Ziaukas; my husband, Christopher Ross; my uncle, inventor and entrepreneur Nelson Jonnes; IBM executive (and onetime science teacher) Victor Romita; and New York City history buff Robert Sarlin. All had many useful comments that helped improve the manuscript. I am grateful to Christopher Buck, whose early enthusiasm for this story fired my own, and to Deborah Buck for her delightful hospitality. Finally, special thanks to my father-in-law, artist John Ross, who drew such excellent and useful diagrams to explain the mysteries of electricity.