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~ Download Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes

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

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



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

Download Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes

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

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it.

Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber—Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.

Empires of Light is the gripping history of electricity, the “mysterious fluid,” and how the fateful collision of Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed.


From the Hardcover edition.

  • Sales Rank: #31559 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-10-12
  • Released on: 2004-10-12
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.00" w x 5.20" l, .75 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 464 pages

Amazon.com Review
Jill Jonnes's compelling Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World offers a multi-sided tale of America's turn-of-the-20th-century quest for cheap, reliable electrical power. Along the way, the book profiles key personalities in both the science and industry of electrification and dramatizes the transformation of American society that accompanied the technological revolution. As her sub-title suggests, Jonnes's focus is on the three great personalities behind the building of the electricity industry. But, as she makes clear, the electrification of America was much more than a pathbreaking scientific quest. The genius of such poet-scientists as Nikola Tesla depended on the more finely tuned business skills of George Westinghouse and the towering capital of J.P. Morgan to achieve actualization. And even Thomas Edison and Westinghouse--innovative industrial combatants in the war between AC and DC current--were victims of the far more powerful and conservative financial forces of Wall Street. Indeed, for Jonnes, the story of electricity is as much about the legions of patent attorneys and bankers who controlled the flow of industry as it is about the circulation of current. Her sophisticated portrait of Gilded Age science, business, and society brings new light to the forces that underlie technological revolutions. As she reveals, it is not so much the great public men of science who directed the destiny of America's eventual empire of light; rather, the path was solidified by those men behind the scenes who were wise enough (and perhaps ruthless enough) to impose their legal, financial, and political dominance onto the scientific innovation--a valuable message for all eras. --Patrick O’Kelley

From Publishers Weekly
Jonnes, a historian at Johns Hopkins (We're Still Here; Hep-Cats, Narcs and Pipe Dreams), details the rise and fall of the three visionaries who harnessed electricity, while also offering a critique of corporate greed. Her tale emphasizes the "War of the Electric Currents," in which Thomas Edison sought to defend the primacy of his direct current electrical system against George Westinghouse's higher-voltage and more broadly applicable alternating current system. Nikola Tesla, the somewhat kooky Serbian genius (and former Edison man), joined the fray on Westinghouse's side with his AC induction motor. Jonnes serves up plenty of color in an engaging and relaxed style, detailing how Edison capitalized on the "deaths by wire," or accidental electrocutions, from the AC system, sensationalized in the newspapers of the time. As she shows, Edison's "holy war" led to Westinghouse's AC being used in the first prison execution by electric chair, in 1890-which proved considerably more grisly and less humane than originally billed. For Jonnes, this history culminates neatly in a rather trite moral lesson: that corporate greed is bad. She contrasts it with the three public-minded men sketched here, who embody what Jonnes believes capitalism ought to be. Edison wanted only "the perfect workshop"; Westinghouse was interested "in helping the world" and giving his workers disability benefits; Tesla wanted to "liberate the world from drudgery." Jonnes's titans loom as monumentally as the allegorical Good Capitalists in an Ayn Rand melodrama. For those who view history as less tidy, this may strain the patience at times. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The study and awareness of electricity is not new, but the successful control and use of it is relatively recent. Jonnes begins by detailing the study of electrical phenomena from ancient times up through the Enlightenment. Audiences who are familiar mostly with Thomas Edison and the lightbulb will find the earlier, less-told part of the story a welcome addition to their knowledge. Naturally, Edison has his place, too, and Jonnes fills a number of pages with the accomplishments of the three major inventors (Tesla, Westinghouse, and Edison), starting with their early research and progressing into the practical application of their work. The last part of the book deals with the slow process of bringing electricity to the rest of the country, the industrial wars between the rival electric firms, and the fates of those who played a role in the electric revolution. A very accessible and informative historical account that will be fascinating reading for a general audience as well as those with a more specialized interest. Gavin Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Most helpful customer reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Essential History with Relevance for Today
By Bryan Long
This is a splendidly written book, and is essential history for those who seek to anticipate the future. For almost all of us alive today in the United States, electricity has always been there (even if not always so omnipresent). If we think about a world without electricity at all, it is to wonder what it was like to experience the night with only flickering lamps and candles to push back the shadows. I had never considered, however, what it was like to experience the coming of electricity as a new thing in the world. New brightly burning lights, new quiet motors --- a new power coursing invisibly through thin wires. Over the last dozen decades, an electrical infrastructure swept the country and transformed our lives -- most of our energy consumption is now via electricity. Ms. Jonnes captured the excitement of this transformation at it's very source; the inventors and businessmen who made the future happen. Those of us who have been part of the Internet revolution will recognize many similarities in these two revolutions. All of us should acquaint ourselves with this history of the electrical revolution, because already the seeds of a new electrical infrastructure revolution have sprouted which will again transform our economy. Ms. Jonnes book is an excellent education written in an engaging style. Bravo!

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Major innovation made fun to read
By D. Diggs
Contrary to Mr. JohnJones most heart-felt beliefs, "THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE A TEXTBOOK!!!". It is however, meant to be a neatly illustrated and informative account of what may be one of the single most significant innovations man has ever achieved.

Being a Design Engineer, I could have been more demanding of Ms. Jonnes circuits and ommissions, but I remembered that this isn't a textbook. If I, or anyone for that matter, desires more discreptive ac/dc circuits we should seek the assistance of a textbook. Ms. Jonnes did, in my humble opinion, an extremely nice job of presenting the primary components of the creation of electricity, both human and mechanical, and provided a nice evolution of electricity (i.e., from novelty entertainment to powering a World's Fair). Whenever I finish a book, especially nonfiction books, I always want to take something away that makes me better for having read it. I can honestly say that was the case with Empires of Light.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Great on Niagara Falls and the fate of inventors
By Paul Eckler
Jonnes gives us a look at the story of electrification from Edison's discovery of the incandescent light to completion of the Niagara Falls hydroelectric generating station (using Westinghouse equipment based on Tesla's AC patents). She begins with an overview of what was known about electricity-the relationship between electricity and magnetism, discovered by Michael Faraday, and the development of electromagnets by Joseph Henry. Development of practical generators in the 1870s, was soon followed by the first arc lights, but they were cumbersome and too bright for home use. Edison took up the challenge to develop an electric light suitable for home use in 1878, completed in 1879, and installed in New York City in 1882.

Edison firmly believed in his DC power system, but it was poorly suited to transmitting power long distances. Once AC transformers were invented, in 1885, George Westinghouse realized that AC was the more practical system. He licensed Tesla's patents for AC generator and motor and began installing systems. A major battle ensued with Edison promoting DC and charging that AC was unsafe. That resulted in the adoption of the AC powered electric chair as a means of execution. Edison General Electric and Westinghouse found themselves in direct competition many times.

Edison was a darling of the media. His side of the story has been told many times. Westinghouse was personable, but far less open to the press. No biographies have appeared since 1926. Tesla was a frequent publisher, gave numerous demonstrations especially at technical meetings. His eccentric nature leads to some treatments as a man of mystery.

The detailed treatment of the Niagara Power project is much appreciated. This was the first major hydroelectric project in the US. It was financed by a Wall Street syndicate headed by JP Morgan. We see the details of how the bankers brought in experts to get the best available advice on the project. Finally Westinghouse won the competition because he had licensed the Tesla AC patents. There was no nearby customer for the power from Niagara. Buffalo, 26 miles away was the logical one. But the project also spawned numerous industries that took advantage of low cost electric power. This is the founding of well known companies. Among them Alcoa (first production of low cost aluminum), Carborundum (abrasives made by electric furnace), Union Carbide (acetylene made by electric furnace), and Hooker Chemical (chlorine, bleach, alkalis, sodium hydroxide, sodium all made by electrolysis of salt water). Niagara began supplying power to Alcoa on Aug 26, 1895.

The book also gives us a profile of three inventors: Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla. We are shown how financiers dealt with them. In Feb, 1892, JP Morgan and associates merged Edison General Electric with another holding, Thompson Houston, renamed the combine General Electric Co., and put CEO Charles Coffin in charge without even consulting Edison. George Westinghouse lost control of his company after it sank into bankruptcy in the Panic of 1907. He was soon forced out of the company. A proxy fight to regain control in 1911 failed. Tesla licensed his key AC patents to Westinghouse and initially received generous royalties. But he agreed to give up those royalties as part of a Westinghouse rescue plan in the Panic of 1891. His other patents were tied up in a deal with JP Morgan to fund radio development. After Marconi beat him to market, he was unable even to defend his own patents. He died penniless.

This is a great read for those interested in technology and how it all came together. We are left hungering for a second volume to cover the rest of the electrification story. We hear nothing of Samuel Insull, very little of the development of electric street cars, electric railroads, interurbans, the electric automobile, TVA, rural electrification, or the expansion of electrical systems throughout the country. Excellent bibliography. Many references. Index.

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