Ernest Freeberg: "The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-02-25/ernest-freeberg-age-edison-electric-light-and-invention-modern-america
Thomas Edison is widely remembered as the man who invented the light bulb. As with many singular events, there's much more to the story, and a new book places the invention in the context of the time. In the mid-19th century the U.S. was in a period of intense technological creativity. Edison and a team of high-level assistants at his New Jersey laboratory benefited from a vibrant exchange of ideas among scientists in the U.S. and across the Atlantic. When Edison finally unveiled the incandescent light bulb in 1879, Americans witnessed the birth of a new age. Diane and her guest discuss how an invention we take for granted today transformed American life.
Guests
Ernest Freeberg
history professor at the University of Tennessee and author of "The Education of Laura Bridgman" and "Democracy's Prisoner."
Related Items
Slideshow: The Age Of Edison
Photos from "The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America" by Ernest Freeberg. All rights reserved.
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Excerpted from "The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America" by Ernest Freeberg. Copyright © 2013 by Ernest Freeberg. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Press HC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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University of Tennessee ...?? That`s funny.. Home of the TVA,and the outrage that project created. Bringing the south into the 20th century was a project. I think they still call bringing them into the light a Commie conspiracy.
Well, for one thing, it's a lot easier to consume stuff when you can see it---in low light (or no) all you can do is talk, read, and have sex...suddenly wondering about the 'demographic transition' in Western societies (~7 births -> ~3 births) around then....
I'm curious what the author's thoughts are on Edison's short sighted support of direct current vs Tesla's alternating current as well as the overall contention between Edison and Tesla.
The importance of Edision was his ability to arrive a creating a system. The invention of light extends to creating the infrastructure to generate, distribute, measure (for billing purposes) etc.
As for Tesla, to credit Edison, Tesla's invention of the AC motor did not arrive until nearly 10 years after Edison's original work.
It occurs to me that the choice to FOCUS ENTIRELY on Edison's way to "capture" and distribute electricity is ultimately unfortunate, quite expensive, and less kind to our environment that the ideas and method Tesla developed to generate and distribute it....from my understanding. In our present day vulnerability due to the electric grid being vulnerable to "cyber attack"...it is may be more "dangerous" than Edison could have imagined.
Edison married the 20-year-old Mina Miller (1866–1947)
On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell (1855–1884), whom he had met two months earlier; she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:
Edison's first wife was 16 Year old Mary Stillwell ... she bore him three children and eventually died.
At 39 he married 20 year old Mina Miller
If we're talking about how light shaped modern America, I think it's important we also consider Alexander Graham Bell's contribution. Bell thought his greatest accomplishment of all was the Photophone - a device that used light and mirrors to communicate over a distance. It's easy to see how this has lead to modern Fiber Optics.
The phrase: "Edison bet on the wrong horse." is a constant in his story and can be applied to almost every invention he attempted to commercialize. This applies to DC, The Phonograph, The Fax, and almost everything else.
Speaking of the cultural adjustment to electricity you reminded me of the aunt or grandmother in a Thurber story who insisted on keeping something plugged into the outlets to keep them safe and save money because the electricity would "leak" out.
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived (via an amusing webcomic):
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
blueneck billybob has it right. I fished those TVA dams/lakes growing up. Mom who worked at TVA always reminded us TN, like other Red states, loved to fight the ' Gub'ment ' preferring to live in the dark and mud of a continual flood plains. TN. still is full of redneck billybobs, though there are plenty of blueneck billbobs. Education wins everytime, though they do like to burn books in TN.
I hope Diane interviews an expert on Nikola Tesla sometime soon. Balance is good. Free energy is good. Didn't Edison pay kids for kidnapped neighborhood pets to test electricity on? And didn't he test radiation on his assistant even after Tesla warned him it was dangerous? Ended up killing the man. The man KILLED an elephant for goodness sake. Evil dude in my opinion.
Although the conversation has been quite interesting and I appreciate the new information, as always Diane and her guest impressed. I just felt the need, as I see others had, to give a shout out to one of the most misunderstood and under valued scientists of all time, Tesla. Tesla rocks :)
Regardless....Edison and his cronies, in their hubris, tried their best to discredit Tesla while at the same time embracing the science as their own....at the end of the day, Edison was just another crony capitalist who lucked upon the discovery of electricity at the right time in history, while Tesla had the potential to advance us light years ahead of ourselves if it weren't for the government stazi actions of raiding the laboratory immediately following his death.
But, what else can you expect from this main stream media show save to persevere the fairy tale lies of history.
This sounds like the least qualified person to have ever written a book about Edison and, to top it off, it sounds like a book that would have been written in the 1940's!!! Listeners knew more facts about Edison than the author did.
In addition, this appears to be - yet another - complete whitewash of how terrible a person Edison was (one of the worst in history). He had NO compassion or empathy for other people or animals (especially his workers and Tesla who he totally "screwed"), he was NOT generous (even with praise), he was totally obsessed with himself and hated all of his competitors and even his investors. In short - he was a complete jerk (far worse than Steve Jobs ever was)!
By the way that poor elephant that the caller rightly pointed out, took over an hour to finally die (in agony) - they couldn't get enough AC electricity to do the job!! So much for AC being dangerous. Edison also tortured many kinds of animals in his "sideshow of horrors"!!! Yeah, Edison sure was a great guy!
lizardinthesun wrote:
"I hope Diane interviews an expert on Nikola Tesla sometime soon. Balance is good. Free energy is good. Didn't Edison pay kids for kidnapped neighborhood pets to test electricity on? And didn't he test radiation on his assistant even after Tesla warned him it was dangerous? Ended up killing the man. The man KILLED an elephant for goodness sake. Evil dude in my opinion."
Exactly!!! This book is just another whitewashed biography.