About : standard furniture warehouse birmingham al
Title : standard furniture warehouse birmingham al
standard furniture warehouse birmingham al
(engine sputtering) narrator:in mid-october, 1922,a film crew arrived in the small townof west orange, new jersey, to spend some time with one of the most famous menin the world: the phenomenally prolific american inventorthomas edison. over the course of a few days, the cameras capturedthe great man at work,
chatting with employees and conducting experimentsin his lab, overseeing tests of packingmaterials in his factories and catching upon the latest advances in the devicefor which he was best known. nathan myhrvold:the things that edison invented are so omnipresentin our society. they've touched the lives ofmillions and millions of people and totally changed them.
we live in a worldthat edison invented. narrator:incandescent light, sound recording,motion pictures. for these and scoresof other inventions, edison had justly earned acclaimas the "inventor of the age." this is a replicaof the first lamp. narrator:but no mere machine couldaccount for his metamorphosis from inventor to icon. (whistling loudly)
(chugging) nancy koehn:we think we are movingvery, very fast today. let me tell you,all those folks in manhattan as thomas edisonis walking the streets thought their bodiescouldn't stand the shock of how fast they were moving. narrator:poised at the starting line of america's rushinto the modern world, edison becameits standard bearer.
hello, hello, hello! narrator:the impact of his native geniusmade infinitely more powerful by his timing, his canny knackfor self-promotion and his compulsive need to win. randall stross:edison was very competitive. the more people who triedto find the answer, the more tempting it was for himto take it on. he was maniacally focusedon maintaining control. narrator:in the end, the intensityof edison's drive
proved both blessingand curse, costing him the allegianceof a lifelong friend and control of the industryto which he'd given life, even as it guaranteed hima kind of immortality. robert rosenberg:there were other greatinventors. then there was edison. he understood that inventingis not just having an idea, and so he made "edison"a name to be reckoned with. (birds cawing)
narrator:in the late winter of 1876, the scattered residentsof menlo park, new jersey, eyed a curious new building just up the hillfrom the train station. it could easily have beenmistaken for a school or a quaker meeting house. in fact, it was a laboratory,a 5,000-square-foot facility entirely dedicated to nurturingthe ideas of one man, an up-and-coming entrepreneur
by the nameof thomas alva edison. no private laboratory in thecountry was so well equipped. from the apothecary jars filled with all manner of chemicalsand organic materials to the scientific instrumentsand shop tools, edison had everythinghe could possibly need to make the natural worldbend to his will. lisa gitelman:he had this keen sense that he needed different kindsof resources in order to invent,
and so menlo park becomesa kind of blank slate on which to come upwith this idea of invention that's uniquely his. myhrvold:most successful inventorsthroughout history were largely people tryingto accomplish a task. they had a day job effectively, and invention was a wayof furthering that. edison decided that inventionwas his day job. narrator:at 29, edison hadthe audacious ambition
of a man who'd come from nothingand who had everything to prove. (film reel clicking) (music playing) narrator:his was a classicamerican story, a spectacular risefrom humble beginnings that soon would be toldand retold and told again. born in 1847 and raisedin port huron, michigan, near the edge of a small country then on the vergeof becoming great,
thomas edison was all pluckand initiative from the start. by his own account, he was curiousto the point of mischief. he once spent hours sittingon a neighbor's goose eggs in an effort to hatch them and set fire to a barn"just to see what it would do." given just three monthsof formal schooling, he spent the carefree afternoonsof boyhood reading his waythrough the library
and obsessively conductingchemistry experiments in the cellar. money was tight,so to finance his dabbling, he went to workat the age of 12, taking a job as a newsboy on the train that ran dailybetween port huron and detroit. along the way, in stationsup and down the line, he became fascinatedwith the telegraph, which was beginning to knitthe growing nation together
as the rails were, only with lengthsof copper wire. john staudenmaier:is there a more leading edgething going on in his world than telegraphy? moving real informationat the speed of light, with very sophisticatedtechnologies to make it happen. he was amazed by it. he was that kind of kid. narrator:edison's fascination sparkeda quest for mastery.
he taught himself morse code and practiced sendingand receiving telegraph messages for up to 18 hours a day before finally landing his firstjob as an operator in 1862, when he was just 15. (chugging loudly) by then, he'd become aware thathe was losing his hearing, the racket of the worldgrowing increasingly dim. but with telegraphy, he foundthat deafness gave him an edge.
"when in a telegraph office,"he later recalled, "i could hearonly the instrument "directly on the tableat which i sat, "and unlike the other operators, i was not botheredby other instruments." neil baldwin:this condition made him feel likehe could think more and he could concentrate more. he became very introspective.
he often felt like he was alone even when there wereother people around. narrator:for five years, edison workedas a press operator, deciphering the dots and dashesof the news reports as they came in over the wires. but the task, once mastered,ceased to inspire him. given his druthers,he took the night shift, which gave him plenty of freetime to read and experiment. before long, he was tinkeringwith the telegraphic equipment.
paul israel:edison didn't havea lot of formal schooling. most of his technical education came from the practiceof telegraphy. the telegraph officeswere schools of electricity. the nature of electricity itselfwas something he studied and learned how to thinkabout how that system operated, how he might improve it. edison slowly began to thinkof himself as an inventor. koehn:edison starts, at the core,the mother lode
of the technologicaltransformation in america. that's very, very important to the way that his mindand his confidence and his place at that machine kind of come together to launch the restof his journey. narrator:in early 1869, edison resignedhis post as a telegraph operator and at the age of 22moved to new york with a few borrowed dollars
in the pocketof his threadbare suit to pursue his careeras an inventor. he spent the next several years bouncing from one short-livedpartnership to another, mainly developingand manufacturing small lots of telegraphicdevices on contract. "sleep," edison later recalled, "was a scarce article"in those days. but he was meticulousand tenacious,
and no technical challengecould cow him. charged with perfectingothers' crude machines, his agile mind spun out a seemingly infinite arrayof variations: automatic telegraphsand printing telegraphs and so-calledmultiplex telegraphs, which were capable of sendingmore than one message at the same timeon the same wire. the booming industryrewarded him with confidence,
and also with cash. as one associate put it, "if you should tell me you couldmake babies by machinery, i shouldn't doubt it." by the mid-1870s,edison had a growing stack of successful telegraphicpatents to his name and enough capitalto finance his dream laboratory in menlo park. israel:edison took a real riskin going to menlo park.
you had to be pretty bold to build this new thing--invention laboratory-- and you were going to becomea professional inventor who was constantly cranking outnew technology. but it was becausehe had this vision of how to becomea great inventor. koehn:this was astoundinglyrevolutionary. you know, "i want to invent. i'm going to beabout invention," right?
"and i don't really wantto be bothered lots of times with very much else." narrator:it was may of 1876, and edison was anxiousto get down to work. his staff was already in place, a small groupof experimental assistants and skilled machinists, many of whom he'd worked withfor years. all that remained wasto move in his family:
his wife mary, whom he'd metin the spring of 1871 and marriedseveral months later; and their children,marion and thomas alva, jr., or as their morse-loving fatherhad dubbed them, "dot" and "dash." edison installed themin a spacious house just down the hillfrom the laboratory, and that, excepting sundays, was more or less the lastthey would see of him.
narrator:from the very beginning,menlo park thrummed like a hive. in the long, open roomsof the laboratory, as many as a dozen menwere at work at once conducting experiments,cutting patterns, banging together crude machines. staudenmaier:edison loved the chase. he wanted to break open very interestingand challenging problems with a lot of promise in them.
gitelman:the drive had something to dowith technical inquiry: a kind of ambition to knowor to figure out things that nobody had thought of yet. it wasn't just likeanswering questions that everybody knew were thereand didn't have answers yet; it was like even coming upwith the questions and answering them. narrator:though telegraphic equipmentwas still his primary focus, the plan at menlo park,as edison put it to a friend,
was to bring out "a minorinvention every ten days and a big thingevery month or so." rosenberg:nobody had the kind resourcesthat edison had. he could say, "you work on this kindof carbon, "and you work on this kindof carbon, and you work on this kindof carbon." baldwin:he would keep track of how many hours he spentin a row on something
and try to beat his last record. he was very into livingabove the store, if you will, and he really implicitly thought that everybody elseshould be like that. narrator:"we work all night experimentingand sleep till noon in the day," edison's chief experimentalassistant, charles batchelor, told his brother. "edison is indefatigable." staudenmaier:it was a rowdy group of guys.
it was kind of likea frat house, but they had the added thingof saying, "we're at the leading edgeof progress right here." (crowd chatter, band playing) narrator:it was an age of marvels, as any of the nearlynine million visitors to the centennial expositioncould attest. opened on may 10, 1876,on a sprawling 236-acre tract in philadelphia'sfairmount park,
the exposition markedamerica's dramatic debut as the world's leadingindustrial power. here was a steam engineso massive that it could run hundredsof machines simultaneously; an elevator that enabled a man to make an eight-story climbwhile standing still; and a battery-operated pen that produced multiple copiesof a document at one time. "the american invents
as the greek sculptedand the italian painted," the times of london reported. "it is genius." but of all the wondersin evidence that spring of 1876, none was more astonishing than alexander graham bell'stelephone, a revolutionary device that converted sound wavesinto an electrical signal and promised to replace thetelegrapher's dots and dashes
with the soundof the human voice. rosenberg:when bell unveils his invention, western union turns to edisonand says, "this is important. we'd like you to lookinto this." narrator:for edison, there were fewmore powerful catalysts than competition. "i don't care too muchfor a fortune," he once said, "as i do for getting aheadof the other fellows."
bell, college educated and bankrolled by his futurefather-in-law, was the ideal adversary. baldwin:thomas edison had no real deepabiding collegial respect for alexander graham bell. alexander graham bell existedas someone to be competed with and overcome and transcendedand bettered. israel:edison saw competitionas sort of a crucial spur to the inventive enterprise.
he said an inventorneeds an enemy. you know, he thought he wasthe best inventive brain around. and also, he had his laboratory,which could outdo anybody else. narrator:it would take edisonand his team mere months to design a devicethat trumped bell's-- a so-called"carbon button transmitter" that carried soundover much longer distances and turned the telephone intoa commercially viable device. in the process, edison stumbledupon the invention
that would change his lifeforever. it was the summer of 1877,and the menlo park team was testing various materialsfor their acoustic properties. edison, though unableto hear the birds outside, was nevertheless obsessedwith sound, its transmissionconstantly cycling through what one colleague describedas his "kaleidoscopic mind." baldwin:the kaleidoscope refracts thelight in many different ways, but you're alwayswithin the same framework.
that's exactly howhis imagination worked. israel:you can seethese sort of patterns. it wasn't just thinking about different waysof doing one thing; it was also about thinkingabout how one technology might contribute to his designof another technology. rosenberg:edison had workedon a telegraph technology that made marks on a paper, so edison was tryingto figure out a way to do that
for the telephone. "how can i record this thing?" he had the basic idea of the vibrating diaphragmfrom the telephone and he thought, "oh, i'll puta needle in the middle of that, "and then i will takea strip of paper "and i will pull thatunder this needle. "and as you speak, it will makeimpressions in this paper. and then you can pull it backthrough later and listen to it."
narrator:initial experimentsquickly gave rise to sketches for a crude machineedison called a phonograph, from the ancient greek,meaning "writer of sound." the device was then refinedin fits and starts, with edison turning out drawings and his machinist john kreusicreating models to test. finally, they settledon a design in which a sheet of foilwas mounted on a hand-cranked cylinder.
staudenmaier:they're working on this thingand they were fooling around. "this is damn interesting. "let's see if we cando something with it. "i don't know if anybodywill ever use it, but let's see what we can do." narrator:when the machine was finished, the men in the shopgathered round, breathless as edison recitedinto the diaphragm the classic nursery rhyme"mary had a little lamb."
mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.. narrator:then he moved the needleto the beginning to see if the rhymewould play back. mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow. and everywhere that mary went, the lamb was sure to go. rosenberg:nobody had ever recordedanything before. and it just changes the wayyou think about the world, if you can playsomething back again. myhrvold:there was a miracle to it
that i think goes beyondmost of the things that we would currentlyexperience. sound was the mostephemeral thing we had, and edison took itfrom being ephemeral to being concrete and something that would existfor the ages. narrator:"i was never so taken abackin all my life," edison said. "i always was afraid of anythingthat worked the first time." edison (recording): i introduce the most wonderful thing
that i have ever experienced, and i congratulate youwith all my heart on this wonderful discovery. narrator:the nation's leading technicalweekly, scientific american, was the first to publicizethe phonograph, following edison's demonstrationof the device in the journal's new yorkoffices on december 7, 1877. edison (recording): through the medium of the phonograph... narrator:"here is a piece of metal,"
the paper's editor wrotein wonder, "that talks in such a waythat there can be no doubt but that the inflections arethose of the human voice." leonard degraaf:all the new technologiesare talked about, written aboutin scientific american. and everybody who is importantin these fields, whether you're an inventor,an engineer or patent attorney, you're going to read scientific american. rosenberg:those physicists and scientistswho were working on sound,
and everybodywho was following that and knew how complex sound was, here comes a jokerwith a little metal diaphragm with a needlein the middle of it, and he records the human voice. gitelman:alexander graham bell and the people who had beenworking on sound, you know, would smack themselvesin the forehead once they saw how simple it was.
narrator:"it is a mostastonishing thing to me," bell confessedto his father-in-law, "that i could possiblyhave let this invention slip through my fingers." the brief noticein scientific american set off a stampede. israel:reporters beat a pathto menlo park to hear this astounding thing. arthur sullivan (recording): i am astonished and somewhat terrified
at the result of this evening's experiment. gitelman:the phonographmade edison world-famous really kind of suddenly. he did demonstrations, and the phonographjust blew people's minds. but more, i think,edison made sure that he wasa colorful character. he was an inveterateself-promoter. baldwin:he was never thereto welcome you.
he would come in from elsewhere,like with his lab coat, and he always wrapped a kerchiefaround his neck and he always had, like,smudges on his face, or like, you know, perspiration, or be mopping his browor something. narrator:chairs were quickly offered, slices of pie handed round,cigars thrown on the table and everyone invitedto help themselves. edison meanwhilekept up a steady stream
of jovial patter, cracking jokesand touting the myriad wonders that soon would emergefrom menlo park. staudenmaier:he had immense self-confidence. he had a sense of humor. and he would pull thingsout of the air that peopleweren't thinking about when they asked a question, and then he'd answer itin a way that,
"wow, i never thought of that." israel:there was somethingabout this guy that seems to have fittheir vision of what the great americaninventor ought to be like. self-taught, good storyteller, you know,he's both down-to-the-earth and also at the same timethe genius, right? he combines those elementsso nicely. narrator:over the next several months,
as sales agents fanned outacross the country with demonstration modelsof the device, the phonograph's inventor becamea full-fledged press sensation. one of edison's associatesjudged it a "mania." "school girls write compositionson edison. "the funny paperspublish squibs on edison. "the daily paperswrite up his life. when shall we get a rest?" staudenmaier:edison's public imageis a mixture of things.
he is on the one handa transcendent brain with a transcendent abilityto discipline and focus. and then he takes napson the floor and rumples up his suit. he doesn't put on airs. ernest freeberg:edison is clearlya home-grown american, self-taught horatio algersort of fellow, an everyman. that was part of his appeal. not a scientific genius,but somebody who was succeeding
because he hada native spark of intelligence and a lot of hard work. he's a great american story. koehn:you know, it's not like he hada team of spin doctors making this whole storywork a certain way. but a lot of piecesfell the right way in terms of his accessibility and his appealto the american public at a time of, you know, great,often frightening,
formidable change. narrator:finally, on aprilfool's day, 1878, reporter william croffutcredited edison with having made lunch "out ofthe dirt taken from the cellar," using a "machine that would feedthe human race." the spoof was loston a good many readers. already, the publichad come to regard edison as equal parts visionaryand magician, or as croffutfamously dubbed him,
"the wizard of menlo park." myhrvold:an invention is an idea. it's an idea that's useful. somebody thinks of somethingand gives us a new device, a new approach, a new technique. and that new ideasuddenly changes the world. narrator:they were publishedin scientific american each and every week throughoutthe late 19th century: lists of new inventions
and announcements of patentsrecently awarded. freeberg:americans as a wholewere thinking of themselves as a nation of inventors. some joked thata young american man would feel guiltygoing to his grave without having won a patentof his very own. this was something thateverybody aspired to do. narrator:to w.b. austin of new york,for his chimney ventilator; to joseph b. underwoodof north carolina,
for a newfangled coffee roaster; to john senn of illinois, for his improved remedyfor hog cholera. israel:the newspapers,you see editorials about how it wasthe patent office now that representedamerican greatness, not the capitol. and i think thatbeautifully captures the way in which americathought about itself,
this growing industrial power on the vergeof transforming the world. freeberg:americans often felta little inferior to europeans. they didn't havethe great universities, they didn't have the great artsand literature tradition. but in the late 19th century,americans said, "this is what we do. we are inventors." narrator:in the spring of 1878,
edison made a splashin the u.s. capital, where he gave back-to-backdemonstrations of the phonograph for members of congress andpresident rutherford b. hayes and sat for a portrait by celebrated photographermathew brady. by then, news of edison'smiraculous device had spread around the world. hordes of the curious weredaily descending on menlo park. and edison, hailed in the pressas "inventor of the age,"
already was beginning to chafeat his celebrity. randall stross:he is deluged with lettersfrom strangers who want things from him. he creates this categoryin his mind of the begging letter. it might be money. it can be other things. so he found himself writingseveral dozen letters a day. he's also discoveringwhen one reporter writes
a long, flattering profile, there are going to be ten others who want to write profilesof him, and he is spendingmore and more time doing the same "mary hada little lamb" demonstrations and not getting any work done. (chugging and whistling) narrator:"the reporterswho come down here have already unstrung my nervesso much,"
edison groused to a friend, "that i think of takingto the woods." finally, in july,he did just that, heading west to wyomingwith a party of scientists to study an eclipse. mary edison, now pregnantfor the third time, was left behind at home. rosenberg:mary was a working-class girl. she was 16 when he met her.
he was 24 years old and livingfor the next contract, the next invention,whatever it might be. baldwin:he was on the ascendancy, and she almost immediatelyfound out what it was like to be married to somebodywho wasn't there. rosenberg:his idea of a good time was always a nightin the laboratory. then the fame came,
and that could not have beeneasy for her. she just didn't havethe background. narrator:visitors to menlo parknoted that mrs. edison was conspicuousmainly in her absence. often, she was ill, plagued by mysterious headaches,panic attacks, fatigue. during the timethat edison was away, mary's nervousness grew so acute as to require the careof a doctor.
and though edison was advisedby his secretary to hurry back, he nevertheless took morethan three weeks to get home. then, as usual,he headed straight for the lab. koehn:he is all about his work,his vision. it's what made him tick. you know, there's the dream, and you get up in the morningthinking about it, and you go through the dayobsessing about it. and you have peoplethat support you in that,
but those people, they don't existon the same plane as the dream. narrator:back at his workbench, edisonconsidered the phonograph... ...which had drawnthe interest of investors who hoped to market the machinefor business use. for that,edison would have to devise a more durable recording surfacethan tin foil, and just now, the prospectdid not much interest him. what dominated his thoughtsin that late summer of 1878
was something that had beenknocking around in his mind for a while: an invention suggestedby three quick sketches he'd made in his notebookand labeled "electric light." staudenmaier:you can go back 3,000 years and you have artificiallighting devices. so what does that tell you? for a very long time,people wanted to have a way to see in the very dim lightof night.
rosenberg:gaslights had been in homesfor some time. they had certain drawbacks. the obvious one isit's an open flame. the not-so-obvious oneis that they're filthy. freeberg:gas seemed the cutting edge, but it wasa terrible technology. it sucked the oxygenout of the air, overheated rooms,spewed a sort of acidic vapor. all sorts of accidental leakscaused asphyxiation.
it was a terrible problem. so people put up with anenormous amount of inconvenience to have this light. but edison and othersrecognized that if they could createa light that was safer, that was cleaner, that they could tapinto an enormous market. narrator:on september 14, 1878, while talking with oneof the reporters
who now regularlyhung around menlo park, edison lifted the curtainon his next big thing. in a matter of a few days, he told the astonished scribefrom the new york sun, he would do what no onehad ever been able to do: devise a way to bringelectric light indoors. for fully 70 years,it had been understood that light could be producedby electricity. but the onlycommercial technology
that so far had been developedwas arc lighting-- a method that forced a currentto jump between two carbon rods and produced a light so blindingit could only be used outdoors, or else in very largepublic spaces. freeberg:the problem with arc lightwas that it was so bright that people could not bearto be around it. even if they set it upin city parks, people would sometimesuse umbrellas to shield themselvesfrom the intensity of the light.
narrator:the alternative wasthe incandescent bulb, a technology that firsthad been patented in 1841, six years before edisonwas born, and still,nearly four decades later, had yet to be made viable. freeberg:it's not hardto invent a light bulb that lasts for just 15 seconds. the problem is to get it to lastfor many, many hours. the trick wasto find something
that would incandesceand not burn up. staudenmaier:this was a hot challenge. all kinds of people wanted in. both sides of the atlantic, there were a lot of peopleworking on this. israel:i think as edison began to lookat what people had done, he realized, "you know what, i can figure outhow to do this." narrator:although he'd done no morethan a couple days' worth
of preliminary experiments, edison was surehe'd cracked the problem. "i have it now!"he crowed to the sun reporter. "scientists have all beenworking in the same groove, "and when it is known how i haveaccomplished my object, "everyone will wonderwhy they never thought of it, it is so simple." gitelman:lots and lots of peoplearound the world were working on electric light.
people announcing to the press,"eureka, i have it!" but you know, the presswas kind of focused on edison. narrator:edison kept on grabbingheadlines over the next month, claiming to have conceived of not merely a long-lastingincandescent bulb, but also an entireelectrical power system, which would be both cheaperand safer than gas. in short order,gas stocks plunged and financiers began lining upat the wizard's door,
all because of a germof an idea. gitelman:so he sort of mobilizedhis worldwide fame to find financial backersfor half-baked notions that he didn't knowwere going to work out at all. israel:when he began to talk about itin the press, people say,"i want in on this," and they come to edison and say, "we want to give you a bunchof money to solve this problem." narrator:until patents were filed,
edison declined to providemuch detail about his plans. but he made a bold promise:in a matter of weeks, he would set lower manhattanaglow with incandescent light. no pronouncement had ever beenmore spectacularly premature. at menlo park, weeks turnedall too quickly to months. as francis upton,a new hire in the laboratory, put it in a letterto his father: "the electric light goes onvery slowly." it was thenthe late summer of 1879,
almost a year after edisonhad announced his intention to light new york. freeberg:many newspapers reported that they were trying to do somethingthat really could not be done. they looked at edisonand said that he really doesn't understandthe basic underlying challenges of creatingan incandescent light, that it is scientificallyimpossible, and the world was clearlystarting to denounce edison
as a stock manipulatorand a fraud and somebody who got luckywith the phonograph, but was out of his depthat this point. he wasn't going to be able todeliver on the electric light. narrator:the criticism irked edison, not least because heand his team at menlo park had been working more or lessaround the clock, and most especially because itunnerved some of his investors, a cabal of wealthy businessmen
led by wall street bankerj.p. morgan. freeberg:they had investeda lot of money. they were beating the doors,wanting to get some evidence that this was actuallygoing to work. staudenmaier:edison understood he had to keep sweet-talkingthe wall street people that were backing himand who kept saying, "so?" gitelman:there were occasions when he hadfinanciers out to menlo park to give them a flatteringbehind-the-scenes demonstration
of what they were working on. there was impatience, but there was alsoa lot of expectation. you know,you might as well have a little bit of moneyriding on edison because he was goingto do something. narrator:edison had no doubtthat he would succeed. what he needed was time. "there is a wide difference
between contemplatingan invention," he later said, "and putting the manufacturedarticle on the market." rosenberg:when he set out to workon electric lighting, he realized pretty early that the visionencompassed everything, and that this wasgoing to be a slog. gitelman:we remember famouslythe light bulb, but of course you've gotto screw the light bulb into a socket.
the socket has to be wired. the system has to be metered. there has to be a generator. it's really a massivelycomplex system to put in place to get that light bulbto go off. i mean, i don't think he,going in, realized how complicated it was. koehn:i think he has that sense that if you take thisenergy form and you tame it,
and then you distribute itin one central place, think of the network of people that can turn a knoband get light. this isn't a dreamyand gauzy kind of vision. it's a vision of, "this can happen. what do we do next?" narrator:already, the project had completely transformedmenlo park.
a new state-of-the-artmachine shop had been built, development of the variouscomponents of the system had gotten underway, and dozens of men had been addedto the payroll-- among them, the new hire upton, a 26-year-oldprinceton-educated physicist whom edison nicknamed "culture" for his fancyeducational pedigree. myhrvold:upton was a more trained,learned man.
edison was a little bitmerciless, kind of teasing him about it. and at one point, edison asked him to calculatethe volume of a light bulb. upton draws the light bulband he approximates it as a sphere and a coneand a cylinder and he's calculating away,and while he does this, edison fills the thingfull of sand and pours it out and effectively doesan empirical measurement.
you know, showing his ownsort of natural brilliance. narrator:upton took the ribbingin stride, awed by what he callededison's "intuitions." in fact, intuitionwas just the first step. equally crucial wasthe inventor's understanding of electrical laws,which had set him on a quest for a very particularsort of bulb. over the previous months, a variety of substances withthe properties edison was after
had been rigorously testedas filaments and dozens of bulb prototypesdesigned. still, as upton put itto his father, "we have not as yetwhat we want." myhrvold:edison is famous for sayingthat he didn't fail; he just found thousands of waysthat didn't work. and to him,that was a progress on the pathof getting something that would. narrator:by the summer of 1879,
the menlo park teamwas gaining on its object. first came the creationof a high-vacuum bulb, so superiorto any other ever produced that edison was movedto share his results with the associationfor the advancement of science. then came a seriesof promising experiments with carbon filaments. rosenberg:now the scientific worldhas taken notice. they may not see himas a great scientist,
but the smart ones knew enough to respect that he was reallygood at solving problems. narrator:finally, in the wee hoursof october 22, 1879, a bulb was fitted with a filamentof carbonized cotton thread and, as had become laboratorycustom, was left to burn. and so it continued to do,hour after hour, for more than13 and a half hours. (birds chirping)
upton, returningto the laboratory at daybreak, was amazed to find the lightstill on. israel:all of a sudden, the possibilityof a successful lamp became apparent to everybodyin the laboratory. they realized,"hey, this is the solution." narrator:"if it can burnthat number of hours," edison saidamid the cheers of his men, "i know i can make it burna hundred." "there will be a great sensation
when the light is made knownto the world," francis upton reportedto his father, "for it does so much more thananyone expects can be done." now, from the new york papers, came word of the publicunveiling of edison's light, to be held at menlo parkon new year's eve, 1879. (whistling) israel:all of a sudden, hundreds of peopledescend on menlo park.
they have to put special carson the trains in order to accommodateall the people that want to see this new marvelof edison's. you can imaginewhat it must have been like. you're coming outfrom new york on a train. it's a dark night,fields kind of snow-covered. you get to menlo park, it's kind of up on the hillfrom the railroad track, and you see these lightsup there.
it must have looked likea fairyland almost to people, coming out in the dark of nightto this place that was lit up in a waythey'd never seen before. narrator:20 lampposts lighted their walkfrom the depot, while the laboratory itselfwas "brilliantly illuminated," one reporter noted,with some 30 bulbs that glowed long into the night. freeberg:the light bulb symbolizedthe ability to push back the night.
turning night into day, which had been a primordiallimitation on humanity, was amazing and transformative. narrator:"there can be no particleof doubt in anyone's mind," raved the new york herald, "that the electric lightis a success, and a permanent one." jill jonnes:put yourself backinto this world where everythingto do with light was a flame,
and imagine thatall of a sudden, one day, that changes. israel:there was a sense in which wewere entering a brave new world. that's what edison represented,you know, the world to come. myhrvold:any new invention,any really powerful idea, is going to provoke aweand wonder and a certain amount of anxiety. in the 19th century, technology was makingradical changes.
narrator:by the early 1880s, machines had begun to usheramerica into the modern world, warping time in a way thatjust a generation before would have seemed unimaginable. the journey from new yorkto san francisco, which once had taken months, now could be accomplishedin a matter of days, and a news story writtenin washington, d.c., on tuesday was printedin the wednesday papers
in cities thousandsof miles away. in the office and the factoryas well as on the farm, machines made the task at handquicker, even as electric lightpromised to prolong the day. staudenmaier:ordinary people feel like theyare a part of a god-like force that is sweeping upa backward world and turning it intoan immensely sophisticated, fast-moving, exciting place. i think at the same time,
it is scaring the hellout of those same people. they don't understandhow things work anymore. where is the world going? edison understood thatthere was no halting this incredibly broad, incredibly powerfulkind of wave of change that was sweeping over america. staudenmaier:people are saying,"we can trust this guy "about a world that we don'tknow how to trust exactly.
we can trust this guy." koehn:he was so admired,and a lot of that was just the incredible interesthe compelled by virtue of what he did at a moment when the modernworld was being done. edison is the machinein the garden, right? chooo, let's go. and a lot of americansgrabbed onto that, held on tightand surged forward.
narrator:in february 1881, edison left his workbenchat menlo park behind and began spending his daysin new york, in an elegant brownstoneat 65 fifth avenue, wired with some 200 lamps to serve as both showplaceand headquarters for the edisonelectric light company. by then, the inventor's pledgeto electrify lower manhattan had been stalledfor more than two years,
while his team grappledwith the challenges of designing the world's firstelectrical power grid. "my light is perfected,"edison said. "i'm going into the practicalproduction of it." with his family ensconcedin a suite of rooms in a nearby hotel,the inventor plunged in. freeberg:this was not a scienceexperiment; this was a business, trying to geta significant return
on a significant amountof capital investment. so edison had to followthe light bulb all the wayto its full realization. narrator:on pearl street, in the heart ofmanhattan's financial district, two adjoining warehousesnow would be transformed into edison'scentral power station, equipped with sixsteam engine-dynamo sets weighing some 30 tons each, as well as switchboardsand control instruments
and a bank of 1,000 lampsfor testing the system. meanwhile, nearly 80,000 feetof copper conductors would be laidbelow the surrounding streets. ultimately, edison plannedto supply electricity to a swath of city blocksa mile square and provide light to every subscribing homeand business in the district with the simple flipof a switch. jonnes:it was massive,
all of the different problemsthat he had to solve, but being edison, he justvery steadily pushed through. narrator:first, new york city officialshad to be convinced of the wisdom of runningelectric current underground before they awarded edison thepermit to tear up the streets. lamps, meters and the othersystem components had to be mass-produced, and it fell to edisonto oversee the factories. it was, as his secretary noted,"a gigantic undertaking,"
one that required the inventorto be administrator, manufacturerand salesman all at once. and on top of everything, there were the "money men,"as edison called them, who never failedto provide distraction. jonnes:j.p. morgan not only puts hismoney into edison's company, he decides that he personallyis going to showcase this new amazing technologyin his own mansion. so he lets edison,
who's up to his eyeballswith all these other problems, know that he would likesomeone to come and set up what was knownas an isolated unit at morgan's house. morgan's house is lit up, and morgan had thesevarious soirees to show it off, and many other rich people contractedto have edison come in and do these isolated units.
narrator:the isolated units provedprofitable, but a pain. neighbors complainedabout the roar of the machinery, which usually was placed inthe customer's cellar or stable or else in a pitunder the back garden. wires crossedor short-circuited, and fires broke out. at least onehysterical housewife demanded the entire installationbe removed. still, the orderscame pouring in.
israel:these isolated plants boomed. there are thousands of them. that was the way in which thecompany was making its money, but edison's visionwas a central station, and edison wantedto make that happen. narrator:although the demands on edison'stime were relentless, whenever he could, he slipped out of his suitand away from the office and headed farther downtown,to pearl street.
there, in the shadowof the rising brooklyn bridge, his crews were at work,frantically digging trenches, laying mainsand troubleshooting equipment. by the summer of 1882, the project was finallynearing completion. koehn:you had to be able to not justmarshal the science, but then put the peopleand the money, the capital, and the organizations together,and the politics. i can't think of another figure
who could operateon all those different levels. narrator:on the afternoonof september 4, the switch at pearl streetwas thrown and hundreds of lamps throughoutthe so-called first district simultaneously began to glow. edison's power grid had successfully lighted onesquare mile of lower manhattan. it seemed only a matter of timebefore it would light the world. nearly four years had passedsince edison had promised
to bring electricityinto people's homes-- four years full of obstaclesand pressure and the persistent,pioneering work of hundreds. now that he had achievedwhat many thought impossible, the garrulous inventor wasalmost too worn out for comment. "i have accomplishedall that i promised," edison said to a reporter. and for once,he left it at that. koehn:he hated anythingthat took him away
from the tinkering andthe thinking and the inventing, but he kept doing it. he says,"i know how to do this and with god as my witness,i'm going to do this." and so that stubbornness gets us to thisextraordinary accomplishment that really, really, reallychanged the world. narrator:it was the middleof july 1884-- and for edison, just anotherlong day of work in new york--
when word from menlo parkarrived. mrs. edison had taken to her bed in the housethey still owned there. she was desperately ill. mary's puzzling ailmentshad long been a source of stress in the edison household. but in her grief overthe recent death of her father, she had seemed more fragilethan ever. a doctor had been called, butthere was little he could do.
at 2:00 in the morningon august 9, mary edison died. she was 29. israel:there's a good possibility that she may have diedfrom morphine overdose. she appears to have hadsome serious complications from her third pregnancy,which created a lot of pain. in that era, opium and morphinewere used in almost every drug, and accidental overdoseswere not uncommon. but you know, her deathwas pretty sudden.
narrator:edison had hurried homebarely in time to say goodbye. his daughter marion laterwould recall waking to find him at his wife's bedside,"shaking with grief." stross:we can speculatethat edison felt guilt for having spentall these years, the entiretyof their married life, removed from the household, immersed in the worldof the lab. and now it was all over.
narrator:under other circumstances, edison might have immersedhimself in work, but he had no inventive projectto consume him. electric power had unraveled the creative fraternityof menlo park, as his trusted lieutenantshad scattered to manage his variouslighting concerns. edison himselfhad spent the two years since the launch of pearl street
working tirelesslyto extend his system, and though the efforthad made him a millionaire, money for its own sakedid not much interest him. narrator:edison was 37 years old now and suddenly a widowerwith three children to raise. just weeks after mary's death, he left the boysin her mother's care, and with 12-year-olddaughter marion in tow headed for the internationalelectrical exhibition
in philadelphia and a rendezvous withan old friend, ezra gilliland. israel:they had known each otheras telegraphers. they actually practicedtheir telegraph skills by transmittingshakespeare's plays. so ezra gilliland is hisbest friend for many years. and in 1884,they meet in philadelphia and decide that they'regoing to go off and become kind ofan inventive partnership.
narrator:collaboration broughta renewed companionship, and in the winter of 1885, a meandering leisure triptogether south. in florida, on a whim, edison bought 13 riverside acresin fort myers and gave half the plotto his old friend. the two would build vacationhomes there, side by side. stross:briefly, edison makes himselfemotionally more open than he had ever been before.
it's as if he had resolvedto leave the world of work and try a different stylein approaching life. narrator:it was through gilliland that edison was introducedto mina miller, the 19-year-old daughter of aprominent ohio industrialist. edison, then 38,was instantly smitten. before long, the young missmiller had become an obsession. "got thinking about mina and came near to being run overby a streetcar,"
he wrote in a diary. "if mina interferes much more, will have to take outan accident policy." reunited finally while on holidayat gilliland's summer home, edison taught mina morse code,tapping out messages on her hand so they might communicateprivately even when in company. he proposed in the same manner. rosenberg:unlike his first wife,
mina grew up in a verysophisticated world. she was the daughter of someonewho was himself an inventor. she'd moved in society circles. she knew what it meant to bearound famous people and had a better sensethan a lot of women would have of what it would be liketo marry one. baldwin:she realized he was mr. edison, she realizedhe was a big shot, but she had her own interests,
and she had much moreof a sense of herself. narrator:with marriage came a new house, a grand 23-room mansionin west orange, new jersey. three more children--a daughter and two sons-- would eventually jointhe edison family. now that his domestic lifewas settled, the inventor was anxiousto get back to his first love. israel:the way in which edison thoughtabout himself as a family man is best captured by a letterto his second wife.
he writes, "you and the childrenand the laboratory are the most important thingsin my life." and i think the inclusionof laboratory tells you a lot. i would arguethat the laboratory probably ought to beat the top of that list. narrator:"i want none of the rich man'susual toys," edison once told a reporter. "i have no time for them. what i want isa perfect workshop."
narrator:when it openedin december 1887, edison's "perfect workshop" was,in his own words, "the best equippedand largest laboratory extant." occupying a corner loton main street, just down the hillfrom his new home, the complex includeda sprawling central structure that, at 60,000 square feet, was ten times largerthan menlo park. in addition to machine shops
and chemicaland experimental rooms, there was a vast technicallibrary and a stockroom furnished, as the proudinventor quipped, with "everythingfrom an elephant's hide to the eyeballsof a united states senator." "my plan,"he told a prospective backer, "contemplates to workingon only that class of inventions "which require but smallinvestments for each. no cumbersome inventionslike the electric light."
edison was fairly burstingwith ideas. his catalogue of"things doing and to be done" in the new laboratoryran to five full pages and included everythingfrom artificial silk to a snow compressorto ink for the blind. koehn:you can't workas much as he did, in as many different spheres,with as much zeal as he did, if you don't have some real fireburning inside there. and that fire has to bea passion for what he was doing
and literally the actof doing it. he loves his mind. he loves slipping into it. for him, it was exactlywhat made him come alive, what gave him his mission. and i can only imagine himlying on his cot, right, at the back of the lab,having one of his catnaps, and then waking up and going, "oh, this is whati was thinking about,
and here's how i'm thinkingabout it differently now." and, you know,being in his element by being in the kind ofvery, very interesting, very, very active black holeof his thinking. narrator:edison had hoped to make a fresh startin his new laboratory. instead, he would findhis pursuit of new inventions eclipsed by old ones, and his perpetual reachfor the top rung
this time would carry himstraight to the bottom. arthur sullivan (recording): it is the most wonderful thing that i have ever experienced. narrator:for the better part of a decade, edison's phonographhad lain dormant, "comatose for the time being," he'd told reporterswhen queried about it. but by the late 1880s, his old rival,alexander graham bell, and his cousin chichester,a chemist,
had picked upwhere edison left off. rosenberg:alexander graham bell's cousincomes to him and says, "tom, isn't this cool? "look what i did. i've done a modto your phonograph." and he had taken the phonograph and put a sort ofwax surface on it instead of tin foil,and edison's basic response was, "uh-uh, not whilei'm around, fella."
stross:edison did not havea generous nature, and he was most unwillingto say to a rival, "well done." gitelman:i think he, you know,got kind of anxious. "i have this little bitof intellectual property here, "i'm known for this,and now other people "are sort of inventingaround my invention. i better get back to it." narrator:denouncing the bell associatesas "pirates," edison had vowed to besttheir machine
and immediately set to workon what he called "the perfected phonograph." to assist in the effort, he'd made his friendezra gilliland an official partner, giving him charge of themarketing and manufacturing of the improved device. but when gillilandexpressed concerns over design flawsin one prototype
and offered edison his own ideasfor potential improvements, he was coldly rebuffed. it was impossible,edison told him, for a man to do businessand invent simultaneously. i think gilliland did feel that he was more of an equalpartner in this operation than edison perceived himas being. the problem is that for edison,nobody is quite his equal. rosenberg:if you had your own ideasand you really wanted to go off,
you were kind ofin the wrong place because it was reallyedison's party. narrator:then, in the spring of 1888, gilliland was approachedby an entrepreneur, who offered to buythe marketing rights to edison's new phonograph. edison stood to make $500,000from the sale. gilliland,in a secret side deal, negotiated a payout for himselfof $250,000.
israel:basically, gillilandput a lot of pressure on him that this was probably the bestdeal he was going to get. so edison gave into the pressure. narrator:it was several monthsbefore edison became aware of the sum paid to gilliland,and then he was enraged. "i just learn you have madea certain trade of a nature unknown to me," he cabled gilliland,then in europe. "i have this day abrogatedyour contract."
rosenberg:edison felt it wasan utter betrayal, and i think thatstung him deeply in a way that he hadn'tbeen hurt before. stross:edison, from the momenthe became famous, felt that peoplewanted things from him, and gilliland was someonehe knew from way back, so he trusted him. edison would not allow himself to be in a vulnerableposition again.
narrator:in fort myers, on the land the longtime friendshad planned to share, two newly constructed housesstood side by side. edison now instructedthe caretaker to "cut the pipes" that supplied gilliland's housewith water. baldwin:thomas edison had a highlycultivated sense of betrayal, and either you were with himor you weren't. it was quite black and whitein that regard. narrator:by 1888, the electrificationof the united states
was well under way. in the six years since edisonhad thrown the switch on the first electricalpower grid at pearl street, his empire had grownto include 121 central stations in cities and townsacross the country, from birmingham, alabama,to grand rapids, michigan, as well as numerous othersin europe and latin america. but already,the industry he'd founded was bristlingwith competition.
in 1884, pittsburgh entrepreneurgeorge westinghouse had gotten into the game,buying up patents from electrical inventorsin america and abroad and quickly developinghis own rival system. more recently,the thomson-houston company, a longtime supplierof arc light, had begun installingits own central stations, using technology licensedfrom westinghouse. now the race was on
to light the dark cornersof the world. staudenmaier:if you are the town council in a town of 5,000 peoplein ohio someplace and you're debating,"do we want to electrify?" you know thatthere's westinghouse, there's thomson-houston,and there's edison. all of them claim to be able to deliver a whole packageto you. narrator:both westinghouseand thomson-houston
were peddlinga new delivery system, developed in europe and known asalternating current, or ac, which employedhigh-voltage wires to transmit electricityover long distances-- as much as several hundred milesfrom the generating station. by contrast, edison's low-voltagedirect current system, or dc, with its maximum delivery rangeof only a mile or two,
seemed downright antiquated. you can imagine how much moreattractive it was to a city if you came as a westinghousesalesman and said, "we don't have to buildpower houses every one mile. "we'll put somethingon the outskirts of town, and as your town grows,"and remember, this is 19th-century america,it's growing very, very rapidly, "we can just expand and providemore and more electricity from this one power station."
narrator:with his competitorsundercutting him on cost, edison was feeling the squeeze. to his 121 domestic stations, westinghouse already had 68after just one year in business. as ac begins to becomea real serious competitor and as the westinghouse systembegins to spread, increasingly,edison's closest associates are begging him to turn to ac. there are lots of advantagesto ac,
and edison refuses to go alongwith them. rosenberg:alternating currentis very complicated compared to direct current. to understand it,to make it work requires a level of mathematicshe just didn't have. he just didn't havethe background. narrator:with his own dominancein the industry at stake, edison's competitive streakshort-circuited. this time, instead ofout-inventing his rivals,
he would conduct a ruthlesscampaign to discredit them. capitalizing on a recent spateof grisly accidents involving high-voltage wires, edison now sought to convincethe public that ac was unsafe. "it's a matter of fact,"he warned in a widely-circulated pamphlet, "that any system employinghigh voltage jeopardizes life." israel:the safety issuewas an important one. but it's also the case
that there were ways to solvethat, and they were solved. and so i think he hadreal concerns about danger, but this was his system. narrator:from west orangenow came accounts of gruesome experiments designedto prove ac's deadly power: the electrocutions of dogs,calves, horses, all by meansof alternating current. edison also offeredhis expertise to new york state in its effort to introducea "humane" method of execution,
testifying that electricitywould indeed be more humane than the gallows. jonnes:all of a sudden edison, who had always beenagainst capital punishment, suddenly is completelybehind the electric chair, and he feels thatthe best way to do this is to use, guess what, westinghousealternating current generators, and it is fully his intentionto associate everything to do
with westinghouseand his electricity with death. baldwin:he had a very adversarial viewtoward other people's technology and he fought to preservehis own technology, and that might've beenhis downfall. narrator:in the end,edison's grisly campaign made not a dentin his competitor's sales. and by 1890,it was clear to j.p. morgan and the other partnersin edison general electric that the future laywith alternating current,
and their future profitsin a merger with westinghouse's principalrival, thomson-houston. "if you make the coalition, my usefulness as an inventoris gone," edison warned. "i can only inventunder powerful incentive. no competitionmeans no invention." it was a price the money menwere willing to pay. staudenmaier:basically, the edison peoplesaid, "we're going ac." so he was forcedout of that game
is really what happened. there's no question about that. narrator:edison had little to dowith the merger, and in the courseof negotiations, his name was dropped. from then on, the company would be knownsimply as general electric. stross:he had backedthe wrong technology, and the end washe lost control.
narrator:edison departed with stock inthe newly consolidated venture and a seaton its board of directors. but he was eager to move on. "i'm going to do something nowso different and so much bigger than anything i've ever donebefore," he told his secretary, "that people will forgetmy name was ever connected with anything electrical." jonnes:edison, who always wantedto look like the champion, said, "oh, you know,electricity is an old thing.
"i'm really done with that. "so, you know,i've created this world." sort of "lesser beingswill move it forward." but the truth ishe was heartbroken. narrator:ogdensburg, new jersey-- a desolate region30 miles from west orange, strewn with quarriesand scarred by mines, perpetually covered in dust. it was to this place that edisonretreated in the early 1890s,
convinced thatits stony landscape would yield to himthe next big thing. the united states was then inthe throes of a building frenzy, two decades and counting of railroads and bridgesbeing banged together, cities stretching outwardand up. all of it hinged on steel,and thus on iron ore, and the rich veins in the eastwere by now running dry. edison intended to keepthe nation's steel mills humming
with an ingenious new process for extracting ironfrom low-grade ore. (loud whistling) (explosion) baldwin:he invented the process that began with dynamitingthese mountains, breaking theminto giant boulders, pulverizing the boulders in these giantinterlocking drums
that break them further down, then break those downinto pebble size, pulverize that downthrough a screening system so you ended up with thislike very fine sediment, and that's when the ironwas pulled out. gitelman:fantastic idea to get iron ore,to grind it up, right, and then drop itand have it drop past... just let it drop pastsome magnets, right? and so the actual iron would bepulled out by the magnets
and the worthless orewould fall to the ground. genius idea. narrator:it was not enoughthat the effort required edisonto design and build a whole seriesof gargantuan new machines; he also intended to automatethe entire plant so that the ore processed there would never once be touchedby human hands. for the first timein many years,
the inventor could once againimmerse himself in inventing. leonard degraaf:fundamentally, edison isa technical problem-solver. it's basicallywhat he wants to do, and that is, he wants to bringa bunch of his mates together and solve funtechnical problems. and at ogdensburg, he's doing iton a massive scale. that is fun. that's like a big sandbox. narrator:from 1890 on,as the plant took shape
and the technical staff grewto more than 200, the ogden works consumed moreand more of edison's time. finally, in 1894, he moved upto the mine entirely, promising mina to return hometo west orange on sundays. baldwin:but he ended up building himselfa little cabin up there. it was called "the white house," but it was really kind of grimyand dusty and horrible, and he wrote some lettersto his wife. it was like he was high
off of how grimy it wasand disgusting it was. and in terms of hishands-on approach, you know, describing crawlingunderneath these machines and fixing them himself because "there's nobody elsewho can do it," you know, it's like a ceothat can't let go. you still have to get downto the nitty-gritty, you can't help yourself. narrator:at times, even to edison,the enterprise seemed cursed.
machinery malfunctioned. buildings collapsed. more than once,the plant had to be shut down for lack of cash. having steered clearof partners, edison had to shore upthe venture with his personal fortuneagain and again, eventually selling evenhis shares in general electric to keep it afloat.
none of it seemed to faze him. as he put it in one letterto mina, "your lover isas bright and cheerful as a bumblebee in flower time." stross:he liked the ideaof not being too old to handle rough conditions, throwing out all of the comfortsof modern life and living as a roughneck. maybe it was a reaction
to his having to keepwall street happy. there were no investorsanywhere near that mine. degraaf:he's away from the pressuresof being thomas edison, the "wizard of menlo park." and so in ogdensburg,he can be himself. narrator:no matter the difficulty, edison kept at ityear after year, so seemingly unconcernedwith the bottom line that many took to callingthe ogden "edison's folly."
even before the plantwas fully operational, the price for its productplummeted, its value diminishedby the discovery of a vast new sourceof high-grade ore in the midwest. edison finally admitted defeatin 1898. by then, he'd sunknearly ten years and some $2 million of hisown money into the venture. israel:why did edison stick with thatfor so long?
it was a technical challenge that edison really enjoyedtaking on. in fact, he later says,you know, he's talking to his assistantin the ore milling venture at the end of it, and they're looking at wherethey'd dug out all this ore, a big hole in the ground,and this guy says, "well, you sure wasteda lot of money on that," and edison says, "yeah,but we sure had fun doing it."
he had such a great time, right, that it didn't matterthat he spent that much money on this hole in the ground,so to speak. narrator:in the questfor commercial iron ore, the inventor had insteadfound fresh inspiration. koehn:there's somethingvery interesting about how he literally lets go of what most of the peoplearound him would call failure and then moves forward
without a huge amountof reflection, soul searching. he's thinking, he's seeing,he's observing, he's filing, but he's moving. this was a man who reallydidn't spend a lot of time looking backward. narrator:they called it the "black maria" for its resemblanceto a police wagon. built in the winter of 1893 just outside the main laboratoryat west orange,
the tar-papered structurehad been positioned atop an enormous lazy susan so that it could be rotatedto follow the sun and outfittedwith a retractable roof to maximize available light. it was from this curiousbuilding on november 1, 1894... (gunfire) ...that the shotssuddenly rang out. inside, america's belovedsharpshooter annie oakley,
little sureshot,was performing her act, firing away at tiny glass ballsas edison's latest invention captured the actionin real time. the device,an electrically powered camera capable of recording motion, was the first of its kindin the united states and a mechanical monument to edison's unparalleled giftfor synthesis. the idea had come to himnearly six years before,
sparked by a conversationhe'd had with british photographereadward muybridge. israel:eadward muybridge, who was very well knownfor these animal motion studies, had developed this device. it was a revolving diskwith these images on it, and as it revolvedwith a light shining through it, it looked like motion pictures. and he gave a lecturein west orange,
which edison attended, and afterwards,they were talking. and edison said, "you know,we ought to combine "my phonographwith your machine and we can producetalking pictures." and then edison got to thinkinga little bit more about that, and he said,"you know what? i can do that myself." narrator:within months, edison haddrawn up a patent application
for an optical recording devicecalled a "kinetograph," from the ancient greekmeaning "writer of motion." the kinetograph, he promised,would "do for the eye what the phonograph doesfor the ear." baldwin:it makes the transitionsound so effortless and truly brilliant. there's something god-likeabout it. "i have solved the problemof the ear and that sensory, and now i will move to the otherway that we perceive the world."
narrator:further inspirationhad been found during a visit to paris in 1889, where edison had met frenchscientist etienne-jules marey, whose "chronophotography" captured 12 consecutive imagesper second on a long,continuous piece of film. israel:marey had been filming birds by converting a guninto a camera so that as you pulledthe trigger,
he was actually takingrapid pictures of them with strip film. and this influenced edison to go back and experimentwith roll film. rosenberg:motion picture technologyis difficult. you have to have filmthat stops, gets the image, advances, stops,gets the next image. and it has to do that20, 30 times a second. so you need filmthat can take the beating.
you need film that'ssensitive enough to do it. edison workedwith george eastman to develop the filmwith the sprocket holes, figuring outhow the machinery's going to advance the film,stop it, advance the film,stop it. and he developeda really terrific camera, and that was his contribution. narrator:throughout, edison had workedclosely with his assistant
in the mining operation, a sometime-photographernamed william dickson, who was largely responsiblefor the optics of the device. now, dickson had begunto produce the first films in what eventually would be the edison company'sextensive catalogue, a collection of short featuresmeant to be shown one at a timeon a coin-operated, peephole viewing cabinetcalled a kinetoscope.
stross:the first motion pictureentertainment device was an ingenious contraption that allowed you to seea loop of film, a very short loop. narrator:the inaugural batchof kinetoscopes shipped from west orangein april 1894: five to atlantic city,ten to chicago, and ten to a small storefrontin manhattan, a former shoe shopnear herald square
soon to become the world's firstcommercial "kinetoscope parlor." stross:they were setting upthe machines, getting ready to open, and curiosity seekershad gathered and they decided to let them in,to give the machines a try, and it turned outto overwhelm them. the public poured in. the novelty of the thingwas incredibly attractive. israel:the kinetoscope,
it's a lot like the originaltin foil phonograph. it's an astounding invention. people are enthralled by it, they want to see it,they want to experience it, but pretty soon,it doesn't go anywhere, right? these short films, you pay a nickel,you see something, and all of a sudden,there's nothing magic about it. narrator:convinced thatthe constant interruption
of having to movefrom one machine to another detracted from the viewingexperience, dickson and otherson edison's team urged him to developa projection device. but the inventor was reluctant. "if projectors replacekinetoscopes," he argued, "there will be a usefor maybe ten of them "in the whole united states. let's not kill the goosethat lays the golden egg."
in the end, others wouldbeat him to the punch. in early 1895, french inventorsauguste and louis lumiã¨re introduced their projectionsystem to wild acclaim in paris. later that year, yet anothersystem, called the phantascope, was unveiled at thecotton states exposition in atlanta, georgia. larger-than-life figuresappeared on a screen. and that was the futureof motion pictures. very rapidly, projection becomessomething that people expect.
narrator:with no projector of their ownto market, edison's sales agents approached the phantoscope'sinventor, thomas armat, and convinced him to sellthe patent rights in his device to edison. "the great majorityof the parties "who desire to investin such a machine have been waiting for the edisonmachine," armat was told, "and they would never besatisfied with anything else." israel:they essentially say,
"you know that everybody'swaiting for edison, "so why don't you just sell outto him? you'll do much better thantrying to compete with him." i think in edison's own mind,he could just slap his name on what became known asthe edison vitascope because by that time, edison is both the individualand he's the corporate edison. he could be one or the other,depending on the circumstance. and in this case,it was the corporate edison
that was the vitascope. narrator:billed by the press as "the ingenious inventor'slatest toy," the vitascope made its publicdebut on april 23, 1896 at new york city'skoster and bials' music hall, throwing hand-tinted imagesacross a 20 by 13 foot screen and effectively launching theamerican motion picture industry in edison's name. (piano music playing)
koehn:the more you peel backthe layers of edison's work, the more you realizethat part of his genius was about seeing howother people's achievements, thoughts, failures,small successes could be connectedto push forward what he was working onin a big way. for edison, it was abouttaking all these ideas, all those differentriver streams which were initiated or fedby all kinds of other people,
and then building the aqueductto channel the river. narrator:on a saturday afternoonin january 1903, 55-year-old thomas edisonwelcomed a new man to the chemical researchdepartment at west orange with a few choice wordsof advice: "nothing that's any goodworks by itself," he said. "you've got to makethe damn thing work." it was more or lessthe edison creed. as one acquaintance put it,
"edison pronounces the words'work' and 'working' as some do 'prayer'or 'religion.'" already, fewer than five years after he'd abandonedthe ogden mine, the inventor had a half-dozennew projects on the wire and was routinely putting in80-hour weeks at the lab. from the wreckage of ogden, using much of the same machineryand techniques, he'd spun a manufactoryfor cement
which one day would be used inthe building of yankee stadium and give rise to a grand planto build low-cost housing with poured concrete. he'd immersed himselfin the development of a storage battery, believing that the futureof transportation lay in automobilespowered by electricity, and had once againrevived the phonograph, this timefor home entertainment.
gradually, the west orangecomplex expanded to include a city block's worthof new buildings, where a thousand men and womenwere put to work making recordings andmanufacturing cylinder records. also vyingfor the inventor's attention was motion picture production, now expandinginto longer, narrative films; the manufacture of bulbs, fan motors, medical equipmentand other assorted devices;
and the myriad details ofoverseeing the business empire that by 1911 operatedunder the umbrella of "thomas a. edison,incorporated," now a worldwide brand. stross:in their advertising, the edison companies would makemuch of the edison name, as if the inventor stoodliterally over the loading dock and gave his blessingto every box that went out of the factory.
gitelman:his face was all overthese products, his name was all over them,his signature was all over them. this is really the beginning of american trademarkconsciousness. narrator:so valuable didthe edison name become that the inventorincreasingly would find himself fending offits unauthorized use. and when his son, tom,sold his famous surname to a fraudulenthomeopathic medicine company,
edison offered to pay hima regular allowance if he would change it. for $25 a week, the inventor'snamesake, "thomas edison, jr." thus became known professionallyas "burton willard." gitelman:the weird thing is thathe went after his son, whose name was "edison"because he was edison. so i'm certain he was very awareof himself as a brand in really almost a modern sense. narrator:it proved a savvy strategy.
as technology wove itselfever more tightly into the fabricof american life, with more and more households boasting a telephonein the hallway and all manner of gadgetsin the kitchen and an automobile parked outsidein the drive, edison continued to loom largein the public mind as the nation'sforemost inventor. degraaf:technology was spectacle.
all these thingswere being developed that were just literallytransforming people's lives. and the publicreally identified edison with this new modernelectrical age, so it translates alsoover into edison sometimes getting credit forthings that he didn't invent. myhrvold:if i'm at a cocktail party and i tell someonethat i'm an inventor, there's exactly two peoplethey think of.
they think of thomas edison and the crazy guy in the back to the future movies, which is kind ofan edison lampoon. edison single-handedly createdthe image of an inventor. narrator:"please accept the thanks,mr. edison, of one trulyappreciative woman," a kansas housewife wrote him, after extolling the virtuesof her pressure cooker and her washing machineand her victrola.
"we women of the small townare indebted to you for our pleasuresas well as our utmost needs." (alarm ringing) (men shouting) narrator:it began in the early eveningof december 9, 1914. sparked by an explosionin the film-finishing building, the massive fire leapt from structure to structureat west orange, gathering force and momentumfrom the chemicals used
in the manufactureof phonograph recordings, as well as the recordsthemselves. the flames could be seenfrom newark, seven miles away. throughout the evening,edison stood watching as a constellationof local fire companies struggled to douse the blaze, which soon engulfedfour city blocks. by 10:00 p.m., he'd alreadybegun making a list of what would need to be doneto recover.
"am pretty well burned out,"he told a reporter on the scene, "but tomorrow, there will besome rapid mobilizing when i find out where i'm at." although the main laboratorywas untouched, by morning, most of the restof the west orange complex was molten rubble. edison was undaunted. when informed that the damageswere estimated at between $3 million and$5 million, he just laughed.
"although i am over67 years old," he said, "i'll start all over againtomorrow." narrator:the years to comewould see edison winding down, spending less and less of histime at his west orange complex, which eventually was rebuilt, and more occupying a new roleas a full-fledged celebrity. mary had a little lamb,its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that mary went,the lamb was sure to go. (audience laughs, applauds)
narrator:he was often seen nowgallivanting about the country with fellow american herohenry ford, who as a young manhad worked briefly for the edison illuminatingcompany in detroit and had idolizedthe great inventor ever since. israel:as ford tells it, he talked to edison abouthis ideas for the automobile. after edison took a lookat his plans, he said, "go for it.
i think you've gotthe answer here." ford clearly saw edison assomebody to model himself after, and they beganto become friends. narrator:calling themselves"the vagabonds," the two men hit the roadeach summer, together with naturalistjohn burroughs and tire magnateharvey firestone, edison usually in the leadof a caravan that included a field kitchen,dining tent, laundry service
and a contingent of cameramen from ford's publicitydepartment. by the second annual sortie,which also included wives, the press was bringing upthe rear. staudenmaier:they were media extravaganzasof the first order. but it was nostalgia for them: four guys out therein the woods, cooking and making their coffee, and it was nostalgiafor the people
that loved to see those stories. "the old guys still got it,look at that." narrator:fueled by extensive publicity, the detailsof the vagabonds' adventures circulated throughthe national conversation: the rib-eye steaksthat were served for dinner; the campfire debatesabout mozart and shakespeare; the fact that one year, the firestoneseven brought along their butler.
rosenberg:there is a story, they were outand the car was having trouble. they pull in to a small townand the guy says, "oh, well, it looks likethe electrical system." and edison says, "no, i'm thomas edison, "i looked at the electricalsystem. the electrical system's fine." the guy looks at him
and looks at the cara little more and says, "oh, i see,it's in the fuel here." and ford says,"no," he says, "i'm henry ford. "i went through the fuel system. there's nothing wrongwith the fuel system." and the fellow looksat john burroughs, who had a beard this long, and says, "and you," he says,"you're santa claus, right?" (playing march tune)
narrator:almost mythic in stature now, edison could barely turn aroundwithout being honored. one poll named him"the greatest living american." in another, he beat outtheodore roosevelt and william shakespeare asthe "greatest man in history." there was a congressional medal,a commemorative stamp, even a song entitled "thomasedison: the miracle man." koehn:journalists, politicians, individuals, other inventors,
pour their ideas aboutwhat constitutes invention into a file folder called"thomas alva edison." and that's not his doing. a lot of it is justwhere he was at the time and the kind of impact he had that doesn't ever get balancedagainst the failures or the people that fed the riverof those inventions. he gets to end upholding it, right, and stands atop the mountaintopas this great, great inventor.
rosenberg:now he is the sage. when you want a great quote,you ask him, even if there's absolutelyno reason why he should know anythingabout it. baldwin:in his last years, he actuallylooks halfway relaxed if you can imagine edisonbeing relaxed. and so peoplewould come to his house and they would havethese interviews where they would ask himhis views
on everything and anythingyou can think of. what do you think ofthe einstein theory? i don't think anythingof einstein's theory because i can't understand it. (laughing) narrator:in 1926, at the age of 79, edison officially retired fromthomas a. edison, incorporated, passing the reins on to hisand mina's eldest son, charles, and taking up more or lesspermanent residence
at his home in fort myers. the same old place. (louder):the same old place. what? narrator:not content to reston the laurels of the more than 1,000 patentsregistered in his name, he busied himself with yetanother inventive campaign: to discover and cultivatea domestic source of rubber. almost completely deaf,suffering from kidney disease
and a persistentdigestive ailment, edison had, in a sort ofmedical experiment, eliminated food entirely, limiting his dietto several daily cigars and a pint of milkevery three hours. "i came in with milk," he said, "and i guessi'll go out with it." returning to west orangein 1931 after a winter in florida,
he was in sucha debilitated state that he was virtuallyunable to work. early in september,his kidneys began to fail; by the end of the month,he was confined to his bed. stross:as edison's health failed, reporters gatheredin west orange. they took over the garageand made it a press office. this went on for weeks. the attention that it received,
with the most minute changeor word from a doctor being sent out around the worldas news, shows a kind of fame that'shard to imagine today. narrator:the news of edison's passingon october 18, 1931 brought forth an outpouringrarely afforded mere mortals. condolences arrivedfrom all over the world from heads of state, civicorganizations, schoolchildren. newspapers from coast to coastran special features, recounting not onlythe inventor's death,
but also the by-now-familiarstory of his life. reporter:workers at his orange,new jersey, plant paid last respects to the manwhose inventive genius freed the world from darkness. narrator:for two days and nights,edison's body lay in state in the library of hiswest orange laboratory, as more than 50,000 peoplepassed to pay their respects. and on the third night, in response to a requestfrom president herbert hoover,
radio listenersacross the country switched off their lightsin unison, the darkness meant as a reminder of what life would have beenlike had edison never lived. baldwin:it was almost like a biblical,catastrophic thing. like, "the inventorof the light, his light has gone out"kind of thing. because he createdthis technology that was now partof everybody's daily life.
myhrvold:they didn't have to havedirectly owned a phonograph to have heard itand be influenced by it. they didn't all have to haveelectric light, but they soon would. thomas edison was borninto a world that wasn't industrialized. indoor lighting was candlesor a kerosene lamp. we couldn't record voicesor sounds or motions. what edison leftby the end of his life
was a worldthat was well on its way to becoming the worldwe know today. narrator:"it is impossible to measurethe importance of edison "by adding upthe specific inventions with which his nameis associated," the journalistwalter lippmann wrote in the daysafter the inventor's death. "edison showed thatanything could be changed and everythingcould be controlled."
israel:we think of the act of inventionas this eureka moment. aha! the light bulb goes off,we have this great idea, that's invention. but for edison,that was the starting point, because he didn'tjust have ideas and build devices that workedin the laboratory; he actually took theminto the marketplace and did it over and over again. he came up with a modern processof innovation.
myhrvold:there was a dynamismand an acceptance of new ideas that made americathe world's inventor. and within america, the guywho really practiced invention as a business, as an end unto itself the most,was thomas edison. baldwin:his imagination was insatiable, had insatiable need to thinkof things that were interesting. you know, i think we're stillall about that, being the first to do thingsand being innovative.
it's ingrainedin our way of life. thomas edison embodiesthe entrepreneurial spirit of this culture. koehn:we love inventiveness. i think part of itis that, you know, america in many wayshas invented itself. and so i think we love people who can take somethingout of the ether, which is a dream or, you know,a kind of glint in your eye.
you bring it out of the etherinto something concrete that changes all of our lives.