Empires of Light….
I am in the midst of reading a wonderful account of the early days of electricity, Empires of Light. The books covers the euphoria of the inventions, the easy early money, followed by the grueling work of actually turning it into a business that changed people's lives. A riveting story that should be required reading for today's entrepreneurs. The book covers Edison, Tesla, & Westinghouse in some depth along with the investors who backed them. Its absolutely wonderful reading how Edison's investors had to be convinced that the invention worked and how he missed milestones and the trials and tribulations of raising money.
The struggle between Edison, the visionary inventor, & Tesla, the young upstart is fascinating. A highly recommended read.
Comments
Comment from Constantine
Time: 11/22/2006, 9:14 pm
I agree, the movement to distributed power generation is quite interesting what impact DC vs AC will have only time will tell. Have you seen what Dean Kamen is up to now (http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/16/technology/business2_futureboy0216/), it really has the potential to change the world. That’s what I call real innovation in the public interest.
PS: Added movie to my netflix queue. Sounds interesting…
Comment from Ken Zirkel
Time: 11/22/2006, 11:01 am
This is a great book. What’s most interesting to me is that AC (Tesla and Westinghouse’s preference) became the standard … yet so many of today’s electronics actually run on DC current (Edison and GE’s preference), which is why we have those “wall wart” plugs which convert the current to DC. And our whole society is set up to utilize centrally-generated power, yet our future seems to be decentralized power in the form of solar cells, wind turbines, etc. Looks to me like AC won the battle, but DC may be the better solution, and may yet win the war.
P.S. Tesla makes a nifty appearance in the recent film “The Prestige”, played with understated dignity by David Bowie.