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Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World | 
 enlarge | Author: Jill Jonnes
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 524274
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.4
ISBN: 0375507396
Dewey Decimal Number: 621.309
EAN: 9780375507397
ASIN: 0375507396
Publication Date: August 19, 2003
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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 OKelley
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Battle of the Electric Giants September 10, 2008
Empire of Lights is the story of the quest to conquer the American Electric Industry. Thomas Edison, Nicholas Tesla, George Westinghouse are all giants in their own right with great accomplishments and life stories to fill up many books. It should be no surprise that when
they come together, they end up altering the way humans live. Edison the experimenter, who invents stuff by relentlessly tring out many things vs Tesla the theoretician with visionary dreams; Edison the all-controlling boss who loves the spotlight vs George Westinghouse a generous boss under whom Tesla flourished. Students of Electrical Engineering with poor grades can feel a little better ; even the great Edison failed to understand the significance and utility of the AC distribution system championed by
George Westinghouse and Tesla. This book may infact enhance the understanding of modern day students by providing perspective on the drawbacks of the DC system and benefits/challenges in implementing an AC system. In a way, the war of the electric currents is similar to the arguments between the coal and nuclear industry of today. The AC current was portrayed as a deadly form of electricity totally unsafe for human use. The Electric industry of late 19th century was lucky that it didnt have to suffer major liability lawsuits for fatal injuries. It will be interesting to see if the Nuclear Industry can overcome the fear in the minds of the people.
There's Always More to the Story March 25, 2008
Its fascinating to imagine the world as electricity was coming into its own. And then there's the reality.
This book offers a perspective rarely seen of someone we consider a major American icon, and two others we all know were important but, unfortunately, often can't remember why.
Living in Pittsburgh, I of course know the legend of George Westinghouse -- but most of my knowledge is of the more recent divestiture of his amazing company after years of mismanagement. I have to say I was pleased to find that while he was a Gilded Age industrialist -- perhaps with many of the characteristics that label implies -- his goals and intentions for his products, as well as his sportsmanly handling in many ways of Edison's ridiculous and often atrocious behavior, were quite noble.
I was shocked to learn more about Edison -- our most celebrated inventor -- particularly his tunnel vision and ruthlessness in preserving his self-decided reign over a technology that had more to offer society than any one man could take credit for. Condoning Brown's dog experiements with AC was sick enough -- to hear that he promoted the development of the electric chair simply to get a leg up on his competition (Westinghouse)was truly sad.
As a publicist, I find Jonnes descriptions of information, disinformation and yellow journalism paint a picture of Gilded Age America steeped in lessons we should have learned long ago about news, business and the legends of American icons.
Well worth the read for anyone who loves to find those places where history repeats itself over and over again.
smooth reading, fun history December 3, 2007
This book explained a lot to me. I selected over AC/DC based upon the reviews. I wasn't disappointed. Buy it, reading it, enjoy it.
 Great read - October 8, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was a great piece of narrative non-fiction - great for anyone who loves nerdy stuff or Wall Street - either story (both well told) are fascinating -
So Good They Should Make It a Movie March 22, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is so good they could make it into a movie. I've worked for an electrical power utility for over 38 years and I'm a history buff so this was a double pleasure for me. Jill Jonnes gives us a fascinating look at the origins of electrical power in the U.S.
There is something here for everyone: the macabre account of the first execution by electrocution, and the equally gut-wrenching story of the lineman in New York who died a horrible death dangling from high-voltage wires forty feet above the pavement. His body burned and spewed blood while the frightened onlookers could do nothing to save him. Then there is the inspiring story of Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla, the three who get the most credit for advancing and solidifying electrical power as a viable business in the U.S. Whether they were "geniuses" or not is a matter of your own perspective. They were certainly workaholics who had extraordinary intelligence and vision about what could be done with new technology. (Edison once worked five days straight while inventing the phonograph.)
There was a great battle between alternating and direct current. Edison stubbornly fought AC all the way. He felt it was unsafe for use by the general public because of the danger of lethal electric shock. He bragged that with his DC system, anyone would survive accidental contact, although the proponents of AC led by Westinghouse countered with the fact that Edison's DC system had caused many fires, both in customers' houses and in the central generating plants. The author points out that Edison may have had another reason, his own pride. Anyone in the business at that time could see the obvious advantage of AC over DC. DC was limited to about a one-mile radius of the generator, where AC could be transmitted several miles by stepping voltage up or down as needed with Westinghouse's new transformers. And once Tesla's AC two-phase motor was developed for commercial use, Edison's DC system was doomed.
Tesla turned into a sort of benevolent mad scientist after the Niagara project--Dr. Frankenstein with his gigantic Tesla coils, shooting lightning into the atmosphere. At one point his lab pulled so much power he caused the Colorado Springs powerhouse to trip off line, throwing the entire area into a blackout. Tesla's visionary dream, apparently, was to develop a means of transmitting power wirelessly. All humanity could tap into the standing wave generated by the Tesla coils, or whatever, and thereby receive free electricity. Tesla naturally needed huge financial support for this and he turned to J.P. Morgan who had financed the Niagara project and many other large ventures. But Morgan had seen too many of Tesla's projects come to naught, so he declined to back any more of them. Among Tesla's many experiments were the fluorescent light and the radio transmitter-receiver, the later being carried forward by Marconi who may have purloined some of Tesla's patents.
Two great projects did the most to advance electric power: the 1893 Columbia Exposition in Chicago, and the Niagara Falls hydro-generator plant. Tesla and Westinghouse were the brains and brawn behind the Niagara project completed in 1895, and it was Westinghouse who got the contract to light up the Chicago World's Fair. In 1893 only the wealthiest Americans could enjoy the advantages of electric light. The fair, known as the White City, showed all Americans the marvels of electrical light and appliances.
The advent of electrical power in the U.S. was a struggle of hard-driven men plowing new ground against constant financial and legal setbacks, the intrigues and subterfuge of their competitors, and the race forward with a technology that was only barely understood at the time. But once it took hold it spread like wildfire as almost everyone, rich or poor, wanted to convert to electric. Indeed, the success of America in WW II, the great arsenal of democracy, was due in large part to the fact that by 1940 cheap electrical power was available in every part of the country, even the desert of New Mexico.
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