Edison, the Man

Hi everyone, welcome to Cold-Knowledge Blind Box. In our last episode, we talked about why the world's power systems use both 220V and 110V. This time, let's get to know again the inventor who often shows up in Chinese language textbooks: the clever boy who used mirror reflections to help his mother during an operation, the inspirational idol who said "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," and who is said to have held more than a thousand patents in his lifetime. This is the story of Edison.

Those more than a thousand patents, both at home and abroad, are worth talking about. A human life is no more than thirty-odd thousand days. To collect that many patents in those days, Edison would have needed to invent one about every 30 days. Is that something a person could possibly manage?

The truth is actually quite simple. Edison had his own invention company. He ran many laboratories and employed many researchers. Their daily job was to go and invent new things and then apply for patents. Because Edison was the boss, many collective inventions were credited to him.

And these employees basically kept watch every day on what other inventors around the world were tinkering with. They looked east and west at each other's progress, and worked out which projects had promise. Edison's company had money and connections, so with a bit of effort, a rival's project could quickly become an Edison company project.

The most famous story here is probably the invention of the electric light.

Textbooks say that Edison, through thousands of experiments, tried all kinds of filament materials, even carbonized cotton thread and cat hair, comparing them to find the best performance. And finally he invented the incandescent light bulb.

But in fact, before Edison, five or six people had already made electric light bulbs. And the carbon filament that was finally chosen was not picked by Edison. It was decided by the Englishman Swan.

But Edison probably felt uneasy about holding this patent, so he invested in and co-founded a company with the original creator, Swan, to shut his mouth.

Edison was also a businessman himself, and had good relationships with various business tycoons. He went to a big financier of the time, J.P. Morgan, and lobbied him to invest in his company. His laboratory staff rushed out fifty thousand bulbs, and instantly lit up New York City.

That glittering night caused a sensation in the media and among the public at the time. It was practically the most stunning advertisement of its day.

So the real world is complicated, and full of games and bargaining. If you dig into the story of how this simple electric light was invented, it follows the same rules as how modern society operates.

Of course, apart from invention, Edison's business kept growing bigger and bigger. Once a person has power, we say he starts to float away.

After the light bulb was invented, the demand turned into a question of power supply. On September 4, 1882, Thomas Edison launched the world's first commercial direct-current power station on Pearl Street in New York. This power system, based on a 110V voltage, delivered electricity through a bronze underground network with a radius of 1.6 kilometers. The cost of one kilowatt-hour was as high as 5 US dollars (equivalent to about 136 US dollars today). Despite the technical flaw that voltage dropped step by step (losses of up to 8% per kilometer), the Edison General Electric Company, relying on its full-chain layout of "light bulbs, generators and distribution networks," monopolized 85% of the American electricity market.

At that time, Edison ran into a problem with DC motors that his staff could not solve. Edison declared that whoever solved it would get fifty thousand dollars.

Then a young engineer from Serbia named Nikola Tesla came along. His technical skills were solid, and he quietly and steadily solved the problem. When he went to Edison to ask for the money, Edison said he didn't understand American humor at all. Tesla, furious, quit.

Tesla then turned to alternating current. From a technical point of view, AC is far more advanced than DC. Tesla was good at technology, and engineers have a stubborn determination to see things through to the end. At the time Tesla had little money, and even if he had to borrow, he was determined to develop AC. Tesla chose to give up his patents, and thanks to that move, we can now use cheap electricity.

The fatal weakness of the DC system was fully exposed in 1884. After Westinghouse Electric obtained Nikola Tesla's AC patents, Pittsburgh built the world's first practical AC power grid. This system, which used transformers to step the voltage up to 220V, delivered electricity across cities through 14,000-volt high-voltage lines, and its unit cost dropped sharply to one twentieth of Edison's system. What shocked the industry even more was that at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Tesla used 250,000 AC lights to create an "artificial daylight," with a power supply radius that had reached 34 kilometers.

Engineers can handle technology, but when it comes to public opinion and media relations, they are no match for Edison.

Faced with a generation gap in technology and an entangled web of complicated interests, Edison launched what was humanity's first systematic technical PR war. He funded a white paper called Case Studies of Deaths from Alternating Current, which contained data on 728 electric shock accidents (87% of which were actually caused by DC). He even manipulated the media into forcibly linking the "electric chair" execution with alternating current. When electrocution was carried out for the first time at Auburn Prison in 1890, Edison's laboratory even secretly supplied an improved AC generator.

Edison's obsession with patents extended into the film industry too. We all know that early films needed many large lamps, and Edison had long ago obtained many film patents. Edison's company was based in New York, on the East Coast of the United States. You could say that in the 1920s, if you wanted to open a movie theater, or if your business involved films, you had to pay patent fees to Edison's company.

And he controlled both the legitimate and the underworld. If you were a director on the East Coast and dared not pay the hefty patent fees, you could not only end up in lawsuits, but thugs would come to wreck your set every few days.

As a result, many film companies moved to the West Coast of the United States, to California. They set up camp in a small town called Hollywood. At that time, transportation and communications were not well developed. Edison might be the local strongman on the East Coast, but his influence could not reach the West Coast. And the judges in California knew that Edison was especially sensitive about patents, so in order to protect local industries, they tended to favor any case related to Edison's patents. This allowed the American film industry to flourish on the West Coast. At the time, a famous French director named Méliès made a science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon. He was preparing to release it in the United States, but Edison secretly had his assistants record it in France and then screened it publicly in America. Méliès earned not a single cent in the United States. In the end, his company went bankrupt, and he had to make a living selling candy at a train station.

So you could say that when we look closely at Edison, he was not only an inventor, but also a shrewd commercial tycoon, and not very generous of spirit.

But people are multifaceted, and we also need to look at the historical context. Edison's era coincided with what Americans call the Gilded Age, also known as the Roaring Twenties. Social Darwinism was surging, and everyone believed that the winner takes all, that you could compete at any cost. As long as you won, that was all that mattered.

Well, that's all for today's Cold-Knowledge Blind Box. After hearing today's story, do you feel you know more about Edison?

Feel free to leave a comment below.

If you have any other cold facts you'd like to hear, you can also open the NIO app, go to the Friends section, find the NIO Radio Shenzhen city community, and leave a message or share the cold facts you like!

Leave your thoughts in the comments and share your views with us! I'm your content guide, and I'll see you in the next episode!

举