HORSEY SURPRISE
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Count Arioch the 28th
- King
- Posts: 6172
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
You guys are being way to kind on Edison. Consider his battle with Westinghouse.
He was a fucking bastard at times; even more bad because he was fucking wrong. We wouldn't have gone into the WWII era, never mind the 21st century if our only source of a power grid was through Edison DC.
Edison's lights were powered by direct current. This was fine for a tinkerer, but Westinghouse—who had become accustomed to thinking on the scale of transcontinental railroads-saw that long-distance transmission of direct current would be problematical, to say the least. Power stations to boost the voltage in the d-c system would be required every mile or so, which would work fine in Manhattan but not so well on the Great Plains.
Edison may have had a genius for self-promotion, but Westinghouse had two weapons of his own: the secondary transformer, U.S. rights to which he had bought in 1885 from the inventors Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs; and the polyphase induction motor, invented by expatriate Serbian visionary Nikola Tesla and sold outright by him to Westinghouse. (Tesla was a notoriously poor business man and negotiator.)
"Westinghouse was the only person who could pull off alternating current against Edison," contends Reis. Edison dismissed Westinghouse's challenge with the suggestion that Westinghouse '"stick to the air brake business,' or words to that effect," Reis adds. As for envisioning an a-c distribution system powering polyphase induction motors, "Tesla had a piece of it," Reis acknowledges, but "George put all the pieces together."
The Gaulard & Gibbs transformer, with stamped copper plates, proved difficult and expensive to manufacture, so Westinghouse introduced the process of winding copper wire around the transformer's core by machine—another Westinghouse innovation that's with us to this day. With Westinghouse's financial backing, electricity was provided to the town of Great Barrington, Mass., with twelve transformers stepping 3,000 volts down to 500 to illuminate 400 incandescent lamps. Soon other communities were installing the a-c system, and by 1886 the Westinghouse Electric Co. was employing 3,000 people.
Edison fought back with propaganda. He placed billboard and newspaper advertisements warning of the dangers of alternating current. An engineer on his payroll, using alternating current, staged public electrocutions of dogs rounded up from the neighborhood. Edison and Westinghouse sparred in print. Westinghouse's cause was set back when Frank Pope, an electrician and patent attorney who advocated alternating current, was electrocuted while working on the Great Barrington generators.
Edison supported the use of alternating current for the newly invented electric chair. Advocates of the chair said it killed more humanely than other methods—a claim that any witness to the first horribly botched execution could plainly see was wrong. The true purpose of the electric chair was to a demonstrate the lethality of alternating current. So successful was this phase of the campaign that a victim executed by electric chair was said by some to have been westinghoused. This relic of the Battle of the Currents is still the favored means of execution in at least nine U.S. states.
Edison may have had a genius for self-promotion, but Westinghouse had two weapons of his own: the secondary transformer, U.S. rights to which he had bought in 1885 from the inventors Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs; and the polyphase induction motor, invented by expatriate Serbian visionary Nikola Tesla and sold outright by him to Westinghouse. (Tesla was a notoriously poor business man and negotiator.)
"Westinghouse was the only person who could pull off alternating current against Edison," contends Reis. Edison dismissed Westinghouse's challenge with the suggestion that Westinghouse '"stick to the air brake business,' or words to that effect," Reis adds. As for envisioning an a-c distribution system powering polyphase induction motors, "Tesla had a piece of it," Reis acknowledges, but "George put all the pieces together."
The Gaulard & Gibbs transformer, with stamped copper plates, proved difficult and expensive to manufacture, so Westinghouse introduced the process of winding copper wire around the transformer's core by machine—another Westinghouse innovation that's with us to this day. With Westinghouse's financial backing, electricity was provided to the town of Great Barrington, Mass., with twelve transformers stepping 3,000 volts down to 500 to illuminate 400 incandescent lamps. Soon other communities were installing the a-c system, and by 1886 the Westinghouse Electric Co. was employing 3,000 people.
Edison fought back with propaganda. He placed billboard and newspaper advertisements warning of the dangers of alternating current. An engineer on his payroll, using alternating current, staged public electrocutions of dogs rounded up from the neighborhood. Edison and Westinghouse sparred in print. Westinghouse's cause was set back when Frank Pope, an electrician and patent attorney who advocated alternating current, was electrocuted while working on the Great Barrington generators.
Edison supported the use of alternating current for the newly invented electric chair. Advocates of the chair said it killed more humanely than other methods—a claim that any witness to the first horribly botched execution could plainly see was wrong. The true purpose of the electric chair was to a demonstrate the lethality of alternating current. So successful was this phase of the campaign that a victim executed by electric chair was said by some to have been westinghoused. This relic of the Battle of the Currents is still the favored means of execution in at least nine U.S. states.
Oh and while I am at it, here is a nice story about how he hoodwinked the public with his so called high fidelity. Anna case, Audio Conspirator.
The most famous tone-test took place March 10, 1920 at Carnegie Hall. Over 2500 people watched and listened as Anna Case sang with the phonograph. Then the lights suddenly went out, but the singing continued. When the lights came back on, all were astounded to see that Anna had left the stage and the Edison Diamond Disc phonograph was carrying on without her!
...
The problem with this incredible story of invention and marketing is that it was mostly a lie. Yes, Edison's invention was probably the best in its time. And yes, it could reproduce voices very well - just not THAT well.
Anna Case finally came clean 50 years after the Carnegie Hall show, admitting that she, and the other singers that took part in the tone tests, actually trained their voices to sound like the machine! Not only that, but even at a large venue like Carnegie Hall, the voice of an operatic soprano would certainly overwhelm the modest sound coming from the phonograph - so while the record played full volume, Anna had to turn hers down a bit.
And that's how Central New Jersey's musical pioneers set out to prove a recording was as good as a live performance by making the live performance only as good as the recording. A successful marketing experiment that has confounded musicians and listeners for almost a century!
...
The problem with this incredible story of invention and marketing is that it was mostly a lie. Yes, Edison's invention was probably the best in its time. And yes, it could reproduce voices very well - just not THAT well.
Anna Case finally came clean 50 years after the Carnegie Hall show, admitting that she, and the other singers that took part in the tone tests, actually trained their voices to sound like the machine! Not only that, but even at a large venue like Carnegie Hall, the voice of an operatic soprano would certainly overwhelm the modest sound coming from the phonograph - so while the record played full volume, Anna had to turn hers down a bit.
And that's how Central New Jersey's musical pioneers set out to prove a recording was as good as a live performance by making the live performance only as good as the recording. A successful marketing experiment that has confounded musicians and listeners for almost a century!