The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America

Freeberg does an outstanding job of organizing the extremely wide effects of the invention of electric light. One of the joys of learning is finding out things you didn't know you didn't know. He pulls together a rich tapestry of vignettes, anecdotes, pictures, cartoons, stories, and descriptions to help readers become as immersed as possible in the exciting and sometimes precarious early modern era. Not everyone welcomed the new invention, Freeberg reminds us. He astutely portrays the often diverging reactions and reception of different social classes, professions, rural/urban populations, European/American audiences, gas/electric companies, and movements concerning this new invention. Though this is not a biography of Edison, Freeberg smoothly weaves the inventor's character, personality, and temperament in and out of his chapters, exposing Edison's own ambivalence about his world-changing invention. The book whetted my curiosity about how the introduction of electric light completely altered family/home life, rural life, the arts, and government and international affairs. It would take several more volumes to more thoroughly on those areas, but what Freeberg decided to focus on, he excelled at. Cultural history fans will eat this book up.

The Age of Edison was clearly written and easy to understand. Ernest Freeberg begins with a background on the electric light, discussing its predecessors and the peoples' fascination with new inventions. He then transitions to Edison himself and other American inventors and their struggles to create a viable light. Then for the last half of the book, Freeberg focuses on ordinary peoples' impact on the electric light, the cloud of doubt and wonder surrounding the new invention, as well as the cons of such a revolutionary innovation.Ernest Freeberg took a new perspective on the development of the electric light and Edison's contributions. Instead of solely focusing on Edison and his greatness, he shifts the focus on ordinary people and how the times affected the invention of the light bulb. He takes the liberty to mention Tesla, but again Freeberg's purpose isn't to highlight just a single individual. Ordinary people make history as well and he sheds light on those unsung heroes. Most importantly however, was society's reception of inventions. Patents provided an incentive for inventors to race to claim rights to their invention, hundreds of ordinary citizens attended expositions throughout the country, and people found a myriad of uses for a single invention. The culture was receptive of life improving innovations.Ernest Freeberg included multiple pictures per chapter, further illustrating important points about the age of the electric light. His claims are credible as he uses a mix of both primary and secondary sources. Overall, The Age of Edison is informative and entertaining. It is recommended for students and for everyone in general. It helps create a clearer understanding of the age of invention in America and its implications on modern day society.

The Age of Edison is a compelling tale of technological innovation and the machinations and creations of all those who participated. At the center is Edison, whose fame was a creation of what he accomplished, what he proclaimed, and what the Press found as good news copy, independent of the reality of what was truly happening. I live but a short distance from Edison’s last lab was in West Orange in New Jersey and it is now a National Parks site. Much of what Edison did is memorialized by the many labs, books, and remnants of his hundreds of “inventions”. Of course next to this National Landmark is the Edison battery factory which one may suppose is left in a state of total collapse because the cleanup of the site would be astronomical, but those factors are somewhat missing from the tale.The book is exceptionally well written and it is really a tale of the electric light, with Edison cast as someone who comes and goes, and yet has a lasting influence. Like so many technological advances there is usually not one person, but many competing for the prize. The goal was clear, light, but the path uncertain. The author details the competition between the arc light and the incandescent light, the need for an infrastructure, and the problems of that infrastructure. Power lines grew, collided with humanity, and in urban areas were driven underground. However they remained to be smashed down during hurricane Sandy, almost 150 years after all of this began. Thus the power industry, unlike the electronics industry rapidly grew, and then froze, for almost a century. But this is a tale of the light bulb, perhaps the most significant driver of that industry.The author opens with the inventing of the light bulb. He wonderfully shows with balance and insight many if not most of the players during this time. Edison was thus one of many, but perhaps the most effective self-promoter. He also had strong financial backers who used their strength as well.The author then discusses the diffusion of light to both work environments as well as leisure environments. He does a great job showing hos this diffusion changed the way people interacted. This is a critical observation of how technology effects sociological change.The author discusses the whole issue of patents and patent battles. At the time of Edison there was a strong development of Socialist movements in the US. On p 153 the author discusses the battles over patents. Socialists as he says:“People invented to satisfy natural creative urge, the socialists insisted, and out of desire to help others. But capitalists bought up the patent rights.”In a sense the author describes the same battle we see today with some on the Internet who feel that content should be free, and that copyright rights are to be trampled.The author discusses the expansion of applications, some good and some useless. On p 169 he describes certain medical applications, some good some useless. Yet at the same time we see the invention of the X-ray systems, which in a way was a natural step from the incandescent light bulb.The battle between “standards” is also brought out by the author in the battle between AC and DC. In reading of Edison’s views, for he was a DC promoter due to his collections of patents in that space, he never did grasp the basic truth that high voltage AC, using transformers, allowed for very low loss transmission over long distances. Edison apparently just did not understand the theory, unlike Tesla, who was a well-educated engineer. Edison was a technician at best, and when that failed he had a large collection of technicians, but in reviewing his library he had little along the lines of true technology. He had technique, a technique developed by extensive trial and error.On p 199 the author discusses the issue of municipal ownership of utilities. Specifically he talks of the strong Progressive drive to have municipalities control such vital resources. In fact they wanted to control telephone and telegraph, water and sewer. Again what the author has done is to lay out the issue as the technology evolved and he demonstrates so well the mapping on today’s same issues in such areas as broadband. In a sense this book uses the light bulb to demonstrate a near universal development process, sociologically and politically, of almost any new massively accepted technology.On p 205 the author recounts the development of the technologists, the introduction of electrical engineering into universities such as MIT, Cornell, and Columbia. In this case the universities were followers; they were presented with a pile of technology driven by techniques with no well accepted basis for growth, and then began constructing the basis.Later in the book the author returns to Government control over the diffusion of this technology. On p 301 is a discussion of the New Deal and the Rural Electrification Administration, bringing light to the farmer. As he says:“The New Deal’s social engineers believed that rural electrification would do much to ease the burden of farm work…”Also he notes the FDR administration wanted to bridge what they saw as a growing gap of rural and urban America. Again the author has brilliantly carried the tale to an end point and a point which we can see again today in the broadband arguments.Overall this book serves two purposes. First it is an excellent summary of the evolution of the light bulb across many facets of society. Second and I believe more important, it represents a paradigm for understanding the development, diffusion and politicization of technological change.

This is an interesting and well written volume describing how the US (and to a lesser extent Europe) embraced the electric light and the availability of electricity in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is not just a description of how Edison "invented" the incandescent light bulb--the book devotes some space to showing how Edison was just one of the inventors working on the device. Edison's real genius was in turning the light bulb into the genesis of the "age of electricity" as communities across the nation began to abandon gas lighting for the utility of electrical lighting.