The Merchant of Power

Some surprises from the early days of electrification

I’m trying to start a new habit of writing down the top insights, fun facts, and surprises from the books I’m reading.

Here is the first set from John F. Waskin’s The Merchant of Power (2006), which tells the story of “Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis.” It’s hard for a modern person to imagine a world without electricity, so reading history books is the best way to stretch the imagination in that direction.

The book is mostly about Sam Insull, an English immigrant who served as Edison’s personal secretary and eventually de facto CFO of Edison’s companies until J.P. Morgan bought them out to form General Electric.

A Morse code marriage

Thomas Edison loved Morse code. He nicknamed his first kids Dot and Dash. He taught his then-girlfriend, the 19-year old Mina Miller, to code while dating. Then he proposed to her by Morse code.

Not a good time to be a dog

During the so-called “Current Wars”, Edison battled Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse over which kind of electricity to generate and distribute: direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC).

The competition got dirty: one of Edison’s companies hired an engineer named Harold Brown to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current across the country. He would do this by electrocuting livestock and stray dogs and cats. He reportedly paid a quarter for each stray dog.

Chicago means “smelly onions”

The name Chicago is from the Native American cheecagu meaning smelly onion which grew in the swamps next to Lake Michigan.

Get electricity for a longer-lasting wife

Advertisers pitched “wife longevity” as one of the benefits of electricity. Ad man Bruce Barton created an ad for Duke Energy asking, “How Long Should a Wife Live?” In the ad, he claims that “the home of the future will lay all of its tiresome, routine burdens on the shoulders of electrical machines”, thereby enabling “mothers of the future…to live to a good old age and keep their youth and beauty to the end.” Thanks to Google and the archives of the Elkin Tribune, see for yourself:

Electric cabinets: one motor to power them all

Here’s a bad idea that probably seemed like a good idea at the time: a kitchen cabinet that housed a Westinghouse electric motor. The motor would power a wide assortment of kitchen appliances: an apple and potato peeler, a dough mixer, a coffee grinder, an ice cream freezer, polishing wheels for the silverware, and more.

Silicon Valley investors love platforms (think Microsoft Windows or Sony PlayStation or VMware ESX) that power applications. When platforms work, they work spectacularly. Cabinets-as-a-platform didn’t work as motors got small and cheap enough to put into standalone appliances — and kitchens got bigger.

Al Capone’s protection

After J.P. Morgan consolidated Edison’s company into General Electric, Sam Insull moved to Chicago. He built and financed dozens of electric utilites including Commonwealth Edison, now ComEd (part of Exelon) and railroads (electric interurban trains, after all, were great consumers of electricity).

Insull would become one of the most successful business people in Chicago. His underworld counterpart was Al Capone. Capone actually offered Insull protection, which he declined because “not only did he like the price of Capone’s services, he did not want to be seen with men sporting wide-brimmed fedoras, pinstripes and tommy guns”.

Ford & Edison tried building Tesla

Henry Ford toyed with the idea of building an electric car. Ironically, it was Thomas Edison who talked him out of it, encouraging him instead to build cars powered by an internal combustion engine.

When Ford sketched his design for Edison on the back of a restaurant menu, Edison reportedly pounded the table, saying “Young man, that’s the thing! You have it — the self contained unit carrying its fuel with it! Keep with it!”

A few years later after Ford shipped the Model T, the two men would revisit the idea of an electric car, going so far as to build a few prototypes in 1913 and 1914. Apparently Edison’s nickel iron batteries were the weak link in the car: they simply couldn't generate enough power for the cars.