The Dawning of the Electrical Age: The Story of Two Towns and Two Luminaries (Part I)
This article consists of two parts. Part I: Roselle, Thomas Edison and Electricity, and Part II: Roselle Park, David Sarnoff and the Radio
The world at the turn of the 20th century was a world without automobiles, airplanes and electricity, a world of dirt roads, horse buggies and candlelight much like the centuries before. But all of that would change. Today we live in a world of electricity in which dazzling metropolises light up the night sky. Electricity is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. So much so that we cannot imagine a world without it.
Like the light-giving fire that came before it, electricity changed the world in ways hitherto unseen. It was Edison’s light bulb that was the antecedent and catalyst to myriad electrical innovations of the 20th century. It would eventually give rise to the vacuum tube, radio, television, the transistor, computers and many other inventions that help to define the century. It now reigns supreme over fire that had dominated as a source of light for millenniums.
But, the story of the light bulb, radio and television and their influence on the world is one of serendipity, discovery and of wonder. In it lies the stories of people and places, of Yankee ingenuity that defines America, its towns and its people. This is not only the story of two ordinary towns and two gifted individuals, but it is also the story of America and the story of an exciting century.
The allure of America has always been the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Edison and David Sarnoff were sons of immigrants and they helped to make America beautiful. Sarnoff, as much as any man, stood on the shoulders of Edison. Edison founded General Electric (GE) and David Sarnoff and RCA would emerge from its chrysalis to morph into the innovator of new mediums of communication that transformed the social landscape of the 20th century. In the early days of the electrical era, New Jersey was the Silicon Valley of its day and home of Edison’s research laboratories, as well as Bell Laboratories, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and Princeton University.
It was also the home of two small sister cities, Roselle and Roselle Park, whose contributions to this era remain relatively unknown to the general public. They are small towns with a rich and coeval history that predates the Declaration of Independence. They were part of the oldest English settlement in New Jersey, Elizabethtown (now Union County) and dates back to the time of Charles II.
Although the history of these towns is older than the nation itself, the most significant contributions were made around the turn of the 20th century. Roselle gave a new light to the world and Roselle Park helped the world to hear a new voice. In these two small adjacent towns, we find the beginning of technologies that led to the modern electrical infrastructure that we cherish today. Thus, Roselle and Roselle Park not only contributed to the electrical landscape of the nation but to the development of modern culture.
Let There be Light: Roselle, Thomas Edison and Electricity
It is well known that Thomas Edison was one of the greatest inventors that ever lived. What is not well known is the contribution made by a small town in New Jersey by the name of Roselle. It was in this small town that Edison demonstrated how an entire village could be lit by electricity. Before that time, gas lighting dominated our cities and had proved to be a cost- effective but dangerous source of light. It was a time when dinner by candlelight was the norm in most homes around the world. But it was Edison’s dream of making electricity so affordable that “only the rich would want to dine by candlelight”.
Roselle is a community with a population of about 25,000 people and encompasses an area of about 2.6 sq. miles. It is the home of Roosevelt (Rosey) Grier, the famous football player/actor/activist, Abraham Clark, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Tony Williams the lead singer of the popular 50s group, The Platters, . It is the site where one of the most renowned photos, “The Identical Twins from Roselle, New Jersey, 1967”, was taken by Diane Arbus.
Also from Roselle are Bob Sumner the former Executive Producer of Def Comedy Jam and the discoverer of many of America’s top comedians: Dave Chappelle, Chris Tucker, Bernie Mac, D.L. Hughley, Martin Lawrence and more. Phil Ivey (often referred to as the Tiger Woods of poker) also resided in Roselle. It was Phil’s grandfather and mentor, Leonard “Bud” Simmons, who, in 1963, sponsored in Roselle one of Malcolm X’s debates on separation and integration.
Roselle is part of one of the oldest communities in America first settled by the Dutch and then the British. As in so many colonial areas, the names of the towns and cities of northern New Jersey read like a glossary of British 17th and 18th century nobility and provinces. Thus, the history of early settlement echoes a time in Britain when the New World gave birth to New York, New Jersey and Elizabethtown — places in the new world linked not only by etymology but by culture and heritage to the old world.
Among the Dutch settlers of northern New Jersey was a young widow of the name Edeson (Edison) who arrived at the Elizabeth port in 1730 accompanied by her three-year-old son John. Elizabethtown was very much pro-revolutionary, and John Edison was a devoted Loyalist. As a result, he was sentenced to hang in 1778. His sentence was later commuted, his property confiscated, and he was exiled to Canada. This was not unusual for this period of revolution as the Loyalist Governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, son of Ben Franklin, received similar treatment. The Edison family remained in Canada until 1842 when they settled in Milan, Ohio. On February 11, 1847, a new addition to the family was born on American soil. His name was Thomas Alva Edison.
Even though he was mostly self-taught at home, the young Edison showed an acute aptitude for learning. Still, it was quite by chance that he learned the fundamentals of the telegraph system. In 1863, during the Civil War, he rescued the young son of J.U. MacKenzie, the station agent at a local telegraph station from drowning.
With MacKenzie’s help, he embarked on a five-year period of studying, experimenting, and finally improving many aspects of the telegraph system. This early exposure to electricity provided an impetus for all his great achievements. His interests led him to Boston, New York City and finally back to Elizabeth, New Jersey, the same township from which his ancestors were expelled in disgrace.
It is also ironic, but true, that Thomas Edison’s son Charles became governor of the state that exiled his ancestors in disgrace. Thus, from a family once ridiculed and deemed un-American, emerged progeny that included one of America’s greatest innovators returning, like a prodigal son, to the region from which his forefathers were expelled.
It was in his ancestral home, where his family first graced the North American continent, that his greatest achievements would be realized. While living modestly in the basement of his friend and mentor, Franklin Leonard Pope, who was a resident of Elizabeth, Edison conceived and experimented with some of his earliest inventions that financed his first laboratory. Although he was later known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park”, Edison had laboratories throughout the state, most notably in Newark, his first laboratory; West Orange, the home of the first movie studio, The Black Maria, and of course his legendary Menlo Park research laboratory.
Edison did not achieve his myriad accomplishments alone. For instance, the African American inventor Lewis Latimer contributed greatly to the development and longevity of the light bulb. Edison’s inner circle became known as the “Edison Pioneers.” One of the pioneers was Miller Fox Moore, another person with ancestral roots in New Jersey and who was also a resident of Roselle. Moore’s work on Direct Current (DC) generators was an important factor in the development of the Edison Company for Isolated Lighting and the establishment of independent generating stations that served as prototypes for today’s electrical utilities.
By the fall of 1882, lights powered by isolated plants were constructed in factories, stores, steamships and newspaper buildings. One of the many assignments delegated to Miller Moore was the establishment of a Village Plant System that would be capable of lighting an entire village. Edison insisted that the village be in the vicinity of New York City and, if possible, in an area that did not previously have gas lighting. Moore’s hometown of Roselle met the criteria for the Village Plant System project.
The Edison Company for Isolated Lighting began its operation to illuminate Roselle in the fall of 1882. It is important to note that in 1882 most people had never heard of electric lighting and those that did were not necessarily enthused by the idea. It did not enter the mainstream as a viable means of lighting until after the 1893 Columbia Expedition held in Chicago. To investors, however, electricity was the new shining thing and it attracted stakeholders such as J.P. Morgan and George Westinghouse eager to capitalize on this new technology.
With the financial backing of such tycoons, a completely new infrastructure, unprecedented in its construction, scope and implementation, would eventually bring not only light to homes but the power of electricity and all that it entails. Edison’s lightbulb, although effective in localized settings, was not ready for large scale integration. There was a significant problem at that time with soot collecting inside electric light bulbs as filaments burned which ultimately made the light bulb turn black. This is not something you would want to happen in a village or city.
To resolve this problem, Edison placed a metal plate inside an evacuated light bulb, brought a wire from it outside the bulb, and applied voltage between the wire and the filament to attract soot particles to the plate. It worked, and the longevity of the lightbulb was significantly improved. Not only were brighter days ahead through this new technology conceived in the twilight of the 19th century; brighter days and nights were also ahead for the 20th century. Electricity transformed Roselle and then cities of the world into dazzling metropolises by delivering light amid the proverbial darkness.
The citizens of Roselle in this regard, were also pioneers, for as Edison once stated, “My greatest trouble will be to get the people to use the lights.” On January 19, 1883, the bold citizens of this small town took an enormous leap into the future. Hence becoming the first town in the world to be illuminated, using a flameless device to generate light. On that day, Roselle emerged as a beacon that would guide the world to a new electrical era.
The demonstration of an electrical infrastructure illuminating a complete town was so successful that in the coming years, newspapers proclaimed Roselle as the “Once Capital of the Scientific World.” Thomas Edison went on to acquire 1,093 patents and he invented the phonograph, motion picture camera, and many other discoveries that required electricity. His work to improve the longevity of the light bulb used in Roselle, serendipitously led to what came to be known as the Edison Effect.
Edison noticed that electrical current flowing through a light bulb’s filament could make the wire so hot that electrons boiled off, sailing through the vacuum inside the light bulb to a metal plate that had a positive charge. This unexpected discovery was a major step in the genesis of the modern electronic world. Yet, the practical application of this phenomenon was something that evaded Edison.
In 1904, Sir John Ambrose Fleming went to work for Marconi’s company. His first assignment was to find a better way to receive radio signals. Fleming began experimenting with the Edison Effect. He discovered that radio waves passing through a vacuum tube created a varying direct current, which could be used as a valve or a switch (diode).
In that same year, Lee De Forest also went to work for Marconi with the same objective. Deforest studied Flemings’ valve and build upon it. The valve De Forest created had something new: a grid made of nickel wire which he placed between the filament and the plate. Applying even a small amount of electrical charge to the grid disrupted the flow of electrons from the filament to the plate thus amplifying the original signal. Two years later, he developed the first vacuum tube (triode) that could be used as a valve, a switch or an amplifier.
One of the earliest applications of De Forest’s vacuum tube was to amplify and modulate radio and telephone signals. The incorporation of vacuum tubes transformed electronics by adding active as well as passive elements. This was vital to the progression from a wireless telegraph system to the radio as we know it today (a device capable of transmitting sound and voice).
Vacuum tubes changed the face of electronics and were a major catalyst for future innovations. The first large scale programable computer, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), was developed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania by John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert.
The ENIAC was built between 1943 and 1945 and came online in 1946. The American military sponsored research of the ENIAC because it needed a computer for calculating artillery-firing tables. Based on the Turing machine, it used nearly 20,000 vacuum tubes and 1,500 relays to emulate ones and zeros. It weighed 30 tons and consumed nearly 200 kilowatts of power.
The ENIAC gave birth to the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) and a host of mainframe computers based on vacuum tubes. Most importantly, the vacuum tube was the antecedent of the transistor invented at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey the following year. In the first decade of computers, more calculations had been performed by computers than all the calculations hitherto. In fact, the genesis of the digital world and the burgeoning of software can be traced to the ENIAC class of computers.
But Edison’s influence goes beyond his inventions. It was not necessarily the light bulb that made Edison a success, but rather his ability to see beyond it and to establish an electrical infrastructure in which the light bulb was an integral part. This infrastructure was superseded by, Nikola Tesla’s AC system. Edison was a hero to Tesla and inspired him to immigrate to America in 1884. It is reported, upon meeting Edison, Tesla said: My Dear Edison, I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!” such was his reverence for the Wizard of Menlo Park and the confidence in his own ability. Tesla proceeded to describe the engineering work he had done, and his plans for an alternating current motor. He later was employed by Edison, however, the two disagreed over payment. Thus, began the rivalry.
After, leaving Edison, Tesla formed Tesla Electric Lighting and Manufacturing Company in Rahway, New Jersey (also part of Union County) and was issued his first US patents. Like most great men, Edison had his flaws and was infected by paradigm paralysis that often inflicts men of conviction. It is a phenomenon of nature that like objects repel and Edison’s ego would not succumb to Tesla’s genius.
This should not detract from Edison’s accomplishments but instead, be seen as a negative reflection of his positive attributes. Tesla’s (AC) system was far superior because it could easily transmit large amounts of current over long distances generated by turbines turned by waterfalls. Although Tesla’s system forms the foundation of the electrical infrastructure that we use today, Edison’s system of DC survived and is the dominant system used in batteries and digital circuits.
Edison’s light bulb was just one step on the journey to modernity and the forebear of the electrical age. Roselle’s contribution was vital to making Edison’s dream of ubiquitous electricity and its use as a conduit for his future inventions a reality.
