95: "Several Thousand Things that Won't Work:" Thomas Alva Edison and His Electric Light
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Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, as he was known, made a recent appearance in our Origin of the Movies episode.

because in addition to the electric light and countless other inventions, he also gave us the motion picture camera. It reminded me that Edison didn't do well in the traditional school classroom when he was a boy. This prolific inventor and successful businessman learned better at home. At school, it's reported that he'd likely be lost in thought. His mother, Nancy, recognized a different approach to learning was required for her son. And the rest is history. As a parent, I appreciate that.

because each of my own three children are different. They each learn in different ways, and I want them to thrive at whatever they choose to do later in life. One learning option for kids today is K-12. K-12 powered schools are accredited, tuition-free online public schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. K-12 can help your child reach their full potential and give you the support you need to get them there.

This is different from homeschooling, where you are responsible for teaching them. K-12 powered schools have state certified teachers, specially trained in teaching online.

So join the more than 2 million families who have chosen K-12 and empower your student to reach their full potential now. Go to k12.com slash HTDS today to learn more and find a tuition-free K-12 powered school near you. That's the letter K, the number 12 dot com slash HTDS. K12.com slash HTDS. It's Sunday morning, October 19th, 1879.

We're in a quiet, rural New Jersey neighborhood called Menlo Park, where a handsome, two-story, grayish-white, clabbered-sided building with two chimneys sits on a hill. It's a curiously elongated structure. The building measures over 100 feet in length, but more curious still is its upper level. The whole floor is a single, massive room.

Thousands of variously shaped and colored bottles containing chemicals of every kind lined the shelved walls punctuated by windows. Tables dot the room, and on these are microscopes, crucibles, magnifying glasses, and all sorts of other instruments. You'll also find batteries, and in one corner, musicians will be glad to know there's a cabinet organ. This is a place of creation, innovation, invention.

This is the laboratory of the 32-year-old inventor presently obsessed with creating a long-lasting and thus commercially viable incandescent light, Thomas Alva Edison. Alva, and yes, the inventor does go by his middle name, sits attentively in a chair. His blue-green eyes are fixated as he cautiously watches the liquid metal, known as mercury, descend through a long, vertically-oriented tube on his Springle-style vacuum pump.

The mercury's flow suctions air from a pear-shaped glass, or bulb, attached via a second tube. This glass bulb is Al's latest iteration of an incandescent light. But before he sends electricity through its copper wires and across the thread connecting them, or filament as it's called, the brown-haired inventor is using this pump to remove as much air from the bulb as possible.

That's how he gives his little filament a fighting chance of not burning to a crisp when electricity zaps it with temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. See, those temperatures are why the filament is the key thing here. Alva would have a marketable incandescent light if only he could find something able to take the heat. He's performed countless experiments over the past year, and this time he's using a carbonized cotton thread. Here we go again. The mercury starts pulling sizable air bubbles.

Al now heats the glass bulb with an alcohol flame, thus expanding the remaining gases inside it. This is delicate work. One mistake and days of effort will go to waste. But as the hours pass, things continue smoothly. The mercury is now dripping faster.

One of Alva's assistants, 19-year-old Francis Jell, grabs the jar collecting mercury at the bottom of the pump, replaces it with a new one, then ascends a step ladder to pour the liquid back into the contraption's reservoir. Meanwhile, Alva cautiously starts using a battery to provide an electrical current to the bulb's two wires. The flow of mercury continues to evacuate air from the pear-shaped glass as the filament inside glows.

After 10 hours of this, the bulb is ready. It's time to see if this filament is the ticket. Alva turns to his bespectacled, mustachioed glassblower, Ludwig Bohm, and instructs him to seal off the bulb. Young Francis Jell and "the old man," as T. Alva Edison is often called, despite being relatively young himself, now settle in to see how long it will last. And at this point, well, I'll let Francis tell it. I quote,

Edison and I kept a death watch to know any convulsions or any last symptoms the lamp might give when expiring. The lamp, however, did not expire. In the morning, we were relieved by Bachelor, Upton, and Force. The lamp continued to burn brilliantly all that day, passing the 24-hour mark. We were stirred with hope as each hour passed. Bets were made, and general good humor existed all round.

The night of the 20th of October again brought quiet to the laboratory as the watch continued, this time composed of Edison, Batchelor, and me. During the night between the 20th and the 21st, Edison, judging from the appearance of the lamp still burning without flaw, seemed satisfied that the first solid foundation of the future of electric lighting had now been laid.

The lamp held out heroically that night and the following day until between one and two o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, October 21st, 1879, it attained more than 40 hours of life, the longest existence yet achieved by an incandescent lamp. Edison now yielded to the temptation as often before in his experimental work to force the lamp with successively higher voltages until in a dazzle of brightness, it gave out.

Is this it? Well, maybe. While Alva Edison agrees with Francis Jell that this bull burned for more than 40 hours, they will write their accounts in the 20th century. On the other hand, their colleague Charles Batchelor won't refute them, but his day-to-day records don't mention this experiment.

He does, however, describe a bulb they prepare on October 21st, which then lights beautifully for 13 and a half hours on October 22nd before surviving yet another hour still after they crank up the juice. Did two men present misremember the same incredible event in the same way? Or did Charles, who was busy preparing more filaments for future experiments as the other two prepared this 40-plus hour bulb, somehow not note it? That I can't tell you.

But whether one or both versions are right, Alva and his team have found that a carbonized cotton thread can make an electric light run for several hours. And the inventor concludes, quote, "If it will burn that number of hours now, I know I can make it burn 100," close quote. If Alva's right about making it run longer, then he, the Wizard of Menlo Park, has truly defeated the dark of night and is on the cusp of bringing about a radical revolutionary change.

The United States, the whole world for that matter, will never be the same. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. History That Doesn't Suck

I could never tell the tale of an inventor whose work touches the telegraph, telephone, audio recording, the stock ticker, the electric light, power stations, and even motion pictures, and so much more while successfully obtaining 1,093 patents in one go. So let's be clear. This is not the comprehensive story of Thomas Alva Edison. This is the story of Alva and his electric light.

And I say his very purposefully because, as I'll detail, electric lights, called arc lamps, predate his work. And others are figuring out the incandescent light at the same time. It's Alva's light, however, that changes the world.

His established reputation, brazenness, business sense, and crucially, his focus on producing not just a working incandescent light, but a practical, commercially viable incandescent to light up a massive swath of lower Manhattan are what set him and the boys at Menlo Park apart from the rest. But I won't get ahead of myself. Let's start by meeting a young Alva Edison whose love of science and entrepreneurialism is already evident at a young age.

Then we can follow him through a few reputation-making inventions on our way back to the wizard's lab at Menlo Park. And to do all that, we need to go back a little over three decades. So let's do it. Rewind. Amid early morning snowfall, Thomas Alva Edison is born about 10 miles south of Lake Erie in the small town of Milan, Ohio, on February 11th, 1847. His family background is deeply American.

Well, North American, that is. During the American Revolution, the Edisons numbered among the thousands of Loyalists who fled north to Canada. And even though his mother originally hails from New York, little Thomas Alva, or just Alva, as his parents Sam and Nancy call him, would have been born up north just like the other Edison kids, if not for his pop participating in an anti-government riot back in 1837.

When charged with high treason in Canada, Sam found motivation to take the fam and immigrate south. Go figure. Now in Ohio, the Edisons are financially successful enough to enjoy a middle-class life in a picturesque red brick home. But they certainly see their fair share of heartbreak too. Death claims the youngest three of the first six Edison children before any of them turn six. As such, baby Alva is raised essentially as an only child.

On top of these painful losses, business is beginning to go downhill. New technologies like the railroad are changing the economy and the inland port of Milan, Ohio is feeling it. And so in 1854, Sam, Nancy and seven-year-old Alva Edison pack it up and move north, right up to the Canadian bordering waterfront of Port Huron, Michigan. Michigan is a great move for the Edisons economically speaking, but little Alva isn't having the best time. He's bullied at school.

The future inventor comes across a bit odd, and he's less inclined to play, more likely to be lost in thought. The other kids respond to his peculiar disposition by dubbing him a "fool." Perhaps worse still, teachers are dismissive of this child who doesn't fit conventional methods. They call Alva "addled," and at least once, he goes home in tears after overhearing his instructor say teaching the Edison kid is a waste of time. Even his father seems to agree.

The one-day great American inventor will later recall that, "My father thought I was stupid. And at last, I almost decided I must really be a dunce." Thank goodness Alva has his mother. Nancy Edison keeps her boy from falling prey to these self-destructive thoughts. Alva will later write of the dark-haired New Yorker, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me. And I felt that I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint."

Nancy knows how to get through to her son. She strikes a near perfect balance between maintaining discipline, yet letting him jump from one topic to another until he gets fascinated by a subject and dives deep. Indeed, Alva often gets desperately lost in a single subject. He'll later recall, "I didn't read books. I read the library." By age nine, he's reading encyclopedias on science and natural philosophy, or what future generations will call physics.

This is where he first reads the words electricity, magnetism, and about the newly invented electromagnetic telegraph. Young Alva, or just Al to the other kids, has a particular passion for chemistry. As he goes door to door selling fruits and vegetables from his family garden to help pay the bills, the aspiring scientist uses his pocket change, or allowance to put that in our terms, to make his own little laboratory in the cellar.

And there, below the Edison home, Alva amasses over 200 bottles, all of which he labels poison to deter anyone from drinking his chemicals. I know, it's kind of adorable and just what a little kid would do. Selling veggies and building his own lab already makes Alva something of a unique child. But that's just the start of it. By 11 years old, he builds his own homemade telegraph, which he then connects to his friend's house about one and a half miles away.

It's also about this time he starts to lose his hearing. You'll find various theories out there as to why, but we don't know for sure. What we do know is that his hearing loss is severe. Alva will later report that, "I haven't heard a bird sing since I was 12 years old." Alva doesn't let his disability hold him back though. He even calls it a blessing as being almost completely deaf lets him tune out distractions. Nor does it damage his confidence.

The intellectually curious and entrepreneurial-minded youth will continue to seize opportunities and think outside the box. He demonstrates those traits rather boldly as a teenager living through the Civil War. It's mid-morning, Wednesday, April 9th, 1862. Fifteen-year-old Alva is descending from a train car in Detroit, Michigan. The mostly deaf teen can't hear much, but he sees large crowds anxiously reading around newspaper bulletin boards.

Wanting to know what the fuss is about, he approaches, reads, and learns that, last Sunday, a Confederate army surprised Union forces camping near Shiloh Church in southwestern Tennessee. It was a bloodbath, the Civil War's worst up to this point. As the crowd absorbs the horror of thousands of casualties, Alva scratches down the main headlines, then dashes off to the telegraph operator here at Michigan Central Station.

See, Al has been selling newspapers and candy on train cars for over a year by this point. He knows a good story when he sees it. He realizes everyone at the stops on his northbound return to Port Huron will want a newspaper detailing the Battle of Shiloh.

Bribing a telegraph operator with a promise of free newspapers for the next three months, Al convinces him to send a note to station masters on the line, asking them to post the headlines with an announcement that newspapers containing greater details will be available for purchase on the 4 p.m. train. The ever-energetic Alva then bolts over to the Detroit Free Press office.

As newspapers with the all caps headline, "THE GREAT BATTLE ON THE TENNESSEE" are coming hot off the press, the teenager makes a bold demand. "I need a thousand copies of the afternoon edition on trust." Surely, some of the newspaper men must be laughing right now, but editor Henry N. Walker loves what he calls the kids, sass. He authorizes the orders. Alva pays another boy to help him carry the papers back to the train where he folds his massive stacks as they start to sting north.

Al steps off the train a short distance later, at Utica, Michigan. He's thronged by people waiting for the newspaper his telegraph advertised would be here. Al usually sells two copies of the Detroit Free Press at this stop. Today, he moves 35. Continuing like this from stop to stop, Alva soon realizes he's going to sell out. So the youthful entrepreneur starts raising the price. The five-cent newspaper becomes ten.

But upon arriving back home at Port Huron, he finds yet another enormous crowd. Looking at his pile of remaining newspapers and back into the faces of his potential customers, cunning Alva cries out, "'25 cents apiece, gentlemen! I haven't got enough to go around!' He sells out and heads home with what he calls an immense amount of money and the realization that the telegraph is a great invention."

Alva uses the money to continue furnishing his new mobile laboratory that he's building on one of the train cars. That's right, just because Al is growing up doesn't mean he's left behind his curiosity and love of science. In the once empty baggage car, Alva houses his stacks of newspapers, crates of candies and groceries, chemicals for the inventions he tries in his downtime, and even a mini printing press with which he's published his own newspaper, The Weekly Herald.

But the mobile lab is short-lived. One of Alva's sticks of phosphorus falls to the floor and sets fire to the baggage car. A conductor here on the Grand Trunk Railway considers this fire the final straw and kicks Alva, his press, his newspapers, and his lab off the train for good. But that isn't the end of the line for the tenacious, impetuous teen. See, previous to losing his sweet setup on the train, Alva saved an infant boy who had fallen on the track from an unbraked boxcar.

He dropped his papers, dashed toward the danger, and lifted the child to safety just by the skin of his teeth. It also just so happens that the child's father was none other than the local station master and telegraph operator, James McKenzie. Feeling beyond indebted to his son's savior, he's more than happy to teach the Edison kid how to properly do Morse code. Through the fall and winter months of 1862, Alva soaks up the telegraph operator's wisdom.

The future inventor practices some 18 hours each day until Morse code becomes a second language for him. Starting in 1863 and for the next five years, Alva takes his telegraphing skills on the road to all sorts of companies in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and even Canada. He has a terrifying moment here when two trains nearly collide under his watch, but not to fear. The crisis is averted and he does what Edison men have done since the 1700s when their prospects get dicey.

They crossed the U.S.-Canadian border. Back in the States, teenage Alva continues to impress colleagues and managers with his telegraphing talent, while also upsetting them with his consistent insistence on invention.

Between December 1866 and January 1867, Al receives the message of President Andrew Johnson's more than 7,000-word second annual message to Congress, as well as the embattled executive's over 6,000-word veto of a bill to extend the vote to Black men in Washington, D.C. If that doesn't sound impressive, let me put it this way. Set this podcast at a slower rate, then transcribe the episode word for word without pausing or taking a break. Yeah.

The dude's among, if not the best taker, as they're called, in the telegraphing biz. But as his reputation grows and his career advances, Aller just can't seem to stop inventing. Instead of sleeping after long days of work, he spends his nights reading the volumes of experimental researches by the famed, earth-shattering British electro-scientist Michael Faraday. The scientist's work leaves a deep impression on the ambitious inventor.

while eating breakfast with his friend, Milton Adams, one morning. Al begins talking about Michael Faraday and exclaims, "I am now 21. I may live to be 50. Can I get as much done as he did? I have so much to do and life is so short, I am going to have to hustle." And hustling does. Al's inventing an automatic vote counter, which lands him his first patent in 1868, a fire alarm, and various other minor inventions or improvements using his knowledge of electricity.

Now, he quickly learns that some inventions aren't appreciated. Turns out congressmen aren't super interested in having their votes counted quickly. So, Al becomes determined to put his inventing energy only into things that people want, things that are practical. Frankly, things that can make money. After all, how else can he afford to take his Michael Faraday inspiration and throw his life into just inventing?

And with that mindset, Al proves himself as much the entrepreneur as he was during his candy and newspaper selling days back in his teens. On January 30th of the following year, 1869, the Telegrapher newspaper publishes the following in its personal section. Quote, Mr. T.A. Edison has resigned his situation in the Western Union office, Boston, Massachusetts, and will devote his time to bringing out his inventions. Close quote.

Over the course of the next half a decade, Alva forms partnerships, receives several dozens of patents, comes to employ over 100 people in his various enterprises, including men who will be with him for years to come, like English immigrant Charles Batchelor. He's also devastated by the loss of his mother, falls in love with and marries young Mary Sitwell, becomes a father, and, as the still-in-his-20s entrepreneurial inventor displays a gravitas beyond his years, picking up a new nickname,

Old Man. For all these accomplishments though, he often struggles to make inflowing cash cover costs. He needs someone to buy into his work in a big way. It's the night of January 4th, 1875. Under escort, Alva passes through the servants' entrance to a mansion on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Once in the house, the not-so-old Old Man is led down a staircase to a basement office.

This is where he's meeting the thickly bearded railroad tycoon who, as we know from episode 74, manipulated national gold prices in 1869, the robber baron Jay Gould. He and Alva spoke recently about the inventor's quadruplex telegraph, which, incredibly, can transmit four messages at once on one wire. The wily New York mogul now wants to continue that discussion. Jay doesn't mince words as he asks Alva, how much do you want for the quadruplex telegraph?

"Make me an offer. I will give you $30,000." Alva is floored. He had been pushing his friend, financer and former boss, Western Union President William Orton for 25,000, but their negotiations had yet to land. Thinking of what that money can do for his young family and business, the intrepid investor turned entrepreneur or entrepreneur turned investor, depending on how you look at it, answers, "I will sell any interest I have for that money."

The deal has been struck. Jay meets Alva at the office of Sherman and Sterling the following morning and hands the inventor a check for $30,000. William Orton will later kick himself for trying to play hardball and losing out on the quadruplex telegraph. Meanwhile, Alva will use his newly acquired small fortune to move on from his Newark digs and set up what we might call America's first invention factory.

The inventor asks his aging, construction-savvy father to find property sufficiently far away from New York City to work in peace and quiet, yet still close enough for prospective investors to visit. Ah yes, this is the origin of that unique two-story building we heard about at the start of this episode. Thomas Alva Edison is moving to Menlo Park.

Alva keeps his nose to the grindstone at Menlo Park, but shifts his attention from advancing the technology behind transmitting the written word via Morse code to transmitting the spoken word. We're talking acoustics, harmonics, perhaps even the human voice. No surprise, really. It's a natural shift and something others have been thinking about as well. It's at this same time that Elijah Gray and Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell are racing against each other to invent a talking telegraph or telephone.

The Scotsman will receive the first U.S. patent for it in 1876, but the debate over who should be credited for inventing the telephone will likely never end. Well, this new direction results in one of Alva's most celebrated inventions, the phonograph. Unlike the telephone, which transmits sound, this ingenious device can record sound waves by making indents on a cylinder, then allow you to play it back.

Alva and the boys, as he often calls his loyal assistants, go mad with glee when, sometime in 1877, the old man sings, Mary had a little lamb into the phonograph, and it works. They can play it back. Now, a real quick but fascinating side note, Alva, the boys, and the world, frankly, all think this recording of the inventor reciting a nursery rhyme is the first playable recording of a human voice in history.

And they'll be right until they aren't. Here's the thing. Roughly two decades ago, French inventor Edouard Léon Scott de Martinville invented what he called a phone autograph, which he intended to record speech not to play it, but to write it. Like when you use your phone's speech-to-text function.

Little did the Frenchman know, however, that in the 21st century, science would make his 1860 recording of the French folk song "Au clair de la lune" become audible. But as cool as this over a century away technological reawakening of the French recording will be, it doesn't change the fact that its potential playability is unknown in the 19th century. And further, that Alva is the one who's made voice recording and playback a practical usable technology.

He'll establish the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company the following year in 1878. Alva, or Al, old man, or sometimes even Tom, continues to work with his crew and promises to produce, quote, a minor invention every 10 days and a big thing every six months or so, close quote. Seriously, a commitment to perpetual innovation. Who does that?

But they keep performing, and as journalists come out to bear witness, New York Sun reporter William Crawford gives the inventor yet another nickname, the Wizard of Menlo Park. Fair enough. I mean, by this point, Al's many inventions over the years, from the electric pen to improvements to the telephone and telegraph, then creating this phonograph and so much more, all just seem magical. But soon, the inventor will answer the siren's call of yet another developing technology.

the electric light. Thinkers and inventors on both sides of the Atlantic have worked on it. But for all their progress, no one has made a truly practical, useful light. With the rising and setting sun still largely governing what hours are of value, perhaps it's time for the entrepreneurial investor or the wizard to give it a go. Maybe Thomas Alva Edison can be the one to conquer the night.

Are you earning and investing in the stock market? In real estate? How about in relationships? Are you earning and investing in your life? I'm Doc G, semi-retired hospice physician and host of the Earn and Invest podcast, where we have the 201 or next level conversations about money and life. Not only how you make money and grow it, but also how you use your wealth to create a better and more fulfilling existence. Join us every Monday and Thursday wherever you listen to fine podcasts.

It's September 8th, 1878. We're in Ansonia, Connecticut, at the workshop of William Wallace. No, he's not a face-painted Scott crying for freedom. He's a wire manufacturer who, with Moses Farmer, has invented an eight-horsepower electric engine, or dynamo.

Word has it this dynamo can light up to eight arc lamps at the same time. And today, University of Pennsylvania professor George Baker has led T. Alpha Edison and Charles Batchelor, or Batch as the English immigrant's boss calls him, to Williams' place to check it out. As the dynamo's rotary spins, it sends power via wiring to 16 carbon rods arranged in eight sets of two.

Each set forms an arc with a small space between them, and as the electric current jumps between the two rods, yep, we have light. One generator, eight lights. Just incredible. Wearing a straw hat and linen duster coat, Alva watches, mesmerized. To quote a reporter present today, the tobacco-chewing wizard of Menlo Park, "Sprawls over the desk with the simplicity of a child."

He looks at the dynamo, the arc lights, and large copper wire over and over while the other men talk among themselves. Alva then starts making calculations. True to his nature, everything is about practicality. How much power does the generator have? The lights. How much coal and gas does it save each day, each month, each year? How could that save manufacturers more money?

Impressive as it is, Alva quickly sees how impractical running one light per horsepower would be to the average person. But the old man is sure he can bridge that gap. The ever-confident wizard of Menlo Park turns to William Wallace and arranges to buy the dynamo for $1,000. He also confidently tells William, "I believe I can beat you in the search." Alva's quest for the electric light has begun. Alva and Bachelor return to Menlo Park and get to work.

Most Americans rely on tallow candles, whale oil, and kerosene to light their way in the dark. You can find coal-powered gas lights in metropolitan hubs, but even those few Americans with this convenience certainly want something better. Gas lights burn inconsistently. They blacken rooms, and if you spend too much time around them, the carbon dioxide they emit will leave you sick to the stomach. Surely then, Alva and Batch conclude, they can find a better electric solution.

Over the next few days, they move from arc lamps to considering incandescent lamps. You know, the type of light with a filament. They drop 45 different filament-based possibilities. Alva's mind is racing. He thinks he has something. On September 13th, less than a week after visiting William Wallace's shop, the wizard telegraphs the kinetic cutter. Hurry up the machine. I have struck a big bonanza. William sends the dynamo to Alva that day.

Meanwhile, Alva's confidence leaps from the pages of the New York Sun as, on September 16th, the newspaper prints an interview with Alva on the electric light. With the process, I have just discovered I can produce a thousand, aye, 10,000 lights from one machine. Indeed, the number may be said to be infinite.

When the brilliancy and cheapness of the lights are made known to the public, which will be in a few weeks or just as soon as I can thoroughly protect the process, illumination by gas will be discarded. With 15 or 20 of these dynamo electric machines, I can light the entire lower part of New York City with a 500 horsepower engine. To be clear,

Just a week earlier, Alva was watching an eight horsepower engine power up to eight very unreliable lights. Now he's promising thousands of lights in homes throughout lower Manhattan, possibly within a few weeks. Wow, that's quite the claim. But when it comes from the mouth of T.A. Edison, the world listens. Gas stocks plummet as Alva's attorney, Grosvenor Lowry, sets up a meeting between Alva and the steadily growing bank, Drexel Morgan & Company.

One of the firm's mustachioed leaders, John Pierpont Morgan, offers to fund Alva's research on the electric light in exchange for any present and future patents. J.P. Morgan, or Pierpont as his business associates call him, believes it is impossible to overstate the value if Edison succeeds. On October 16th, Drexel Morgan & Company will team up with Alva's old friends at Western Union to form the Edison Electric Light Company.

Between his stocks, budget, and other considerations, Alva's cut will be valued at nearly $400,000, the equivalent of more than $10 million to us in the 21st century. This all sounds well and good, perhaps a little too good. So what exactly has Alva just bitten off?

To shed some light on his challenge, pun completely intended, let's take a deeper dive on where the technology surrounding electric lights stands in the 1870s and what is still needed to make them commercially viable in homes. First things first, when you hear people say, Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb, that's not quite right. Even the ever-confident, if not flat-out boastful Alva wouldn't claim to be the sole inventor of the electric light.

It's future generations, like us, who will sometimes mistakenly state that Alva invented it full stop. I'm sure you've already put this together, but I'll say it anyway. The Wizard of Menlo Park isn't inventing electric lighting so much as improving it, making it cheaper and reliable enough for commercial viability. So where's the science on this in the 1870s? Well, scientists, or more accurately, philosophers, have been experimenting with electricity for centuries. ♪

Back in 1746, a lawyer with almost zero electrical know-how in Holland's city of Leiden found out the hard way that a jar of water can hold an electric charge and that the human body is an effective conductor. This is how we got the Leiden jar. In the early 1750s, a relatively young Benjamin Franklin came up with an experiment involving a key and a kite that further convinced the world lightning and electricity are the same thing.

And as we approached 1800, Italian professors Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, whose names give us the words galvanize and volts, developed a bitter feud over the source of electricity moving through a dissected frog's leg that resulted in the latter developing the first basic battery.

Alessandro stacked zinc and copper disks with wet cloth. And as the zinc took electrons from the copper, or silver in some cases, his pile of disks created an electric charge. Building off of Alessandro Volta's discovery, Sir Humphry Davy made massive batteries at the newly established Royal Institution in London. This also enabled him to create the arc light in 1809.

It was completely impractical given the battery power required to make his light operate, but would continue to improve in the decades to come as others advanced humanity's knowledge of electricity. Quick aside, Humphrey's assistant and successor was the one and only Michael Faraday, whose scientific advancements, I'll remind you, inspired a young Thomas Alva Edison with the need to hustle. Anyhow, to keep our eyes on the prize, the arc light improves, as we know from William Wallace's display for Alva in 1878.

In fact, by that same year, arc lamps are lighting a few public spaces, including a full half-mile stretch of l'Avenue de l'Opéra in Paris, France. So why aren't arc lamps just dominating the lighting game in the 1870s? Well, they have some serious problems. Arc lighting is less than reliable. It's spotty, and when it does work, you wish it had a dimmer.

As one reporter puts it, for a few seconds, the light would be strong, clear, unwavering. Then it would flicker, and darkness for an instant would fall. Suddenly, the light would grow brighter, sometimes increasing slowly in brilliancy, at other times leaping out of bound to the full measure of radiance. So arc lamps sort of work for lighthouses, warships, maybe streetlights, but they definitely aren't practical for residential use. How do we turn the corner into domestic lighting then?

This would be a true game changer. First, this would require someone figuring out how to subdivide the light, which is to say how to produce small lights that can be turned on and off individually. Yeah, no one wants to either have every light in their house on at once or have an individual buzzing, whirring, smoking, and steaming generator for every single light. That's what it would take to have one light on and others off right now.

Clearly then, subdivision is an absolute necessity for indoor lighting. But even if subdivision is figured out, no one wants to go blind from an overpowering arc lamp in their house. People want a reliable, soft light. That's where the incandescent might come in. The idea behind an incandescent is to send the electric current through a small string or filament inside a glass bulb. This will give consistency and stability to the light the heated filament emits.

But the challenge here is finding a material that can serve as a filament without burning up as the electrical resistance of the filament raises the temperature by a few thousand degrees Fahrenheit. And by 1878, as many as 20 scientists have taken a crack at it over several decades. Nor have they all given up. Inventors dotting the globe are still in the game. In short, humanity's knowledge of electricity and lighting have come a long way by the 1870s.

But those two remaining challenges to indoor lighting, subdividing light and finding a long-lasting cheap filament appear nearly insurmountable. Yet here comes Thomas Alva Edison, who having seen William Wallace's Arclight and Dynamo is now stepping up to the plate with all the swagger in the world, boasting that he'll quickly light up all of lower Manhattan. He's taken seriously because of his past accomplishments. But man, with a brag like that,

Alva better produce something fast. It's now the evening of Friday, October 11th, 1878, less than a month since Alva Edison claimed he would soon light up all of lower Manhattan. A reporter from the New York Herald is just arriving at Menlo Park, ready to bear witness to the old man's incandescent light. The newspaper man is shown into the lab. He notes a small metal stand on a table. The stand holds a glass globe, which itself contains some kind of apparatus.

It's about this time that Alva finally breaks away from his work and looks up. The inventor gestures towards this object and simply says, "There it is." Unlike arc lamps, this bulb emits a low, comfortable light. The kind that invites you to curl up with a good book. This is incredible. After a few minutes, Alva offers to provide a comparison point. "Now I will extinguish it and light the gas, and you can see the difference."

The newspaper man notes that the gaslight has far more yellow tint to it than Alva's incandescent. The old man then lets his visitors see both side by side. Yes, the incandescent is far better than the gaslamp. It's soft enough not to hurt the eye, yet closer to sunlight than the gaslamp. The impressed reporter asks, "When do you expect to have the invention completed, Mr. Edison?"

Alva turns off the incandescent and puts it away as he responds. The substance of it is all right now, but there are the usual little details that must be attended to before it goes to the public. Are the lights to all be of the same degree of brilliancy? All the same. Have you run across a series of difficulties in it as yet? Well, no, and that's what worries me. By God, Alva has done it. Before the in awe reporter leaves, he also gets to lay his eyes on Alva's latest generators.

Just incredible. With few variations, Alva will repeat this same visit with a few reporters. Speaking of the incandescent bulb, another reporter asks, how long will it last, Mr. Edison? The wizard responds confidently, forever almost. Only weeks have passed since Alva even began thinking about the electric light, yet it appears he's perfected the incandescent bulb.

Here's the thing, though. Pray you never play poker with old Alva Edison, because these demonstrations for the reporters are bluffs. Shams. While it's true that his incandescents have an excellent glow, Alva's lights currently have a longevity of no more than two hours. Some only make it minutes. That's why he always turns it off so quickly. And as he is asked over and over to present his invention publicly, he knows he can't maintain this charade.

He starts to worry about the progress on both the improved light and generator. Indeed, the fact is that Alva hasn't just bitten off making a long-lasting incandescent light bulb. Given his drive for practicality, he's really trying to invent a long-lasting incandescent bulb and the entire infrastructure needed to power a city, from meters to generators and more. Wow. To paraphrase a younger version of the inventor, sounds like he's going to have to hustle.

The work proceeds in earnest. Right out the gate, Alva's running on little sleep or food, powering through a painful bout of neuralgia. He and his assistants, the boys, like his English-born right-hand man, Charles Batchelor, the Swiss machinist, John Kruse, and the New Englander, Francis Upton, often have to work through the night because visiting admirers waste their time during the day.

In these first few months of work, Alva pins his filament hopes on platinum, but alas, shortly after reaching the 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit needed for the element to illuminate, it burns. He realizes he has to find something else in early 1879. Alva and the boys are connecting a lot of dots by this point. Contrary to conventional incandescent wisdom, the wizard decides he needs to find a high-resistance filament.

See, since Alva is thinking about lighting a city, not just a single bulb, he realizes that the light needs to be high resistance, that is, able to run on low voltage. The old man also sees that the more gas he can remove from the bulb, the longer his incandescents last. Ah, that's where the mercury pump that we heard about at the start of this episode comes in, and the newly hired teenager, Francis Jell, often takes on this painstaking task.

Meanwhile, Alva realizes he has to figure out how he's going to subdivide the light and power these bulbs in mass. By March, he and the boys have come up with a new dynamo, which they call the long-legged Marianne, on account of its three-foot-tall iron poles. Their crucial improvement is that, rather than having equal internal and external resistance for maximum current, their dynamo has a smaller internal resistance, which increases its output, or horsepower,

Brilliant. Michael Faraday would be proud. But even as the Menlo Park team acquires a glassblower so talented they almost overlook his yodeling, a German immigrant named Ludwig Bohm, the high-resistance, long-lasting filament remains elusive. Then, one night, as Alva mindlessly rolls some black lamp through his fingers, basically the carbonized soot left over after burning a gaslight, he decides to try this carbonized substance as a filament.

This new direction yields better results. Alva and the boys think they might be onto something. And they are. After countless failed attempts, they carbonize a thread of cotton as a filament. And even if we don't know the particulars, whether it runs for 40 plus hours or closer to 14 and a half, we do know that on or around October 21st, 1879, this bulb works until Alva extinguishes it.

The men of Menlo Park must be ecstatic to see their year's worth of dedication, work, hope, sweat, and tears finally bearing fruit. On November 4th, just two weeks after this first successful lamp, Alva files to patent the Edison electric lamp with a carbon filament. He'll receive it as patent number 223,898 on January 27th, 1880. Yet even with this success, Alva and his team don't let up on their search for a longer lasting filament.

Ultimately, they'll perform hundreds of experiments, trying everything from various silks, horse hair, fish line, vulcanized rubber, cork, grass fibers, linen twine, wrapping paper, New Zealand flax, and even beard hair right off the chin of two of Alva's employees. They soon find that carbonized cardboard makes an even longer lasting filament. It can burn for 300 hours. Still not perfect for commercial use, but Alva and the boys are really getting there.

If only the public understood that. Some in the press say Alva is all talk, and The Wizard's New York-based competitor, William Sawyer, is claiming Alva has infringed on his patented work. For the record, British inventor Joseph Swann also figures out the incandescent light bulb at this same time, but he makes no such accusations. So The Wizard of Menlo Park decides there's only one way to shut down the naysayers and prove the viability of his incandescent light: a public display.

In late 1879, Alva announces he'll light up 10 houses in Menlo Park before the week is out. It's a bold move. If anything goes awry, this could backfire badly. But then again, Alva is a bold man. It's the night of New Year's Eve, 1879. A train on the Pennsylvania Railroad is traveling south from the metropolis of New York City down to a small, quaint village in New Jersey.

Passengers are crammed into every car, yet to think, this isn't even the only train making the journey. Not even close. Extra trains have been added for tonight. Surely, visitors will grossly outnumber the village's entire population, but logistics be damned. How can one resist the chance to see Thomas Alva Edison's incandescent light bulbs illuminate Menlo Park?

Exiting the trains at the village's small depot, the people are greeted by a sight unlike anything anyone has ever experienced. As they look up the gentle hill rising before them, their view isn't cut off by the dark of night, nor are they overwhelmed by an overly bright arc lamp, which few, if any of them, have likely ever seen. Instead, they see 20 lampposts with soft, glowing glass globes all along their path.

These orbs, they just shine. Yet they don't hurt your eyes if you look at them. It's like magic. Countless people roam the town, taking in the several structures, including Sarah Jordan's boarding house, all illuminated by electricity. One building, however, is more interesting than the others, the famous inventing laboratory. With light streaming from the two-story building's 20 or so windows, visitors are drawn to the lab like moths to the flame. That's fine.

All are welcome inside and Alva's assistants are more than busy taking questions and trying to keep their curious guests from accidentally breaking anything. Here, the people are greeted by still new wonders. One light is submerged in water, yet it still shines. Elsewhere, an assistant turns a switch back and forth. As he does so, the light in one bulb flashes on then extinguishes with the mere flick of his finger. How is this possible?

Surely, Thomas Alva Edison must be a god among men, a modern Prometheus. How else could his assistant give and take light like this? And of course, the god of this new fire, Mr. Edison himself, is here. He's dressed in his usual casual, if not sloppy manner, happily explaining his electric light and taking questions from all who ask. Putting on such a public display was a huge risk, but everything went perfectly.

Well, almost perfectly. Alva had a few assistants on the lookout for sabotage, and as the display continued the next day, they caught a man employed by the Baltimore Gas Company purposely short-circuiting lights. He only managed to kill four lamps. So in truth, the saboteur only added to the festivities with his drama. Overall, some 3,000 people witnessed the lights at Menlo Park. But for all its success, Alva's display doesn't win over his critics.

The spike in the Edison Electric Light Company's stock caused by the display at Menlo Park ends as quickly as it began. Meanwhile, other companies with other patented versions of the incandescent lamp are popping up. William Sawyer and Albin Mann's Electrodynamic Light Company doesn't look like much of a threat, but the United States Electric Lighting Company, which is using Hiram Maxim's bulb, has a foothold in New York. Charles Brush's arc lights aren't a direct competitor,

but his young company is starting to light public streets. He illuminates several blocks of Broadway in New York City before the end of 1880. Alva has his own wins that same year. He finds bamboo is an even better filament than cardboard and starts a light bulb company, but he's also butting heads with the Tammany Hall political machine that controls New York City. So in February 1881, the Wizard of Menlo Park realizes he has to make his presence felt more fully. He packs it up and moves to Manhattan.

Establishing himself in a four-story double brownstone located at 65 Fifth Avenue, Alva quickly begins laying the groundwork for his electrical empire. And I mean that literally. The wizard is moving on his infrastructure plan to run buried, insulated electric wires through lower Manhattan in the very same way gas lines run underground and into the currently gas-lit homes and offices of Gotham. And no, that isn't a Batman reference. Gotham is one of New York City's many nicknames.

Menlo Park veteran John Kruse manages the mostly Irish laborers carving their way through lower Manhattan's horse dung covered streets to lay wire within one square mile that includes the financial district and newspaper row. Their work is also overseen by inspectors. These guys never show up to inspect. They only show up to collect their $5 per day wages from Alpha Edison.

But accepting such "government oversight" was crucial to obtaining approval from New York's Tammany Hall of Politicians. Anyhow, as Irishmen and others work through a harsh winter and deal with delayed deliveries of iron and copper, Alva's also building a power station over at 255-257 Pearl Street. You know, the location was a dilapidated slum, but the cost was still horrendous. Manhattan real estate, am I right?

Well, once completed, this station will have six coal-fueled dynamos, called jumbos in a nod to P.T. Barnum's elephant. And those will produce the electricity that will travel through all these newly buried wires to light up one square mile of lower Manhattan. At least, that's the theory. And by the latter part of 1882, Alva thinks it's ready. It's September 4th, 1882.

The Wizard, John Kruse, and other Edison employees are at Drexel Morgan & Company's office building on the corner of Broad and Wall Street. I'll remind you that J. Pierpont Morgan is a major investor in the Edison Electric Light Company. Hence, Alva and his top guys are here with the mighty banker for this momentous occasion. The opening of Pearl Street Station. They're waiting for the magical hour of 3 p.m. That's when the switches will be thrown and electricity will flow under the streets and into the office and surrounding buildings.

Things grow quiet and tense as the minutes wane. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, four years of work, and not a little criticism from the public and media have gone into this venture. What if it doesn't work? One of Alva's men, Edward Johnson, makes a joke to lighten the mood. $100, they don't go on. Alva Edison is as confident as ever. Taken, he exclaims. Then, three o'clock arrives. John Lieb throws the main circuit breaker at Pearl Street.

Alva flips the switch in Pierpont's office. "They're on!" The men excitedly yell. They are indeed. The Edison Electric Light Company is now powering 8,117 bulbs in the 368 buildings located within its first district. Pearl Street Station is a success. The starting de Grey 35-year-old old man, Thomas Alva Edison, has done it.

It took far longer than his initial boast of a few weeks, but his incandescent bulb not only lights up, as those made by others have done, his is commercially viable. Practical. He truly has lit up a part of lower Manhattan. The wizard tells a Sun newspaper reporter, "I have accomplished all I promised." Maybe not entirely. Alpha's lighting infrastructure is incredible and revolutionary, but it still has limitations.

Even with his powerful jumbo dynamos, his station can't run lights more than half a mile away. The direct current is just too weak beyond that distance. Edison Electric Light is tackling that issue in part by producing isolated systems by which the company lights a single house or building with its own individual dynamo. It makes over 300 of these for locations around the world by 1883, but they don't always work out so great. It's an unspecified day in 1883.

Edward Johnson is on his way to 219 Madison Avenue. This top exec from the Edison Electric Light Company might not love making house calls, but when the owner is none other than the up-and-coming king of banking and Edison Electric Light Company investor, J. Pierpont Morgan, well, he most certainly will. That's particularly the case since Edward oversaw the recent rebuild slash upgrade of Pierpont's system. So if the powerful banker says he's having problems...

Edward's on it. The Edison man's heart sinks the moment the door opens. Almost immediately, he's hit with what he calls, quote, a strong smell of wet, burned wood and burned carpet, close quote. Edward rushes to the library. The floor is torn up. Pierpont's once beautiful desk is charred, as is the rug and other ruined objects stacked in the once beautiful, ornate room. Oh, this is bad.

Worse yet for Edward, it was his idea to run wire under the floor in order to provide Pierpont with a desk light. And now, the famously ill-tempered banker's study is ruined. Well, time to face the music. J. Pierpont Morgan himself is walking toward the smoldering library. Standing in the doorway with a newspaper in one hand, the stout, mustachioed banker peers at Edward over his glasses. He utters one word. Well?

Edward's figured out the problem. Metal plates under the desk. He's ready to launch into an explanation when the austere financial titan's wife, Frances, appears behind her husband. She and Edward make eye contact. She raises a finger to her lips, then walks away, unnoticed by Pierpont. Edward gets the message. Don't make excuses. Let her husband move first. The two men stand in silence a moment longer.

Finally, the banker asks, well, what are you going to do about it? Mr. Morgan, the trouble is not inherent in the thing itself. It is my own fault and I will put it in good working order so it will be perfectly safe. How long will it take to fix it? I will do it right away. All right, see that you do.

Without question, Thomas Alva Edison, the great inventor who improved the telegram, the telephone, and gave us the phonograph, has forever changed the world. Not by being the sole inventor of the electric light or even the incandescent light, but by finding a way to make it deliverable to the public. By merging it with good business sense and, crucially, then dreaming up the infrastructure needed to make indoor electric lighting viable.

Yet, it's clear that much remains to be learned about the safe and consistent delivery of electricity itself. Is it possible then that one of Alva's employees, a gaunt, mustachioed young man from the Austrian Empire, has a better method of delivery than direct current? Next time, we'll bear witness to a most vicious fight as Alva and his soon former employee, Nikola Tesla, go to war over direct and alternating currents.

And

Thank you.

Mark Ellis, Mark Price,

Matthew Mitchell, Matthew Simmons, Melanie Jam, Nick Sekinder, Noah Hoff, Paul Goeringer, Rick Brown, Sarah Trawick, S.B. Wade, Sean Pepper, Sharon Thiesen, Sean Baines, Creepy Girl, Tisha Black, and Zach Jackson. Join me in two weeks where I'd like to tell you a story.