Power Struggles: Scientific Authority and the Creation of Practical Electricity before Edison

In too many lay histories of science, the field of electronics jumps from Benjamin Franklin's kite experiments to Thomas Edison's light bulb.   Yet there was nearly a century of other inventions in between. The many threads of narrative found in Power Struggles parallel the rush to invent, to bring to market or to improve various recent technologies too.   The contemporary reader is reminded of the personal computer in the 1970s and '80s, to the spreading Internet and World Wide Web in the1990s, to cell phones in this past decade.

From the early 19th century experiments of Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, and the romantically named (something from the Tarot?) "crown of cups" electrochemical battery, some rich nomenclature is found among the many early experiments in electronics.   The field was initially called galvanism, after Galvani, and the study of the physical sciences, including experimental physics, was called "natural philosophy".   It was a relatively democratic field, with merit recognized among--and by--its wealthy, gentleman scientists.   Benjamin Franklin and Humphry Davy, though of modest birth and means, were welcomed into their company, because it was acknowledged that they had something to say and to teach.

When Michael Faraday successfully turned magnetism into electricity on October 28, 1831, the age of the magneto began. Thomas Davenport soon developed an experimental motor that ran on batteries, and in 1851 Charles Grafton Page developed an electric railroad locomotive.   Electricity by mechanical means, using coils, magnets, and steam-powered movement, birthed electrometallurgy and electroplating, depositing molecules of one metal upon a substrate of another.

Artists who employ leading technologies will note the story of Samuel F.B. Morse, painter and art professor (and sporadic anti-Catholic anti-immigrant New York mayoral candidate).   Morse's story marks roughly the middle of Schiffer's book.   Progress of the electric telegraph had been stalled, in part because the US government was satisfied with semaphore messages transmitted by flag code between observation posts.   With the help of the machine shop of his collaborator Vail, Morse put together the first commercially feasible electromagnetic telegraph system.   There was a telegraph line built from Baltimore to Washington, DC in 1844, and Ezra Cornell made a fortune in cable-laying equipment, enough to establish a college (later university) in his name.

Schiffer discusses the importance of scientific authority in the nineteenth century, when "humbug" was rife. Contentious arguments arose around exactly who deserved credit for each invention.   Edward Clarke and Joseph Henry both followed Franklin's example by failing to take out patents for their discoveries.   The judgment of Henry, a founder of the National Academy of Sciences and Director of the Smithsonian Institution, had the power to make or destroy careers.   Yet Henry himself felt slighted in histories by Morse and Vail of the telegraph's development.   This is detailed in Thomas Coulson's Joseph Henry: His Life and Work (Princeton, 1950).

Compared to other industrial nations, the US government gave meager funding to inventors for development, but made substantial purchases of the products of proven technologies. The contemporary reader thinks of the Burning Man festival or pyrotechnic performances by Survival Research Labs when reading of demonstrations by Colt and others, to Navy Admirals and US Senators, of electric detonations of underwater mines.   Author Schiffer consulted myriad sources for firsthand accounts of the event during the US Civil War where an electrically-detonated Confederate mine sunk the US ironclad Cairo .   After the war, electric systems were used for detonation of dynamite in the construction of tunnels, bridge caissons and mines.

One technology, peripheral to electricity, of interest to both artists and scientists of the time was photography.   Morse had a workshop in a building on the New York University campus, as did Samuel Colt and the physicist John Draper, experimenting with the optics and photochemical processes of photography.    Morse visited Daguerre in Paris in 1839, and experimented with Draper at NYU.   When Morse gave classes in new-found photographic techniques, one of his students was Matthew Brady, the notable photographer of the US Civil War battlefields and personages.

The challenge of illuminating Constantino Brumidi's murals in the upper reaches of the dome of the US Capitol required development of an electric ignition system for its gas lamps.   This required a mammoth battery for the spark.   Soon there were arc lights in lighthouses, yet the challenge of successfully and profitably lighting urban buildings and streets with electricity remained.   Thomas Edison had already made his fortune from the phonograph when, in 1878, he turned his attention to electric lights and the power generation and transmission system to provide their power.   The powerful magnetos of this era began to be called dynamos, which Edison's company also manufactured and sold.   The race to build a successful lighting system was between Edison and George Westinghouse.   Westinghouse had developed a system that used alternating current (AC), versus Edison's system that used direct current (DC).   Edison's company was eventually wrested from Edison's hands--like Steve Jobs' Apple Computer (which at least he wrested back)--and was merged with another alternating current-generating company, into the corporation still called General Electric.

At times the second half of Schiffer's book unspools as slowly as Cyrus Field's Trans-Atlantic cable.   The first half of the book was more frequently enlivened with anecdotes of suits and counter-suits that, from the vantage point of 160 years, appear as futile and kooky as the Apple vs. Microsoft legal actions fifteen years ago.   Still, Power Struggles: Scientific Authority and the Creation of Practical Electricity before Edison is a valuable history, and makes the reader ponder.   Progress in electronics, then as now, seems to rest on multiple legs.   These legs need to balance and stabilize innovative concepts, solid manufacture of products, reliable systems of power generation and transmission, metallurgy and availability of material resources.   Like the grand nineteenth century project for electric power and light that Michael Brian Schiffer methodically and thoroughly details, to put together multiple processes that result in technological innovation remains a mighty struggle.