The Wizard of Menlo Park (14 page)

It happened that Fox was peering into the office of the United States Electric Lighting Company, which made an incandescent bulb based on the design of Hiram Maxim and was immediately identifiable by a filament that resembled the letter “M.” As far as Edison was concerned, the bulb was a “clean steal” of his own cardboard-filament design, thinly disguised by the cutesy “M.” When interviewed, he professed to be unconcerned. “I do not worry about them, or a hundred like them. I always expected them and there will be more of them.” But United States Electric had not merely begun manufacturing, it had already installed a working exhibition of 150 bulbs in a basement reading room of the Equitable Building, the home of its Manhattan office. Edison’s laboratory could argue the technical merits of its newer bamboo filament, but in the image game, it was now behind. United States Electric had got the jump on Edison Electric by being the first to establish a presence in New York City. Its lights soon were installed in several other offices and the post office, powered by generators on the premises in each case. Edison must have been upset, too, by the way that George Barker, his friend at the University of Pennsylvania, seemed to have switched allegiance, writing him that Maxim’s bulbs were brighter than Edison’s, an observation that Barker felt he had to share with Edison because “my own self-respect requires me to be honest, even with a friend, like yourself.”

Edison also had to contend with a new manifestation of hostility: cartoons that turned the image of the Wizard of Menlo Park into a charlatan. In one cartoon that appeared in 1880, captioned “The Decadence of the Wizard of Menlo Park,” Edison is depicted as a con man, playing a shell game with nonsensically named inventions, offering to show “the Great Invention Trick.” Place your money on the table, receive a share of stock, then “now you see them, and now you don’t see ’em!”

Edison would not be able to quell the criticism, nor best Maxim and other competitors, by means of technical specifications. Nor was the competition to establish the electric light one that would be fought primarily in the courts. Rather, Edison was the reluctant participant in a contest of marketing strategies. The bigger the stage, the better. The Edison Electric Light Company urgently needed to complete Edison’s original plan of introducing his electric lights in Lower Manhattan, connected to what would be the first system of centralized power generation. To lay the electrical lines, however, the company needed the permission of the Tammany-dominated city government, one of the most corrupt governmental bodies in an age defined by political corruption.

The Brush Electric Light Company, having negotiated an understanding with the city well before Edison’s company was ready, was the first company to be able to flip the switch, in dramatic fashion, sending power from a central station to lights installed along Broadway, between Fourteenth and Twenty-seventh Streets, at 5:25
P.M
. on 20 December 1880. Brush had arranged with the city’s Department of Public Works to secure permission for a two-week trial in the city. In doing so, the company had shown its willingness to take on considerable financial risk in order to obtain the opportunity to show its lights in the most coveted location in the country. Not only did it offer the service to the city free of charge, it had to accept a provision that gave the department the right to order that the streetlamps be taken down on a day’s notice.

The debut of Brush lighting went well. The lights were mounted on corrugated iron posts that stood twenty feet tall, double the height of the gas lamps (they, too, were turned on that evening, permitting a side-by-side comparison). The arc lights were sufficiently bright that a newspaper could be read while standing 150 feet away from a post. One account described an “artistic effect” produced by the contrast of brilliant white and deep black, as in the sight of white horses attached to an elegant carriage standing outside of Tiffany’s, surrounded by an impenetrably black background. As bright as the arc lights were, however, this stretch of Broadway was already well lighted by gas lighting in the shops. When the city cut off the gas streetlamps at six o’clock to see how much light was supplied by the arc lights alone, the ambient light thrown out by the shop windows made it hard to even notice that the gas lamps on the street had been turned off. Still, the drama of the electric light display was heightened, albeit artificially, by the presence of ten uniformed policeman assigned to stand along the route of the Brush Electric Light Company’s wires (whether to guard against sabotage or to serve as ornamentation was not explained).

In making arrangements with the city to lay wires for his service, Edison had not pursued a contract for street lighting. He knew his bulb was ill suited for the purpose, and even were that not the case, he expected to be fully occupied initially with supplying individual businesses with service. Even as a private businessperson, however, seeking to provide service to other private interests, he had encountered substantial bureaucratic obstacles. The Department of Public Works tried to apply the same terms to Edison Electric as it had to Brush Electric, insisting that the city could withdraw permission with only one day’s notice. Edison countered that he could justify making the considerable investment in laying lines only if he were provided with irrevocable permission that would extend a full year. This seems to have been a reasonable request, so Public Works could say nothing other than that it was powerless to bestow a utility franchise of such duration, and pushed the problem upstairs, to the city’s Board of Aldermen.

Edison himself had neither the experience nor the temperament to work with a group of professional politicians known for being more attentive to personal pecuniary interests than to the public weal. Fortunately, Grosvenor Lowrey knew that this was the time to step forward and propose a modus vivendi that did not involve bribes, but did involve currying of favor from political operators. Lowrey obtained Edison’s consent to provide a special performance of the Menlo Park magic light show for the New York Board of Aldermen.

It’s impossible to determine whether Lowrey was supernaturally savvy, or just plain lucky, but the evening he set for the demonstration in Menlo Park for New York’s City Fathers was 20 December, the very same evening that Broadway would be transformed into the Great White Way by Brush Electric. The aldermen missed the spectacle in New York, pulling in to Menlo Park on a private train provided by the Pennsylvania Railroad exactly at the moment when Brush Electric made its Broadway debut. Edison Electric attempted to put on a show of equal dramatic power in Menlo Park, having installed three hundred streetlamps in a double file up the hill. All were alight when the visitors from New York arrived, and the press accounts praised their “soft, mellow” light. No one pointed out—in print, at least—that Edison Electric was not planning on competing head-to-head with Brush for the street-lighting business and that this display was decorative but effectively useless. Unlike Brush’s two-thousand-candlepower lights arrayed along Broadway, Edison’s sixteen-candlepower incandescent bulb was of use only indoors. When placed outside it did little but illuminate the protective white globe within which it sat.

Two years before, Grosvenor Lowrey had overridden Edison’s objections and insisted that Edison spend a portion of his advance payment from the Edison Electric Light Company on a separate two-story brick building to serve as an office and library. Edison had argued that his little office on the ground floor of the laboratory was sufficient for his needs, but Lowrey had countered that he must have a suitable place to receive distinguished visitors, one that projected an image of financial solidity. A new freestanding office was built, and on Lowrey’s orders Edison had purchased the finest cherry furniture, identical to the pieces in Lowrey’s own offices in the Drexel Building in New York City. These proved to be farsighted preparations for this moment, when the party of visitors climbed the hill and stepped into Edison’s richly appointed office.

Edison was haggard in appearance, with uncombed hair, and as he greeted each person with a handshake, one reporter described Edison as wearing “a forced look of pleasantry.” Just as Edison had been expected to perform the same routine ad nauseam when the phonograph was unveiled, now he was called upon to do parlor tricks with the electric lights, though the possibilities for a variety show were limited. Leading his visitors to the laboratory, he had them look out the windows when, with a signal to an assistant, the power was cut to the twin lines of outside lights. The visitors began to applaud, and then, in a twinkling, the lights were brought back on. “That’s the last of the lamplighters, if we have the electric light in New York,” one of the visitors said to another. The city’s savings in labor costs resulting from the dismantling of gas streetlamps maintained by humans was not viewed by this group as purely positive, however. A city commissioner recalled that a machine sweeper had once been introduced to Central Park: “‘What do you think of it, Pat?’ he asked a sweeper employed there. ‘It’s a wonderful thing,’ said Pat, ‘but yer ’oner,’ he added archly, ‘devil a vote it can cast.’ The Mayor took the hint. The force was retained, and the machine received no endorsement.”

It was a moment of awkwardness for Edison and his associates, and could easily have been avoided. After all, his light was not going to be marketed for use as street lighting, so there had been no need to allow the aldermen to worry about the potential loss of patronage. It fell to Lowrey to keep the guests moving toward the evening’s final act, following the tour of the laboratory and the machine shop: a feast catered by New York City’s Delmonico’s Restaurant (birthplace of baked Alaska and lobster Newburg). The spread was laid out in the laboratory, tended by gloved waiters in formal evening wear who did not stint when pouring champagne.

Edison did not know the protocol for such occasions—he ate and drank oblivious to the fact that he was still wearing his sealskin hat—but Lowrey was an adept master of ceremonies. After allowing his guests time to fill themselves and let the ample quantities of alcohol take effect, he rose to give the first after-dinner speech. He began with compliments for the mayor, and then for the aldermen, and only after warming up his audience did he launch into a talking advertisement for Edison and his great enterprise and the difficult challenge of making the light not brighter, but less bright, into a “soft, mellow light, which was adapted to commercial needs.” Edison’s was the “perfect light.”

Edison was strongly averse to speaking in public and allowed Lowrey to speak on his behalf. The guests then followed with perorations that became more ornate as one followed another. The champagne flowed, “Menlo Park” became “Melno Park,” and the drinking continued even after the aldermen boarded their train at ten o’clock for the return home. The effects of the alcohol produced the impression, recorded by the reporter for
New York Truth,
that “each alderman looked as though he thought himself the Mayor of New York.” The paper declared Edison’s demonstration a “decided success, especially of his guests’ capacity for Champagne.”

When the aldermen woke up the next day, the convivial feelings for Edison with which they had left Menlo Park were replaced by hangovers. Negotiations resumed and the aldermen would not back down from onerous terms, asking the Edison Electric Light Company to pay ten cents a linear foot for the privilege of laying wire. With wires running in parallel along both sides of every street, this charge would run about $1,000 a mile. The city also wanted 3 percent of gross receipts after the first five years. Outraged, Edison made the terms public in January 1881, seeking support for terms more favorable to the company. Brush Electric had not had to pay the city anything for the privilege of operating, Edison pointed out. He also made noises that if he could not obtain reasonable terms, he would take his business to a more hospitable place, such as Newark or Philadelphia.

Edison’s public airing of his grievances over proposed terms did not result in any noticeable strengthening of his bargaining power. His representatives and the city government would wrangle for four more months before settling upon five cents a linear foot as a franchise fee. In the meantime, however, Brush Electric had adroitly moved from brief free demonstration, to free demonstration of longer duration, and then to a profitable city contract to light a number of important locations in addition to Broadway. Well positioned on the most visible streets, the company was asked to light hotels and theaters, providing lighting that also met “commercial needs,” the segment of the marketplace that Lowrey had attempted to position the Edison Electric Light Company as uniquely capable of addressing.

Menlo Park had been the perfect locale for Edison’s laboratory when the quest for novelty would bring eager feature writers to Edison’s door, happy to describe whatever was put on display. But now that Edison Electric had formidable competition that was well entrenched in the most visible part of the most visible city, a rural train stop was no longer the best-placed stage. A member of the Edison Electric Light Company board came up with an intriguing idea: leasing a four-story brownstone residence in Manhattan to house the company offices, strategically situated in a prominent location, on Fifth Avenue, just south of Fourteenth Street. With the installation of a gas-powered power plant in the basement and two hundred incandescent lights throughout the building, 65 Fifth Avenue could serve as a glowing advertisement for the company’s lighting on display every night, indoors, where it was designed for use, yet in a location easily visible to the passersby and open for visitors to tour.

For the company to fully exploit the potential of offering attractions at 65 Fifth Avenue that could not be found anywhere else, Edison himself would have to be installed there along the with the two hundred light fixtures. He would have to be willing to spend more time glad-handing visiting strangers than had ever been the case in Menlo Park, where he had been protected by the relative isolation of the laboratory. Yet in early 1881, when his business interests required a personal sacrifice on his part, moving into an almost full-time role as greeter, he did a brave thing: He accepted the responsibility to contribute in whatever way would most help the business, regardless of how much he loathed the role, and how reluctantly he relinquished control of the miniature universe embodied in the Menlo Park laboratory. In early February 1881, Edison began to spend his daytime hours at the Fifth Avenue office, returning to Menlo Park at night. At the end of the month, he moved his family into a hotel across the street from the office. He now could make himself available to personally receive the lines of visitors, including scientists, financiers, actors, diplomats, and sundry royalty (afterward, in private, he would do wicked impressions of the famous for the entertainment of the staff). In its first year on Fifth Avenue, the company rarely closed its doors before midnight.