Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World Book

This was the story of Thomas Alva Edison, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla , who collectively and individually did so much to change the economic and physical conditions of everyone in the world. About a year ago I read a novel about these three individuals. It incorporated factual events but also turned their lives into a melodramatic soap opera, so of course it was sold to Hollywood. I wanted to know the real story behind the spread of electricity and these brilliant, ambitious and driven men. "Empires of Light" is what I was looking for.

Edison was a partially deaf inventor who got his start with the telegraph. Westinghouse was a Pittsburgh industrialist who made his name with inventions for railroads. Tesla was a Serbian genius and dandy with OCD. Most of the book was devoted to the AC/DC battle. Edison was the advocate of direct current although it involved setting up numerous central stations because it couldn't travel more than half a mile. He thought alternating current was too dangerous and recommended its use in capital punishment. It was, in fact, used in the first electric chair. Westinghouse and Tesla believed in the future of alternating current, and AC ultimately prevailed once a way was found to lessen the danger. The war continued to be fought at The White City fair in Chicago. I liked the author's description of the dazzle, spectacle and magic of electricity at the fair. Inventions of all three men were featured there. In edition to the spread of electricity, these men were also instrumental in the development of light bulbs, phonographs, movies, iron ore extraction, wireless transmission, radios and much more and were the holders of thousands of patents. They faced setbacks in their commercial operations, however, and both Edison and Westinghouse wound up being ousted from their companies by financiers. Tesla never was particularly adept at exploiting the commercial possibilities of his inventions.

This book was comprehensive, sometimes to a fault. I know that there is tendency, when you have done a lot of research, to want to include everything you found out, but some descriptions and details could have been omitted. I also wanted to skip over the dog electrocution experiments and the details of the first execution, but it's hard to do in an audiobook. However, it was fascinating to read about how these men converged.