It may startle some reader to be told that the foundations of modern
electrical science were definitely established in the Elizabethan Age.
The England of Elizabeth, of Shakespeare, of Drake and the sea-dogs,
is seldom thought of as the cradle of the science of electricity.
Nevertheless, it was; just as surely as it was the birthplace of the
Shakespearian drama, of the Authorized Version of the Bible, or of
that maritime adventure and colonial enterprise which finally grew and
blossomed into the United States of America.
The accredited father of the science of electricity and magnetism is
William Gilbert, who was a physician and man of learning at the court of
Elizabeth. Prior to him, all that was known of these phenomena was what
the ancients knew, that the lodestone possessed magnetic properties and
that amber and jet, when rubbed, would attract bits of paper or other
substances of small specific gravity. Gilbert's great treatise "On
the Magnet", printed in Latin in 1600, containing the fruits of his
researches and experiments for many years, indeed provided the basis for
a new science.
On foundations well and truly laid by Gilbert several Europeans, like
Otto von Guericke of Germany, Du Fay of France, and Stephen Gray of
England, worked before Benjamin Franklin and added to the structure
of electrical knowledge. The Leyden jar, in which the mysterious force
could be stored, was invented in Holland in 1745 and in Germany almost
simultaneously.
Franklin's important discoveries are outlined in the first chapter of
this book. He found out, as we have seen, that electricity and lightning
are one and the same, and in the lightning rod he made the first
practical application of electricity. Afterwards Cavendish of England,
Coulomb of France, Galvani of Italy, all brought new bricks to the
pile. Following them came a group of master builders, among whom may be
mentioned: Volta of Italy, Oersted of Denmark, Ampere of France, Ohm of
Germany, Faraday of England, and Joseph Henry of America.
Among these men, who were, it should be noted, theoretical
investigators, rather than practical inventors like Morse, or Bell, or
Edison, the American Joseph Henry ranks high. Henry was born at Albany
in 1799 and was educated at the Albany Academy. Intending to practice
medicine, he studied the natural sciences. He was poor and earned his
daily bread by private tutoring. He was an industrious and brilliant
student and soon gave evidence of being endowed with a powerful mind.
He was appointed in 1824 an assistant engineer for the survey of a route
for a State road, three hundred miles long, between the Hudson River and
Lake Erie. The experience he gained in this work changed the course
of his career; he decided to follow civil and mechanical engineering
instead of medicine. Then in 1826 he became teacher of mathematics and
natural philosophy in the Albany Academy.
It was in the Albany Academy that he began that wide series of
experiments and investigations which touched so many phases of the great
problem of electricity. His first discovery was that a magnet could be
immensely strengthened by winding it with insulated wire. He was the
first to employ insulated wire wound as on a spool and was able finally
to make a magnet which would lift thirty-five hundred pounds. He first
showed the difference between "quantity" magnets composed of short
lengths of wire connected in parallel, excited by a few large cells,
and "intensity" magnets wound with a single long wire and excited by
a battery composed of cells in series. This was an original discovery,
greatly increasing both the immediate usefulness of the magnet and its
possibilities for future experiments.
The learned men of Europe, Faraday, Sturgeon, and the rest, were
quick to recognize the value of the discoveries of the young Albany
schoolmaster. Sturgeon magnanimously said: "Professor Henry has been
enabled to produce a magnetic force which totally eclipses every other
in the whole annals of magnetism; and no parallel is to be found since
the miraculous suspension of the celebrated Oriental imposter in his
iron coffin."*
* Philosophical Magazine, vol. XI, p. 199 (March, 1832).
Henry also discovered the phenomena of self induction and mutual
induction. A current sent through a wire in the second story of the
building induced currents through a similar wire in the cellar two
floors below. In this discovery Henry anticipated Faraday though his
results as to mutual induction were not published until he had heard
rumors of Faraday's discovery, which he thought to be something
different.
The attempt to send signals by electricity had been made many times
before Henry became interested in the problem. On the invention of
Sturgeon's magnet there had been hopes in England of a successful
solution, but in the experiments that followed the current became
so weak after a few hundred feet that the idea was pronounced
impracticable. Henry strung a mile of fine wire in the Academy, placed
an "intensity" battery at one end, and made the armature strike a bell
at the other. Thus he discovered the essential principle of the electric
telegraph. This discovery was made in 1831, the year before the idea of
a working electric telegraph flashed on the mind of Morse. There was no
occasion for the controversy which took place later as to who invented
the telegraph. That was Morse's achievement, but the discovery of the
great fact, which startled Morse into activity, was Henry's achievement.
In Henry's own words: "This was the first discovery of the fact that a
galvanic current could be transmitted to a great distance with so little
a diminution of force as to produce mechanical effects, and of the means
by which the transmission could be accomplished. I saw that the electric
telegraph was now practicable." He says further, however: "I had not in
mind any particular form of telegraph, but referred only to the general
fact that it was now demonstrated that a galvanic current could be
transmitted to great distances, with sufficient power to produce
mechanical effects adequate to the desired object."*
* Deposition of Joseph Henry, September 7, 1849, printed in
Morse, "The Electra-Magnetic Telegraph", p. 91.
Henry next turned to the possibility of a magnetic engine for the
production of power and succeeded in making a reciprocating-bar motor,
on which he installed the first automatic pole changer, or commutator,
ever used with an electric battery. He did not succeed in producing
direct rotary motion. His bar oscillated like the walking beam of a
steamboat.
Henry was appointed in 1839. Professor of Natural Philosophy in the
College of New Jersey, better known today as Princeton University. There
he repeated his old experiments on a larger scale, confirmed Steinheil's
experiment of using the earth as return conductor, showed how a feeble
current would be strengthened, and how a small magnet could be used as
a circuit maker and breaker. Here were the principles of the telegraph
relay and the dynamo.
Why, then, if the work of Henry was so important, is his name almost
forgotten, except by men of science, and not given to any one of the
practical applications of electricity? The answer is plain. Henry was an
investigator, not an inventor. He states his position very clearly: "I
never myself attempted to reduce the principles to practice, or to
apply any of my discoveries to processes in the arts. My whole
attention exclusive of my duties to the College, was devoted to original
scientific investigations, and I left to others what I considered in
a scientific view of subordinate importance--the application of my
discoveries to useful purposes in the arts. Besides this I partook of
the feeling common to men of science, which disinclines them to secure
to themselves the advantages of their discoveries by a patent."
Then, too, his talents were soon turned to a wider field. The bequest of
James Smithson, that farsighted Englishman, who left his fortune to the
United States to found "the Smithsonian Institution, for the increase
and diffusion of knowledge among men," was responsible for the diffusion
of Henry's activities. The Smithsonian Institution was founded at
Washington in 1846, and Henry was fittingly chosen its Secretary, that
is, its chief executive officer. And from that time until his death in
1878, over thirty years, he devoted himself to science in general.
He studied terrestrial magnetism and building materials. He reduced
meteorology to a science, collecting reports by telegraph, made the
first weather map, and issued forecasts of the weather based upon
definite knowledge rather than upon signs. He became a member of the
Lighthouse Board in 1852 and was the head after 1871. The excellence of
marine illuminants and fog signals today is largely due to his efforts.
Though he was later drawn into a controversy with Morse over the credit
for the invention of the telegraph, he used his influence to procure
the renewal of Morse's patent. He listened with attention to Alexander
Graham Bell, who had the idea that electric wires might be made to carry
the human voice, and encouraged him to proceed with his experiments.
"He said," Bell writes, "that he thought it was the germ of a great
invention and advised me to work at it without publishing. I said that
I recognized the fact that there were mechanical difficulties in the way
that rendered the plan impracticable at the present time. I added that
I felt that I had not the electrical knowledge necessary to overcome the
difficulties. His laconic answer was, 'GET IT!' I cannot tell you how
much these two words have encouraged me."
Henry had blazed the way for others to work out the principles of the
electric motor, and a few experimenters attempted to follow his lead.
Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith of Brandon, Vermont, built an electric
car in 1835, which he was able to drive on the road, and so made himself
the pioneer of the automobile in America. Twelve years later Moses G.
Farmer exhibited at various places in New England an electric-driven
locomotive, and in 1851 Charles Grafton Page drove an electric car,
on the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, from Washington to
Bladensburg, at the rate of nineteen miles an hour. But the cost
of batteries was too great and the use of the electric motor in
transportation not yet practicable.
The great principle of the dynamo, or electric generator, was discovered
by Faraday and Henry but the process of its development into an agency
of practical power consumed many years; and without the dynamo for the
generation of power the electric motor had to stand still and there
could be no practicable application of electricity to transportation,
or manufacturing, or lighting. So it was that, except for the telegraph,
whose story is told in another chapter, there was little more American
achievement in electricity until after the Civil War.
The arc light as a practical illuminating device came in 1878. It was
introduced by Charles F. Brush, a young Ohio engineer and graduate of
the University of Michigan. Others before him had attacked the problem
of electric lighting, but lack of suitable carbons stood in the way of
their success. Brush overcame the chief difficulties and made several
lamps to burn in series from one dynamo. The first Brush lights used for
street illumination were erected in Cleveland, Ohio, and soon the use of
arc lights became general. Other inventors improved the apparatus, but
still there were drawbacks. For outdoor lighting and for large halls
they served the purpose, but they could not be used in small rooms.
Besides, they were in series, that is, the current passed through every
lamp in turn, and an accident to one threw the whole series out of
action. The whole problem of indoor lighting was to be solved by one of
America's most famous inventors.
The antecedents of Thomas Alva Edison in America may be traced back
to the time when Franklin was beginning his career as a printer in
Philadelphia. The first American Edisons appear to have come from
Holland about 1730 and settled on the Passaic River in New Jersey.
Edison's grandfather, John Edison, was a Loyalist in the Revolution who
found refuge in Nova Scotia and subsequently moved to Upper Canada. His
son, Samuel Edison, thought he saw a moral in the old man's exile. His
father had taken the King's side and had lost his home; Samuel would
make no such error. So, when the Canadian Rebellion of 1837 broke out,
Samuel Edison, aged thirty-three, arrayed himself on the side of the
insurgents. This time, however, the insurgents lost, and Samuel was
obliged to flee to the United States, just as his father had fled to
Canada. He finally settled at Milan, Ohio, and there, in 1847, in a
little brick house, which is still standing, Thomas Alva Edison was
born.
When the boy was seven the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan.
The fact that he attended school only three months and soon became
self-supporting was not due to poverty. His mother, an educated woman
of Scotch extraction, taught him at home after the schoolmaster reported
that he was "addled." His desire for money to spend on chemicals for a
laboratory which he had fitted up in the cellar led to his first
venture in business. "By a great amount of persistence," he says, "I
got permission to go on the local train as newsboy. The local train from
Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles, left at 7 A.M.
and arrived again at 9.30 P.M. After being on the train for several
months I started two stores in Port Huron--one for periodicals, and
the other for vegetables, butter, and berries in the season. They were
attended by two boys who shared in the profits." Moreover, young Edison
bought produce from the farmers' wives along the line which he sold at
a profit. He had several newsboys working for him on other trains; he
spent hours in the Public Library in Detroit; he fitted up a laboratory
in an unused compartment of one of the coaches, and then bought a
small printing press which he installed in the car and began to issue a
newspaper which he printed on the train. All before he was fifteen years
old.
But one day Edison's career as a traveling newsboy came to a sudden end.
He was at work in his moving laboratory when a lurch of the train jarred
a stick of burning phosphorus to the floor and set the car on fire. The
irate conductor ejected him at the next station, giving him a violent
box on the ear, which permanently injured his hearing, and dumped his
chemicals and printing apparatus on the platform.
Having lost his position, young Edison soon began to dabble in
telegraphy, in which he had already become interested, "probably," as
he says, "from visiting telegraph offices with a chum who had tastes
similar to mine." He and this chum strung a line between their houses
and learned the rudiments of writing by wire. Then a station master
on the railroad, whose child Edison had saved from danger, took Edison
under his wing and taught him the mysteries of railway telegraphy. The
boy of sixteen held positions with small stations near home for a few
months and then began a period of five years of apparently purposeless
wandering as a tramp telegrapher. Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis,
Memphis, Louisville, Detroit, were some of the cities in which he
worked, studied, experimented, and played practical jokes on his
associates. He was eager to learn something of the principles of
electricity but found few from whom he could learn.
Edison arrived in Boston in 1868, practically penniless, and applied for
a position as night operator. "The manager asked me when I was ready to
go to work. 'Now,' I replied." In Boston he found men who knew something
of electricity, and, as he worked at night and cut short his sleeping
hours, he found time for study. He bought and studied Faraday's works.
Presently came the first of his multitudinous inventions, an automatic
vote recorder, for which he received a patent in 1868. This necessitated
a trip to Washington, which he made on borrowed money, but he was unable
to arouse any interest in the device. "After the vote recorder," he
says, "I invented a stock ticker, and started a ticker service in
Boston; had thirty or forty subscribers and operated from a room over
the Gold Exchange." This machine Edison attempted to sell in New York,
but he returned to Boston without having succeeded. He then invented a
duplex telegraph by which two messages might be sent simultaneously, but
at a test the machine failed because of the stupidity of the assistant.
Penniless and in debt, Edison arrived again in New York in 1869. But now
fortune favored him. The Gold Indicator Company was a concern furnishing
to its subscribers by telegraph the Stock Exchange prices of gold. The
company's instrument was out of order. By a lucky chance Edison was on
the spot to repair it, which he did successfully, and this led to his
appointment as superintendent at a salary of three hundred dollars a
month. When a change in the ownership of the company threw him out of
the position he formed, with Franklin L. Pope, the partnership of Pope,
Edison, and Company, the first firm of electrical engineers in the
United States.
Not long afterwards Edison brought out the invention which set him on
the high road to great achievement. This was the improved stock ticker,
for which the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company paid him forty thousand
dollars. It was much more than he had expected. "I had made up my mind,"
he says, "that, taking into consideration the time and killing pace I
was working at, I should be entitled to $5000, but could get along
with $3000." The money, of course, was paid by check. Edison had never
received a check before and he had to be told how to cash it.
Edison immediately set up a shop in Newark and threw himself into many
and various activities. He remade the prevailing system of automatic
telegraphy and introduced it into England. He experimented with
submarine cables and worked out a system of quadruplex telegraphy by
which one wire was made to do the work of four. These two inventions
were bought by Jay Gould for his Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company.
Gould paid for the quadruplex system thirty thousand dollars, but
for the automatic telegraph he paid nothing. Gould presently acquired
control of the Western Union; and, having thus removed competition from
his path, "he then," says Edison, "repudiated his contract with the
automatic telegraph people and they never received a cent for their
wires or patents, and I lost three years of very hard labor. But I never
had any grudge against him because he was so able in his line, and
as long as my part was successful the money with me was a secondary
consideration. When Gould got the Western Union I knew no further
progress in telegraphy was possible, and I went into other lines."*
* Quoted in Dyer and Martin. "Edison", vol. 1, p. 164.
In fact, however, the need of money forced Edison later on to resume
his work for the Western Union Telegraph Company, both in telegraphy and
telephony. His connection with the telephone is told in another volume
of this series.* He invented a carbon transmitter and sold it to the
Western Union for one hundred thousand dollars, payable in seventeen
annual installments of six thousand dollars. He made a similar agreement
for the same sum offered him for the patent of the electro-motograph. He
did not realize that these installments were only simple interest upon
the sums due him. These agreements are typical of Edison's commercial
sense in the early years of his career as an inventor. He worked only
upon inventions for which there was a possible commercial demand and
sold them for a trifle to get the money to meet the pay rolls of his
different shops. Later the inventor learned wisdom and associated with
himself keen business men to their common profit.
* Hendrick, "The Age of Big Business".
Edison set up his laboratories and factories at Menlo Park, New Jersey,
in 1876, and it was there that he invented the phonograph, for which he
received the first patent in 1878. It was there, too, that he began that
wonderful series of experiments which gave to the world the incandescent
lamp. He had noticed the growing importance of open arc lighting, but
was convinced that his mission was to produce an electric lamp for use
within doors. Forsaking for the moment his newborn phonograph, Edison
applied himself in earnest to the problem of the lamp. His first search
was for a durable filament which would burn in a vacuum. A series of
experiments with platinum wire and with various refractory metals led
to no satisfactory results. Many other substances were tried, even human
hair. Edison concluded that carbon of some sort was the solution rather
than a metal. Almost coincidently, Swan, an Englishman, who had also
been wrestling with this problem, came to the same conclusion. Finally,
one day in October, 1879, after fourteen months of hard work and the
expenditure of forty thousand dollars, a carbonized cotton thread sealed
in one of Edison's globes lasted forty hours. "If it will burn forty
hours now," said Edison, "I know I can make it burn a hundred." And
so he did. A better filament was needed. Edison found it in carbonized
strips of bamboo.
Edison developed his own type of dynamo, the largest ever made up to
that time, and, along with the Edison incandescent lamps, it was one of
the wonders of the Paris Electrical Exposition of 1881. The installation
in Europe and America of plants for service followed. Edison's first
great central station, supplying power for three thousand lamps, was
erected at Holborn Viaduct, London, in 1882, and in September of that
year the Pearl Street Station in New York City, the first central
station in America, was put into operation.
The incandescent lamp and the central power station, considered
together, may be regarded as one of the most fruitful conceptions in
the history of applied electricity. It comprised a complete generating,
distributing, and utilizing system, from the dynamo to the very lamp at
the fixture, ready for use. It even included a meter to determine the
current actually consumed. The success of the system was complete, and
as fast as lamps and generators could be produced they were installed
to give a service at once recognized as superior to any other form of
lighting. By 1885 the Edison lighting system was commercially developed
in all its essentials, though still subject to many improvements and
capable of great enlargement, and soon Edison sold out his interests in
it and turned his great mind to other inventions.
The inventive ingenuity of others brought in time better and more
economical incandescent lamps. From the filaments of bamboo fiber the
next step was to filaments of cellulose in the form of cotton, duly
prepared and carbonized. Later (1905) came the metalized carbon filament
and finally the employment of tantalum or tungsten. The tungsten lamps
first made were very delicate, and it was not until W. D. Coolidge,
in the research laboratories of the General Electric Company at
Schenectady, invented a process for producing ductile tungsten that they
became available for general use.
The dynamo and the central power station brought the electric motor
into action. The dynamo and the motor do precisely opposite things.
The dynamo converts mechanical energy into electric energy. The motor
transforms electric energy into mechanical energy. But the two work in
partnership and without the dynamo to manufacture the power the motor
could not thrive. Moreover, the central station was needed to distribute
the power for transportation as well as for lighting.
The first motors to use Edison station current were designed by Frank J.
Sprague, a graduate of the Naval Academy, who had worked with Edison,
as have many of the foremost electrical engineers of America and Europe.
These small motors possessed several advantages over the big steam
engine. They ran smoothly and noiselessly on account of the absence of
reciprocating parts. They consumed current only when in use. They could
be installed and connected with a minimum of trouble and expense. They
emitted neither smell nor smoke. Edison built an experimental electric
railway line at Menlo Park in 1880 and proved its practicability.
Meanwhile, however, as he worked on his motors and dynamos, he was
anticipated by others in some of his inventions. It would not be fair
to say that Edison and Sprague alone developed the electric railway, for
there were several others who made important contributions. Stephen
D. Field of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, had a patent which the Edison
interests found it necessary to acquire; C. J. Van Depoele and Leo Daft
made important contributions to the trolley system. In Cleveland in
1884 an electric railway on a small scale was opened to the public. But
Sprague's first electric railway, built at Richmond, Virginia, in
1887, as a complete system, is generally hailed as the true pioneer of
electric transportation in the United States. Thereafter the electric
railway spread quickly over the land, obliterating the old horsecars and
greatly enlarging the circumference of the city. Moreover, on the steam
roads, at all the great terminals, and wherever there were tunnels to be
passed through, the old giant steam engine in time yielded place to the
electric motor.
The application of the electric motor to the "vertical railway," or
elevator, made possible the steel skyscraper. The elevator, of course,
is an old device. It was improved and developed in America by Elisha
Graves Otis, an inventor who lived and died before the Civil War and
whose sons afterward erected a great business on foundations laid by
him. The first Otis elevators were moved by steam or hydraulic power.
They were slow, noisy, and difficult of control. After the electric
motor came in; the elevator soon changed its character and adapted
itself to the imperative demands of the towering, skeleton-framed
buildings which were rising in every city.
Edison, already famous as "the Wizard of Menlo Park," established his
factories and laboratories at West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887, whence
he has since sent forth a constant stream of inventions, some new and
startling, others improvements on old devices. The achievements of
several other inventors in the electrical field have been only less
noteworthy than his. The new profession of electrical engineering called
to its service great numbers of able men. Manufacturers of electrical
machinery established research departments and employed inventors. The
times had indeed changed since the day when Morse, as a student at
Yale College, chose art instead of electricity as his calling, because
electricity afforded him no means of livelihood.
From Edison's plant in 1903 came a new type of the storage battery,
which he afterwards improved. The storage battery, as every one knows,
is used in the propulsion of electric vehicles and boats, in the
operation of block-signals, in the lighting of trains, and in the
ignition and starting of gasoline engines. As an adjunct of the
gas-driven automobile, it renders the starting of the engine independent
of muscle and so makes possible the general use of the automobile by
women as well as men.
The dynamo brought into service not only light and power but heat; and
the electric furnace in turn gave rise to several great metallurgical
and chemical industries. Elihu Thomson's process of welding by means
of the arc furnace found wide and varied applications. The commercial
production of aluminum is due to the electric furnace and dates from
1886. It was in that year that H. Y. Castner of New York and C. M. Hall
of Pittsburgh both invented the methods of manufacture which gave to
the world the new metal, malleable and ductile, exceedingly light,
and capable of a thousand uses. Carborundum is another product of the
electric furnace. It was the invention of Edward B. Acheson, a graduate
of the Edison laboratories. Acheson, in 1891, was trying to make
artificial diamonds and produced instead the more useful carborundum, as
well as the Acheson graphite, which at once found its place in industry.
Another valuable product of the electric furnace was the calcium carbide
first produced in 1892 by Thomas L. Wilson of Spray, North Carolina.
This calcium carbide is the basis of acetylene gas, a powerful
illuminant, and it is widely used in metallurgy, for welding and other
purposes.
At the same time with these developments the value of the alternating
current came to be recognized. The transformer, an instrument developed
on foundations laid by Henry and Faraday, made it possible to transmit
electrical energy over great distances with little loss of power.
Alternating currents were transformed by means of this instrument at
the source, and were again converted at the point of use to a lower and
convenient potential for local distribution and consumption. The first
extensive use of the alternating current was in arc lighting, where the
higher potentials could be employed on series lamps. Perhaps the chief
American inventor in the domain of the alternating current is Elihu
Thomson, who began his useful career as Professor of Chemistry and
Mechanics in the Central High School of Philadelphia. Another great
protagonist of the alternating current was George Westinghouse, who was
quite as much an improver and inventor as a manufacturer of machinery.
Two other inventors, at least, should not be forgotten in this
connection: Nicola Tesla and Charles S. Bradley. Both of them had worked
for Edison.
The turbine (from the Latin turbo, meaning a whirlwind) is the name of
the motor which drives the great dynamos for the generation of electric
energy. It may be either a steam turbine or a water turbine. The steam
turbine of Curtis or Parsons is today the prevailing engine. But
the development of hydro-electric power has already gone far. It is
estimated that the electric energy produced in the United States by the
utilization of water powers every year equals the power product of forty
million tons of coal, or about one-tenth of the coal which is consumed
in the production of steam. Yet hydro-electricity is said to be only in
its beginnings, for not more than a tenth of the readily available water
power of the country is actually in use.
The first commercial hydro-station for the transmission of power
in America was established in 1891 at Telluride, Colorado. It was
practically duplicated in the following year at Brodie, Colorado. The
motors and generators for these stations came from the Westinghouse
plant in Pittsburgh, and Westinghouse also supplied the turbo-generators
which inaugurated, in 1895, the delivery of power from Niagara Falls.