Brilliant (38 page)

[>]
"There was scarce": Quoted ibid., p. 67.
"There is something": Franklin, quoted ibid., p. 57.
"be kept clean": Franklin, "The Electrical Writings," p. 45 (pdf p. 56).

[>]
"As soon as any": Ibid., p. 95 (pdf p. 106).
"Franklin's conclusions demanded": Dray,
Stealing God's Thunder,
p. 83.

[>]
"I obtain several": Alessandro Volta, quoted in Edwin J. Houston,
Electricity in Every-Day Life,
vol. 1 (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1905), pp. 347–49.
"made electricity manageable": Benjamin,
The Age of Electricity,
p. 32.

[>]
"the city of Moscow": Francis R. Upton, "Edison's Electric Light,
Scribner's,
February 1880, p. 532.

[>]
"suddenly found themselves": Quoted in Wolfgang Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century,
trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 55.

[>]
"A new sort of urban star": Robert Louis Stevenson, "A Plea for Gas Lamps," in
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893), pp. 277–78.
"Promptly as the courthouse": Quoted in John Winthrop Hammond,
Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric
(New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1941), pp. 31–32.

[>]
"The city's 65 gas lamps": Richard B. Biever, "Indiana's Bright Lights,"
Electric Consumer,
Indiana Statewide Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives,
http://indremcs.org/ec/article
(accessed February 13, 2009).
"lighting ... emerged": David E. Nye,
Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 54.
"Cities lit in this way": Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night,
p. 126.

107 "following the practice": Howard Strong, "The Street Beautiful in Minneapolis," in
American City,
vol. 9 (New York: Civic Press, 1913), pp. 228–29.

[>]
"single light alone": "Lights for a Great City: Brush's System in Successful Use Last Night,"
New York Times,
December 21, 1880, p. 2. "the moment the dazzling": Ibid.

[>]
"Since the electric lamps": "Lights in Street Lamps: Bright Electricity Makes the Old-Time Gas Look Dim,"
New York Times,
June 20, 1898, p. 10.

C
HAPTER
7: I
NCANDESCENCE

[>]
"described an experiment": Quoted in Brian Bowers,
Lengthening the Day: A History of Lighting Technology
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 89.
"It was all before me": Thomas Edison, quoted in Paul Israel,
Edison: A Life of Invention
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), p. 166.

[>]
"ran from the instrument":
New York Sun,
quoted in Israel,
Edison,
p. 165.
"Now that I have": Edison, quoted in George Westinghouse, "A Reply to Mr. Edison,"
North American Review,
December 1889, p. 655.
"A mistaken idea": Francis R. Upton, "Franklin's Electric Light,"
Scribner's,
February 1880, p. 531.

[>]
"When I was a boy": David Trumbull Marshall,
Recollections of Boyhood Days in Old Metuchen
(Flushing, NY: Case Publishing, 1930), in Metuchen Edison History Features,
http://www.jhalpin.com/metuchen/history/boy37.htm
(accessed January 18, 2006).
"His iron ideas":
New York Daily Graphic,
quoted in Jill Jonnes,
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
(New York: Random House, 2004), p. 54.

[>]
"At six o'clock":
New York Herald,
quoted in Robert Friedel and Paul Israel,
Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), p. 37.
"The more resistance": Edison, quoted in Friedel and Israel,
Edison's Electric Light,
p. 75.

116 "(April 29) Wood loop": Friedel and Israel,
Edison's Electric Light,
P. 154.

[>]
"Edison's electric light":
New York Herald,
quoted in Jonnes,
Empires of Light
p. 65.

[>]
"The light was subjected":
New York Herald,
quoted in Friedel and Israel,
Edison's Electric Light,
pp. 112–13.

[>]
"Standing at one end":
Lowell Morning Mail,
quoted in David E. Nye,
Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 190.

[>]
"It was a great deal": Herbert L. Satterlee,
J. Pierpont Morgan: An Intimate Portrait
(New York: Macmillan, 1939), p. 207.
"had to be run by": Ibid., p. 208.

[>]
"All that changed": Jonnes,
Empires of Light,
pp. 79–80.

[>]
"It was a light": "Miscellaneous City News: Edison's Electric Light,"
New York Times,
September 5, 1882, p. 8.

[>]
"In the stores":
New York Herald,
quoted in Friedel and Israel,
Edison's Electric Light,
p. 222.

[>]
"I would get a fever": Nikola Tesla, quoted in Pierre Berton,
Niagara: A History of the Falls
(New York: Kodansha International, 1997), pp. 157–58.

[>]
"Spare me that nonsense": Edison, quoted in Berton,
Niagara,
p. 161.
"It will never be free": Edison, quoted in Margaret Cheney,
Tesla: Man Out of Time
(New York: Dorset Press, 1981), p. 43.
"The wind at times": "In a Blizzard's Grasp,"
New York Times,
March 13, 1888, p. 1.
"Poles with their long arms": "Wires Down Everywhere,"
New York Times,
March 13, 1888, pp. 1–2.

[>]
"The man appeared": Quoted in Jill Jonnes, "New York Unplugged, 1889,"
New York Times,
August 13, 2004,
http://www.nytimes.com
(accessed June 28, 2009).
"aspect of the city": "A Night of Darkness: More Than One Thousand Electric Lights Extinguished,"
New York Times,
October 15, 1889, p. 2.

[>]
"As to the accidents": Westinghouse, "A Reply to Mr. Edison," p. 661.

C
HAPTER
8: O
VERWHELMING
B
RILLIANCE
: T
HE
W
HITE
C
ITY

[>]
"Electricity is the half": Hubert Howe Bancroft,
The Book of the Fair: An Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the World's Science, Art, and Industry, as Viewed Through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893
(Chicago: Bancroft, 1893), p. 399.
"a marsh when": Julian Ralph, "Our Exposition at Chicago, with Plan of Exposition Grounds and Buildings,"
Harper's,
January 1892, p. 206. "a treacherous morass": Quoted in Norma Bolotin and Christine Laing,
The World's Columbian Exposition: The Chicago World's Fair of 1893
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 11.

[>]
"of darkened ivory": Ralph, "Our Exposition at Chicago," p. 207.
"so bewildering no eye": W E. Cameron, quoted in Marc J. Seifer,
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, Biography of a Genius
(New York: Citadel Press, 1998), p. 117.
"There would be a dozen": Quoted in Bolotin and Laing,
The World's Columbian Exposition,
p. 148.

[>]
"It is the part": Bancroft,
The Book of the Fair,
p. 401.
"were used lavishly": J. P. Barrett,
Electricity at the Columbian Exposition
(Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1894), p. 1.

[>]
"brilliance almost too dazzling": Bancroft,
The Book of the Fair,
p. 402.
"Having seen nothing": Quoted in Erik Larson,
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
(New York: Crown, 2003), p. 254.
"by virtue of pressure": Louis H. Sullivan,
The Autobiography of an Idea
(New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 308.

[>]
"Chicago, one might say": William Dean Howells,
Letters of an Altrurian Traveller
(Gainesville, FL: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1961), p. 20.
"'Undisciplined'—that is the word": H. G. Wells, "The Future in America: A Search After Realities,"
Harper's Weekly,
July 21, 1906, p. 1020.

[>]
"Within the memory": George Bird Grinnell,
Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), pp. 200–201.
"The Native Americans": Robert W. Rydell,
All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 63.
"several of the exhibits": Ibid.

134 "Here was an opportunity," Rossiter Johnson, ed.,
A History of the World's Columbian Exposition Held in Chicago in 1893,
vol. 3 (New York: D. Appleton, 1898), pp. 433–34.
"of whom twenty-one": Ibid., p. 444.
"Sight-seers ... were fascinated": Ibid.

[>]
"As if to shame": Frederick Douglass, introduction to
The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition,
by Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand L. Barnett, ed. Robert W Rydell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), p. 13.
"When it was ascertained": Ferdinand L. Barnett, "The Reason Why," in
The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition,
pp. 74–75.
"the contents of a great": Quoted in William Cronon,
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 344.

[>]
"We earnestly desired": Douglass, introduction, pp. 7, 16.

[>]
"his gaze turned upward": Bancroft,
The Book of the Fair,
p. 403.
"no two of which": Barrett,
Electricity at the Columbian Exposition,
p. 18.

[>]
"The Edison tower": Bancroft,
The Book of the Fair,
p. 424.
"Close at hand": Ibid., pp. 421–22.

[>]
"dipping reels of wire": Ibid., p. 409.
"When the currents": Quoted in Seifer,
Wizard,
p. 121.

[>]
"lumped off the whole": Quoted ibid., p. 120.
"without injury to life": Quoted ibid.
"The streams of light": Nikola Tesla and Thomas Commerford Martin,
The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla: With Special Reference to His Work in Polyphase Current and High Potential Lighting,
2nd ed. (New York: Electrical Engineer, 1894), p. 320.
"After such a striking,": Quoted in Margaret Cheney,
Tesla: Man Out of Time
(New York: Dorset Press, 1981), p. 73.

[>]
"alive with the deafening": Jill Jonnes,
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
(New York: Random House, 2004), p. 267.
"Popular interest": Francis E. Leupp,
George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1919), p. 169.
"What astonished visitors": Ibid.

142 Winslow Homer's
The Fountains:
This painting is in the collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine.

[>]
"I believe": Quoted in David F. Burg,
Chicago's White City of 1893
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), p. 287.
There are 'bits'": "Fate of the Chicago World's Fair Buildings,"
Scientific American,
October 3, 1896, American Periodical Series Online, p. 267.

C
HAPTER
9: N
IAGARA
: L
ONG
-D
ISTANCE
L
IGHT

[>]
"I was in a manner": Charles Dickens,
American Notes for General Circulation,
vol. 2 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1842), pp. 177–78.

[>]
"All the coal raised": Sir William Siemens, quoted in Pierre Berton,
Niagara: A History of the Falls
(New York: Kodansha International, 1997), p. 151.
"The greatest and strongest": Peter Kalm, quoted in Charles Mason Dow,
Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls,
vol. 1 (Albany: State of New York, 1921), p. 56.

[>]
"Several of the
French":
Ibid., p. 58.

[>]
"Thirteen hundred workmen": Berton,
Niagara,
p. 162.

[>]
"[I] pictured in my imagination": Nikola Tesla, quoted in Marc J. Seifer,
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, Biography of a Genius
(New York: Citadel Press, 1998), p. 132.
"the inlet gates": Jill Jonnes,
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
(New York: Random House, 2004), p. 320.
"the falls and Buffalo": Tesla, quoted ibid., p. 326.
"Electrical experts say":
Buffalo Enquirer,
quoted in Jonnes,
Empires of Light,
pp. 328–29.

[>]
"Wherever mankind wishes": Irving Fisher, "The Decentralization and Suburbanization of Population," in
Giant Power: Large Scale Electrical Development as a Social Factor,
ed. Morris Llewellyn Cooke (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1925), p. 96.
"Yoked to the Cataract!":
Buffalo Enquirer,
quoted in Jonnes,
Empires of Light,
p. 329.
"What
is
electricity": R. R. Bowker, ed., "Electricity," no. 12 in The Great American Industries series,
Harper's,
October 1896, p. 710.
"Now, I must tell you": Tesla, quoted in Seifer,
Wizard,
p. 5.

151 "To Adams the dynamo": Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 380.

[>]
"The dynamos and turbines": H. G. Wells, "The Future in America: A Search After Realities,"
Harper's Weekly,
July 21 1906, p. 1019.

P
ART
III

[>]
"So if we moderns": Fernand Braudel,
Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800,
trans. Miriam Kochan (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 226.