The Last Days of Night(107)

Paul founded a new firm with his associates. His success as Westinghouse’s chief counsel served as no small advertisement to future clients. He soon had dozens. Most were household names. Paul eventually took over William Seward’s old firm, originally founded decades before its name partner had successfully negotiated the Alaska Purchase. Paul soon brought on Hoyt Moore, an expert in the new field of taxation law, which was becoming more important to the firm’s larger corporate clients. Eventually, Paul would promote his own protégé to a partnership: Bob Swaine, a bright young man only a few years out from Harvard Law. (No one’s perfect.) Moreover, the pyramidal structure he had developed to handle the light-bulb suit proved useful on other cases as well. He wrote of his “Cravath system” in various journals. Its method was that each suit was overseen by a partner at the firm, below which a team of associates handled the daily drudgery of legal work. The associates ascended through a hierarchy of their own, based on the length of time they’d been with the firm—first years, second years, and so forth, on and on up the totem pole until one day, if they were quite lucky, they might become partners themselves. The system rivaled Westinghouse’s factories for efficiency of production.

Paul had turned the practice of law from a craft into an industry. As attorneys from Washington to San Francisco had learned of his system, they’d begun adopting his methods. If only, he thought, one were able to patent the practice of law as one might patent the devices the law protected.

Even Nikola Tesla prospered on and off. While Tesla saw not a cent of income from his work on alternating current, the enterprise he founded with J. P. Morgan’s money did not go bankrupt until 1903. His personal wealth, while nothing compared to Edison’s or Westinghouse’s, was enough for him to take a room at the Waldorf Astoria. It was a short walk from there to Delmonico’s, where Tesla would dine every single night, without fail. The manager gave him his own table, which they set each evening especially for him.

The writer Robert Underwood Johnson and his wife, Katharine, made it their sworn mission to find Tesla a suitable mate. Though the couple introduced him to all the most eligible women in New York, and some even took a fancy to the tall, commanding genius, he never reciprocated their affections.

Paul saw him around the city a few times, at dinner and a number of parties. Agnes made sure to attend every event at which she knew he’d be present. She kept close watch over him at first, but over time they grew distant. The fame that she had given up openly delighted him. For a time his name was spread almost as wide as Edison’s. Journalists lined up to profile him. He became one of the city’s great characters—a mysterious and eccentric sage. A ganglier oracle at Delphi. Paul and Agnes watched as Tesla enjoyed the show. His black suits, Agnes pointed out, were always immaculate. Ever alone in his own world, Tesla had learned to pause and occasionally savor the delicacies of this one.

Paul would never know it, but Nikola Tesla would outlive them all. He died quite penniless in 1943, having had to trade the Waldorf Astoria for a single-occupancy hotel.

Tesla never did invent the non-infringing light bulb that Paul had once so desperately needed; Westinghouse’s engineering team did. Under Westinghouse’s leadership, they worked methodically to modify the old Sawyer and Man patent. Instead of a single piece of glass surrounding the filament, they used two. Called the “double-stopper lamp,” it was mass-produced in Westinghouse’s own air-brake factory just in time to light the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The courts instantly and unequivocally ruled that this light bulb was fundamentally different from Edison’s. Arguably the most lucrative invention of the entire current war did not arrive in any grand spark of individual genius, but rather flowed from a simple, painstakingly achieved modification to a decade-old British design performed over three years by a team of organized experts. Westinghouse held the patent on the double-stopper lamp, but no one person could quite claim to have “invented” it.

And then, of course, there was perhaps the greatest irony of the age: the curious and unexpected fate of U.S. Letters Patent No. 223,898.

Paul and his associates pursued the case vigorously. So did Morgan and Coffin, who could use the victory to bludgeon a number of smaller electrical companies into either bankruptcy or more-profitable licensing arrangements. Westinghouse, flush from success, was happy to spend the legal fees in order to defend his good name. For Paul, it was all a matter of pride. This was the largest patent-infringement case in the world. The attorney who litigated it successfully would secure a place in history.

And so it was that Paul found himself arguing before the Supreme Court of the United States. He argued brilliantly, defending himself against Justice Fuller’s quick barbs. He did his work well, and it was a sight to behold. It was the capstone to any lawyer’s career.

A few weeks later Paul found out the result. He lost.

And no one much cared.

Edison v. Westinghouse had become an undead lawsuit. It had lived on far past the point that either of its named litigants cared about its result. By the time Edison’s patent was upheld in court, it was soon to expire. Westinghouse’s double-stopper lamps were already on the market, so he was forbidden from manufacturing a bulb that he’d already stopped making. The few minor electrical companies that had continued using designs similar to Edison’s, in the hopes of a Westinghouse victory, were duly sent out of business. In some quiet, smoky room somewhere, Morgan crossed another victory off a long list.