The Last Days of Night(12)

So who had invented the light bulb? The answer, according to Paul’s reasoning, was that it depended. And that it was not the place of the federal government to suffocate innovation in its cradle while the field was so new. To say that Thomas Edison had invented the light bulb was bad for free enterprise. It was bad for scientific progress. It was bad for business. It was bad for consumers. And it was bad for the United States of America.

“You know,” said Westinghouse finally after Paul had spent some hours largely in monologue, laying out this strategy for his client. “You were right about me before. I don’t like lawyers.”

Westinghouse looked at the sun setting outside the squat laboratory windows.

“But as lawyers go, you might be halfway decent.”





I can always hire mathematicians, but they can’t hire me.

—THOMAS EDISON



THAT SPRING, THE light-bulb lawsuits descended like locusts upon the land. The filings swarmed on the coast—New York, Washington, Philadelphia—before sweeping west across the plains. The assault was biblical, the mood among the attorneys apocalyptic.

Paul had never seen anything like it, because no one had. He was aware of previous patent disputes. Skirmishes over various aspects of the telegraph had been popping up for decades. The sewing machine—now a common appliance in any decent home—had produced a thunderous volley of claims and counterclaims. But those were small beer to this. Not only were there now 312 separate lawsuits between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, but there were dozens of other smaller electrical companies who were suing and being sued by one another with equal vigor.

Carter would check in on Paul periodically from his adjacent office, feigning helpfulness, inquiring as to whether Paul could use any advice. Paul declined the offers of his onetime mentor easily. Hughes was sneakier, though, approaching Paul obsequiously in search of advice. Paul had to give the man credit both for persistence and for being so transparently phony that it barely counted as subterfuge. Inept lying was almost as good as honesty. “My clients at National Steel would sure be tickled pink if they knew their contracts were getting a second look by the genius who represents George Westinghouse.” Paul couldn’t refuse, but he also knew enough of Hughes’s competitive ambitions to keep the man as far away from the files as possible.

“Say, Cravath,” began Hughes one spring afternoon as he entered Paul’s office. His square face and prematurely thinned hair gave him a look of thoughtfulness. “There’s been something gnawing at me of late. It seems to me that if Edison is out there plotting against us, we might want to think a bit about just what he’s got in store.”

Paul took note of Hughes’s unsubtle use of “us” and “we,” but did not comment on it.

Hughes shut the door behind him conspiratorially. “Have you thought about acquiring a spy?”

Paul set down his straight-capped Waterman. The pen had by that point left a permanent scar on his finger. Even a brief respite felt pleasant.

“A spy?” he asked.

“In Edison’s shop. Someone to leak his plans. His strategy.”

“A spy sounds melodramatic.”

“I can help us find one.” Hughes slapped a newspaper upon Paul’s desk. Looking down, Paul saw that it was the morning’s New York Times—not the city’s most egregious Edison sycophants, but far from the least either. The story to which Hughes gestured was buried behind a dozen columns of financial news and agony pages. The headline read: EDISON FIRES SENIOR STAFF. And the article went on to describe a bloodbath of spring firings—a dozen engineers who’d been let go from Edison’s laboratory.

“Thomas Edison cannot sneeze without it becoming national news,” said Hughes. “The papers have him under closer scrutiny than we ever could.”

“Why is he firing his top people?”

“Because he’s in need of someone to blame. What if something in Edison’s laboratory isn’t working the way he wants it to, so he’s going through engineers until he finds someone who can get whatever it is to function?”

This was an intriguing possibility. Paul hadn’t been thinking the matter through from Edison’s perspective. What troubled the great man, perched high in his Fifth Avenue office? What remained unaccomplished by the man who could light up the Statue of Liberty with a touch of a button?

“It’s the distance,” Paul realized. “He still can’t get the distance to work. Like the statue.”

“What statue?”

“Lady Liberty. Westinghouse explained it to me once. Or he tried, at any rate. Electrical current, of the sort Edison and Westinghouse are both manufacturing, cannot travel more than a few hundred feet. It can’t go from Edison’s office on Fifth Avenue all the way down to—it doesn’t matter. But Westinghouse was positive on the point: It does not matter how large a generator you build; electrical current can’t venture more than the length of a city block.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. But Westinghouse suggested that it’s a terrible problem. His own men go sleepless failing to solve it. Installing generators every few blocks, as both companies are forced to, is extremely expensive, not to mention inefficient.”

Hughes pointed down at the names of Edison’s now-former employees. “This man right here, mentioned in the article. Reginald Fessenden.”