The Last Days of Night(30)

The paper went on to suggest, in language of unvarying vehemence, that alternating current was likely to fry the bones of any child within a hundred feet of its use. Because it ran at twice the voltage of direct current, it was, so Harold P. Brown argued, twice as deadly. There was, moreover, no legitimate scientific reason to prefer alternating current to direct; only the marketplace had caused these devious merchants of death to adopt this crooked technology. And, finally, the paper named the main proponent of this deadly system: George Westinghouse. “A villain who apparently will stoop to new lows to make an extra dollar off the na?ve and gullible.

“To prevent the wholesale loss of human life,” concluded Harold Brown’s editorial, “all alternating current, such as that offered by George Westinghouse, must be banned immediately by the legislature of this state.”

—

That evening Paul watched George Westinghouse pace across his laboratory. Gas lamps hung along the walls and washed the cavernous space with a pale orange light. Westinghouse’s engineers feared that electric lights might interfere with their tests on new light-bulb designs. The newest colors on the market—the softest yellows, the wispiest fading whites, the lightest bursting sun flares—were developed here. The colors of the future had to be examined in the dim past.

Identical editorials from Brown had appeared in four other East Coast papers. Westinghouse’s first commercial A/C system, based on Tesla’s ideas, was set to be installed in only a few weeks’ time in Buffalo. The department store Adam, Meldrum, and Anderson had already taken out advertisements touting the 498 A/C-powered bulbs that were soon to shine from its Italianate ceilings. Unless, that is, Harold Brown succeeded in having such a system banned.

“It isn’t true,” said Westinghouse. “A/C is not more dangerous than D/C. Just the opposite. Why would the Evening Post print such a bald-faced falsehood?”

“Do you know who owns the Evening Post?” said Paul.

“I do not.”

“Henry Villard.”

“Who is…”

“Some middling newspaper tycoon. But a middling newspaper tycoon who happens to have quite recently come into possession of some two thousand shares of stock in Edison General Electric.”

Westinghouse stopped his pacing. “Edison gave him shares in exchange for denouncing me on his paper’s front page?”

“We’ll never be able to prove it,” said Paul.

“Can he do this? Can he really get the state legislature to ban my current?”

“It depends.”

“Damned lawyers,” grumbled Westinghouse. “Just give me a straight answer: Can he do this or can he not?”

“I sent inquiries to Albany from the station. It appears that Edison has already gotten a friendly New York state senator to submit just such a bill.”

“I’ll hazard a guess that Edison has found a way to compensate his state senator as well?”

“Having failed to produce a better product than you, he’s now going to use the law to make your product illegal. I’ve already sent a message to my state senator. I’ll argue your case before the legislature myself. He can’t bribe all of them.”

Westinghouse lowered his gaze to the floor. “A/C is better,” he said quietly. “My work is better than his.” Whoever he was talking to, it was not Paul.

“Can you help me to understand it? I’m a layman. Talk to me like a layman. Your alternating current runs at twice the voltage of his direct current. You told me so yourself. Well, to a layman: twice the current, twice the danger. It sounds like common sense.”

When Westinghouse next spoke, his voice was low. “But this is the very thing about electricity. Nothing about it makes any common sense at all.”

Westinghouse summoned Reginald Fessenden for help with a demonstration. After only a few months here, Fessenden appeared to have aged a few years. He seemed exhausted. Whatever work he was doing, and whatever stresses were being placed on him, was quickly graying his temples.

A smallish generator was attached to something Westinghouse called a capacitor. The thing was about six inches long, shaped like a cylinder, encased in a material—rubber?—that was smooth and perfectly black. It looked, to Paul, something like a French dessert.

At Westinghouse’s request, Fessenden gave a few spins to a hand crank at the machine’s side. It whirled with a soft hum.

“And now,” Westinghouse said, turning to Paul, “I’d like you to place each of your hands on one of those leads there. Yes. Those are the ones.”

Paul looked at these “leads”—open-ended strips of cable—with trepidation. He remembered the flaming workman above Broadway.

“Sir…won’t that electrocute me?”

“Yes. When you put your hands on those leads, one hundred ten volts of alternating current will shoot right through your body.”

Paul blinked. This sounded like a certain death.

Westinghouse registered Paul’s fear. “You don’t trust me?”

“It’s not that, but…” Paul looked at the machines. These deathly, futuristic things. Paul took a long, slow breath, and grabbed as hard as he could at the wire leads.

A popping sound.

A sharp yell from deep within Paul’s throat.

And in under a second, it was over.