The Last Days of Night(31)

Paul waved his hands in the air, wriggling his fingers to shake off the sting. The pain was akin to that of catching a baseball without a mitt.

There’d been no flash of light. No spark. No caged lightning unleashed upon his flesh.

“Oww,” said Paul finally, when he remembered to speak.

“So,” said Westinghouse patiently, “what have we learned?”

Paul turned to Fessenden for an answer.

“Voltage,” supplied Fessenden dutifully, “is not the same as power. A/C may run at higher voltages than D/C, but it does so with a variable amplitude. I can show you a notebook full of equations to explain this if you’re curious.”

“Aha!” said Westinghouse. “We’re teaching Paul some science, at long last. Now: What is it about the very nature of alternating current that makes it less dangerous?”

Paul again turned to Fessenden.

“Right,” said Fessenden. “So, it’s called alternating current, you’ll remember, because it literally alternates direction hundreds of times per second. While direct current remains constant. Now, in response to electrical current, the muscles of the human body contract. As yours just did. This is why people are electrocuted to death. They grasp the current, and they can’t let go, because the current contracts the very muscles that are holding on.”

“The brain wants to let go,” said Westinghouse, “but the muscles won’t comply. Just now, as soon as you felt the shock, what happened?”

“I let go.”

“You were able to let go because as the A/C changes its direction each of those hundreds of times per second, there is actually an infinitesimal pause in the current. Think of it like a carriage: It goes in a circle clockwise as fast as it can, then to turn around it has to slow, and then stop, and then speed up again in the other direction. Such is the case with alternating current.”

“Except for the slowing-down part,” corrected Fessenden.

Westinghouse agreed. “Electricity lends itself poorly to metaphor. Gravity, centripetal motion—much easier phenomena to explain by way of literary analogy. If Newton worked in poetry, we’re left to toil in prose. I have pondered this on occasion.”

Paul took in all that he’d been told. How could they explain all of this to potential customers without demanding that each of them try sticking their hands inside an A/C generator to see for themselves?

Having a better system than Edison’s would do no good if they couldn’t explain to the public why it was better. Reality mattered not at all; perception was the whole of business. Edison had realized this before they had. While Westinghouse was using Tesla’s discoveries to develop a superior product, Edison had skipped straight to developing a superior story.

And stories were supposed to be Paul’s expertise.

As if he’d been reading Paul’s train of thought, Westinghouse spoke again. The professorial tenor was gone from his voice.

“Paul,” said Westinghouse quietly, “I rely on you to see this kind of thing coming.”

Westinghouse’s words were a cold breeze. They were so soft as to be almost inaudible, and yet they froze Paul in his place.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Westinghouse,” said Paul. “I knew that Edison was going to respond to our hiring of Tesla and our adoption of A/C. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t think he’d go this far.”

“This is your job,” continued Westinghouse. “You are not, if this situation is to be any indication, doing it as well as I might hope.”

Embarrassed, Paul looked to Fessenden. But the engineer was busying himself with the documents in his hands, conspicuously avoiding eye contact.

“You’ve made the mistake,” said Westinghouse, “of underestimating the villainy of Thomas Edison.”

“I have. And what I can promise you today is that I will never do so again.”

Paul was dismissed a few minutes later. He and Fessenden left the inventor to the quiet of his dark and empty laboratory.

“He’ll get over it,” said Fessenden as they walked side by side toward the mansion, across the moonlit lawns of the estate. The muggy air threatened to burst into a summer storm above the country oaks. “I’ve been on the receiving end of that same look. He has a way of making you feel six inches tall. But don’t worry: He’ll be on to someone else’s failures tomorrow.”

“How’s Tesla doing?” Paul hadn’t heard any complaints about Tesla in a few weeks, which he’d taken as a positive development.

At the mention of Tesla’s name, Fessenden grimaced. “Well…I’m afraid that’s going to be a bit difficult to explain.”





Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers.

—THOMAS KUHN, THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS



IT TURNED OUT that Tesla had presented Westinghouse with a sketch. Something concerning the airless vacuum that filled the light bulbs. Westinghouse had suggested making a few tweaks and then testing both versions to see which operated better, and in response Tesla had gone up to his office and shut the door in protest.

Four days later, Fessenden and his men had still not heard a word from Tesla. He had been scribbling nearly illegible demands for saltine crackers on the backs of Machinery Department requisition forms and then slipping them without ceremony under his door. It had taken a full day for a passing char girl to notice them. The girl brought the papers to the attention of the butler, who then had to figure out some way of bringing the incident to Westinghouse’s attention without causing the old man to break something glass-carved and expensive.