Edison's Electric Light: The Art of Invention

3. “Some Difficult Requirements”

48 chapter three “Some Difficult Requirements” Despite the complexity that continued to characterize his efforts, by the spring of 1879 Edison believed that he had finally solved the key technical problems of the platinum lamp. To be sure, the various regulators he still employed were troublesome and required further work. But the progress he had made in improving the performance of platinum by using a vacuum led him to announce that the lamp was essentially perfected and that only the remaining elements of the system delayed introduction of the incandescent light. He even began giving public demonstrations of the lamp and its supporting system in mid-March. In the second half of that month he used the Menlo Park laboratory as a showplace in which as many as two hundred people observed his electric light— platinum-iridium spirals in vacuum chambers—in full operation.1 A vivid description appeared in the New York Herald for March 27, 1879: The first practical illustration of Edison’s light as a system has just been given. For the past two nights his entire laboratory and machine shop have been lighted up with the new light, and the result has been eminently satisfactory. . . . Only two things, Edison says, are now necessary before the light can be given to the public . The first is the standard lamp to be used and the second a better generator than the one now in operation. Neither of these requirements is regarded by him as difficult of attainment.2 The importance of regarding “Edison’s light as a system” was widely apparent—to his backers, his co-workers, and the public at “Some Difficult Requirements” 49 large. That Edison was not simply devising a workable lamp, but building a complex system of lamps, generators, and transmission and control devices, was obvious to all. Too much credit has perhaps been given him for his “systems approach” by later observers. It is true that a number of Edison’s rivals seem at first glance to have been insensitive to the systems demands of a practical electric light, but there is also little question that his first months of work were hardly more sophisticated than theirs. Edison, like other inventors, saw the real challenge of electric lighting as the invention of a workable lighting element. It was Edison’s overwhelming confidence in his ability to meet this challenge that led him to devote more attention to system components. The gas system provided an obvious model for electric lighting. The complexity implied by this model was readily apparent at the time. This is best illustrated by a New York Herald reporter writing on December 11, 1878: The various parts of the system of [Edison’s] electric lighting are probably as numerous and require as many patents for complete protection as did the system of lighting by gas, with its purifiers, gasometers, retorts and the hundred other appliances all going to make up the entire plan. Among the appliances of the electric light which will have to be served before the light as an entirety can be explained are the improved dynamo machines, the regulators , condensers, switches and coolers, besides the different portions of the light proper and the various forms of conductors and lamps to meet the diversity in the wants of the consumers. When all these are completed—and not a day passes without a marked advance toward their completion—the electric light of the wizard of Menlo Park will be ready for inspection, criticism and use, but not before.3 To succeed in competition with gas, electric lighting would have to provide comparable service at a competitive price. Throughout his work on the light, Edison kept the competition in mind, gathering data on the sizes and costs of various gas systems, calculating 50 edison’s electric light the light output of the typical gas jet, and comparing the economics of gas and electric-arc systems. The gas system also suggested components, such as meters, necessary for any successful lighting system. As early as November 1878 devices were being sketched for measuring electricity consumed by users of the light.4 A December 3, 1878, Herald article quoted Edison to the effect that he had just applied for a patent on his meter: “It was one of the details that hadn’t been accomplished. It works splendidly.”5 This appears to have been typical Edison hyperbole, since the Menlo Park records...