The Languages of Edison's Electric Light (review)

The Languages of Edison's Electric Light. By Charles Bazerman. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Pp. x+416. $39.50.

Charles Bazerman has set two agendas for his examination of the development of Thomas Edison's electric lighting system between 1878 and 1882. The first is to see what current theories of rhetoric might contribute as analytic tools to the historian's craft; the second is to see what the historical record can offer those same theories of rhetoric. Bazerman is interested in how "communicative acts" both represent and influence the social world into which new technologies are introduced. He focuses on the evidence by and about Edison in the news media, trade literature, patent documents, financial communiqués, and commercial displays as well as within Edison's business organizations.

The thesis seems rather unremarkable in the context of today's global capitalism: to introduce a complex new product, you have to promote it (before and after invention) in your own organization, the media, the courts, and the professional literature as well as in the marketplace. What is remarkable is the extent to which Bazerman uncovers similarities more than a century ago and the extent to which his Edison comes across as a thoroughly modern entrepreneur/communicator.

The book is organized into three sections: "Establishing Meanings," "Making It Real," and "Establishing Enduring Values." Within each section, Bazerman examines newspapers, the technical press, financial documents, literature, patent records, laboratory notes, and marketing materials in order to understand how Edison exerted influence within specific contexts, or what he calls "meaning systems." Loosely, the first section deals with issues and images that preceded Edison's development of the lighting system. The second focuses on the invention itself and its initial public demonstrations, while the third deals with the introduction of lighting and all its attendant accoutrements as a consumer good. The detailed descriptions of the correspondence and exchanges in these arenas are welcome additions to our understanding of technological innovation.

Bazerman does not present a new interpretation of Edison or of innovation. Rather, familiar stories are reexamined--am I really writing this?--in a more revealing light. For example, it has long been recognized that Edison manipulated the press for his own ends. Bazerman provides more detail on specific elements of the story and offers a richer sense of motivations and consequences than previous accounts. This is particularly true in the case of the press coverage surrounding the Paris Exposition of 1882. Bazerman shows Edison's accomplices paying off some reporters and offering jobs to others to ensure prime press coverage at a time when Edison's electrical preeminence was being severely challenged. Similarly, Bazerman adeptly illustrates how Edison self-consciously prepared laboratory materials with an eye toward the requirements of the patent system and then used the patent system and the press to establish scientific and business leverage.

At times, however, the analysis falls flat. A basic misunderstanding of the physical environment flaws Bazerman's discussion of the Menlo Park notebooks. He concludes that few explicit instructions were issued to machinists via the notebooks because the library, office, drafting room, and machine shop were downstairs from the second-floor laboratory, a room about 25 feet wide by 100 feet long. Actually, when Edison decided to tackle the lighting project, he built a new brick office/library and a substantial brick machine shop, both about 50 feet from the main laboratory building. Expanding the lab site and staff should have increased the need for written communications. Despite this, the machinists continued to rely on tacit knowledge, verbal instructions, and their own problem-solving abilities. That craft tradition and not physical proximity explains the lack of written instructions.

It is a credit to Edison that he developed the elaborate system of written communications, including the copying of raw lab notes into research ledgers, without offending the sensibilities of his craftsmen. Along with shifts in leadership models from charismatic to corporate, this episode provides additional...