Introduction Of The Edison Electric Light - 3

Introduction Of The Edison Electric Light - 3

A retrospective survey shows that had the men in control of the American gas-lighting

art, in 1880, been sufficiently far-sighted, and had they taken a broader view of the

situation, they might easily have remained dominant in the whole field of artificial

lighting by securing the ownership of the patents and devices of the new industry.

Apparently not a single step of that kind was undertaken, nor probably was there a gas

manager who would have agreed with Edison in the opinion written down by him at the

time in little note-book No. 184, that gas properties were having conferred on them an

enhanced earning capacity. It was doubtless fortunate and providential for the electriclighting

art that in its state of immature development it did not fall into the hands of men

who were opposed to its growth, and would not have sought its technical perfection. It

was allowed to carve out its own career, and thus escaped the fate that is supposed to

have attended other great inventions--of being bought up merely for purposes of

suppression. There is a vague popular notion that this happens to the public loss; but the

truth is that no discovery of any real value is ever entirely lost. It may be retarded; but

that is all. In the case of the gas companies and the incandescent light, many of them to

whom it was in the early days as great an irritant as a red flag to a bull, emulated the

performance of that animal and spent a great deal of money and energy in bellowing and

throwing up dirt in the effort to destroy the hated enemy. This was not long nor

universally the spirit shown; and to-day in hundreds of cities the electric and gas

properties are united under the one management, which does not find it impossible to

push in a friendly and progressive way the use of both illuminants. The most conspicuous

example of this identity of interest is given in New York itself.

So much for the early opposition, of which there was plenty. But it may be questioned

whether inertia is not equally to be dreaded with active ill-will. Nothing is more difficult

in the world than to get a good many hundreds of thousands or millions of people to do

something they have never done before. A very real difficulty in the introduction of his

lamp and lighting system by Edison lay in the absolute ignorance of the public at large,

not only as to its merits, but as to the very appearance of the light, Some few thousand

people had gone out to Menlo Park, and had there seen the lamps in operation at the

laboratory or on the hillsides, but they were an insignificant proportion of the inhabitants

of the United States. Of course, a great many accounts were written and read, but while

genuine interest was aroused it was necessarily apathetic. A newspaper description or a

magazine article may be admirably complete in itself, with illustrations, but until some

personal experience is had of the thing described it does not convey a perfect mental

picture, nor can it always make the desire active and insistent. Generally, people wait to

have the new thing brought to them; and hence, as in the case of the Edison light, an

educational campaign of a practical nature is a fundamental condition of success.