Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [119]
In the fall of 1889 the Cataract company had sought advice from Thomas Edison, who at the time was in Paris collecting honors and reviewing his displays at the Universal Exposition. The inventor wired his response: "No difficulty transferring unlimited power. Will assist. Sailing today" Back in the United States, he admitted that there were in fact considerable difficulties. Direct current was unsuitable for high-voltage, long-distance transmission. Alternating current was perfect for transmission, but the lack of a good motor meant that the current could be used only for light and not for the industrial applications needed to make the project pay The Niagara plans stalled for lack of attractive options. Then came the Frankfurt exposition in 1891, which demonstrated alternating current's clear advantages over direct. Throughout 1892 both General Electric and Westinghouse scrambled to create alternating-current proposals for Niagara.16
They also battled for another prize: the contract to light the world's fair planned for Chicago in 1893. Officially known as the World's Columbian Exposition, the fair would commemorate (a year late) the quincentennial of Columbus's voyage to the New World. Like all world's fairs, its real purpose was to showcase industrial progress. This would be the first great American fair of the electrical age, and the contract to supply incandescent lighting carried great prestige. After submitting a bid of $1 million, General Electric was shocked to learn that Westinghouse had secured the contract with a bid of $399,ooo.17
The Chicago fair centered on the "White City," a collection of elaborate classical buildings surrounding a central lagoon. There were buildings devoted to Fine Arts, Agriculture, Mining, Transportation, and Manufacturing, but electricity captured the spirit of the times. At the last great American fair, in Philadelphia in 1876, Americans saw a few crude dynamos and arc lamps. Less than two decades later, a new industry was in full flower. Westinghouse lit the grounds and buildings with 100,000 incandescent lamps, while other companies added 5,000 arc lamps. Spotlights with colored filters turned iridescent the jets of water in the fair's fountains. Visitors could board an electric train or putter about the lagoon in an electric launch. The massive Ferris wheel—invented for the fair—was studded with 1,500 bulbs.
At the entrance to the Electricity Building was a heroic fifteen-foot-tall statue of Benjamin Franklin, kite in hand, and displays inside traced the history of electricity over the previous centuries. Thrusting up at the building's center was the Edison Tower, a tall shaft encircled with thousands of colored lamps and topped by a huge incandescent bulb. Many of the fair's 27 million visitors were experiencing the wonders of electricity for the first time, and the exposition "dissolved much of the mystery that had pervaded its domain," one official claimed. "It brought electricity to the people in the light of a servant not as an awful master." Fairgoers admired the latest phonographs, telephones (including an underwater version for divers), railway signals, pickpocket detectors, seismographs, clocks, tabulating machines, cash registers, and egg incubators. The military-minded could see an electric torpedo, while industrialists enjoyed electric fans, hoists, riveters, welders, pumps, drills, conveyor belts, and air compressors. Medical electricity was not neglected. In addition to devices for giving therapeutic shocks, there were dental mallets and drills, surgical lamps, cautery devices, and a lamp-tipped catheter for illuminating kidney stones. The Edison Manufacturing Company displayed a physician's kit in a black walnut case that included a battery, sponge electrodes, and an "interchangeable fast and slow vibrator." The average citizen was most interested in devices for the home, including the "model electric kitchen" that featured ovens, kettles, frying pans, saucepans,