• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1120 0

suggesting changes to a near-final draft. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Peter Dear, and Michael Kammen trained me in the ways of history, as did Larry Moore, who continues to provide a model of graceful scholarship and gracious living. Jackie Johnson, editor, read the manuscript nearly as many times as I without once losing her equanimity or her sharp eye for detail. George Gibson, publisher, took a chance on a wild card and displayed unflagging enthusiasm throughout. My agent, Gail Ross, deftly guided me through the thickets of trade publication. Howard Yoon, excellent friend and savvy adviser, nurtured the project from conception to birth; without him the book would not exist.

Melissa Cole read not a prepublication word but made me immoderately happy during the final weeks of revision, and beyond. My siblings, nieces, and nephews—Len, Mary, Dan, Heather, David, Emily, Katherine, Jacob, Joseph, and Ella—provided entertainment and boundless affection. I dedicate this book to my parents, Dorothy and John Essig, whose love has made it, and all else, not only possible but joyful.

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES

COMMISSION REPORT: Report of the Commission to Investigate and Report the Most Humane and Practical Method of Carrying into Effect the Sentence of Death in Capital Cases (Albany: Troy Press, 1888).

ENHS: Edison National Historic Site Archives, West Orange, New Jersey.

KEMMLER HEARINGS: People of the State of New York, ex rel. William Kemmler Against Charles F. Durston, as Warden of the State Prison at Auburn, N.Y. (Buffalo: J. D. Warren's Sons, 1889).

TAEB: Papers of Thomas A. Edison (book edition), ed. Reese V. Jenkins et al., 4 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989-). Example: TAEB 4:858 refers to volume 4, page 858.*

TAEM: Thomas A. Edison Papers: A Selective Microfilm Edition, ed. Thomas E. Jeffrey (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1985-). Example: TAEM 138:355 refers to microfilm reel 138, frame 355.*

THOMSON PAPERS: Elihu Thomson Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

PROLOGUE. EDISON ON THE WITNESS STAND

1. New York Telegraph, July 23,1889 (TAEM 146:463).

2. Testimony quotations are from Kemmler Hearings, 623, 629-30, 636. Also see New York Daily Graphic, July 23,1889; New York Sun, New York Tribune, July 24,1889.

3. London Standard, as quoted in New York Times, August 17,1890.

4. Edison to Alfred Southwick, December 19,1887 (TAEM 138:355).

5. The two most important academic articles on this topic are Thomas P. Hughes, "Harold P. Brown and the Executioner's Current: An Incident in the AC-DC Controversy," Business History Review 32 (1958): 143-65; and Terry S. Reynolds and Theodore Bernstein, "Edison and The Chair,'" IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 8 (March 1989): 19-28. Also see Terry S. Reynolds and Theodore.

6. Brooklyn Citizen, November 4,1888 (TAEM 25:580).

CHAPTER 1. EARLY SPARKS

1. J. L. Heilbron, Elements of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 160-61.

2. Quotation from ibid., 172. Also see Geoffrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder, Col.: West-view Press, 1995), 290-96.

3. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society, 296-314; Heilbron, Elements of Early Modern Physics, 173-80.

4. Quotation from Heilbron, Elements of Early Modern Physics, 185. Also see Sutton, Science for a Polite Society, 314-19; Park Benjamin, The Intellectual Rise in Electricity: A History (New York: Appleton, 1895), 522.

5. Quotation from Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, July 29,1750, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W Labaree (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959-), 3:19-20. Also see I. Bernard Cohen, Benjamin Franklin's Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 28-29.

6. Cohen, Benjamin Franklins Science, 66-109; Heilbron, Elements of Early Modern Physics, 196-200; Sutton, Science for a Polite Society, 325-31.

7. Quotations from Franklin to Peter Collinson, February 4, 1851, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 4:111-13;