Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [158]
CHAPTER 22. THE END OF THE BATTLE OF THE CURRENTS
1. Quotation from Samuel Insull to Edison, July 16, 1890 (TAEM 129:228). Also see "Annual Convention of Edison Illuminating Companies," Electrical World 14 (August 24,1889): 135-36.
2. For the work on alternating current, see John Kruesi to Samuel Insull, July 31,1890 (TAEM 129:236); Samuel Dana Greene to Edison, October 10,1890 (TAEM 129:263); Alfred Tate to Greene, October 14, 1890 (TAEM 141:638); Tate to Insull, November 1, 1890 (TAEM 141:700); Insull to J. C. Henderson, November 5, 1890 (TAEM 129:277); Insull to Tate, November 6,1890 (TAEM 129:276); Kennelly Notebook #3, August 22,1890, pp. 101,128,136-39,148,150 (TAEM 104: 730,740, 768, 782, 787, 800, 803); "Memorandum of Mr. Edison's Work During the Year 1891," January 6,1892 (TAEM 143:16); Israel, Edison, 333.
3. Quotations from Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process, 284, n. 20; New York Herald, November 16, 1890. When the state needed a new execution generator at the end of 1890, the Edison company considered adapting one of its own new alternating generators for the purpose. It is unclear whether the machine was actually sold to the state. See Kennelly to J. C. Henderson, December 14, 1890 (TAEM 109:648). Five years later, Edison said that if 2,000-volt alternating-current wires were properly maintained, "the danger to human life, by reason of electric shocks, is insignificant." Edison to G. W. Grant, July 1895 (TAEM 135:793; month conjectured by TAEM).
4. Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process, 287-91; Israel, Edison, 335-36.
5. Quotation from Edison to Henry Villard, April 1,1889 (TAEM 144:216).
6. Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process, 281-83, 294; Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 87-88.
7. Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process, 294-301; Israel, Edison, 336; Passer, Electrical Manufacturers, 150, 321-27.
8. Quotations from New York World, February 21,1892.
9. Quotations from Israel, Edison, 336; Edison to Henry Villard, April 1, 1889 (TAEM 144:216). Also see Tate, Edison's Open Door, 260-61; New York Tribune, February 20,1892; Newark Call, February 28,1892 (TAEM 146:752); Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process, 281-82.
10. Edison to Henry Villard, February 8,1890 (TAEM 140:510).
11. Quotations from Tate, Edison's Open Door, 278. Also see Israel, Edison, 335-37.
12. Quotation from Israel, Edison, 292. Also see Charles Musser, Thomas A. Edison and His Kinetographic Motion Pictures (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995).
13. Israel, Edison, 338-62.
14. Ibid., 335-37.
15. Kline, "Science and Engineering Theory," 288-92; Hughes, Networks of Power, 129-35.
16. Quotation from Edward Dean Adams, Niagara Power: History of the Niagara Falls Power Company, 1886-1918, 2 vols. (Niagara Falls, N.Y.: privately printed, 1927), 1:144. Also see Steven Lubar, "Transmitting the Power of Niagara: Scientific, Technological, and Cultural Contexts of an Engineering Decision," IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 8 (March 1989): 11-13; Robert Belfield, "The Niagara System: The Evolution of an Electric Power Complex at Niagara Falls, 1883-1896," Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (1976): 1344-45.
17. Passer, Electrical Manufacturers, 142-43; Daniel H. Burnham, The Final Official Report of the Director of Works of the World's Columbian Exposition (New York: Garland, 1989), 5-6.
18. Quotations from J. P. Barret, Electricity at the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1894), xi, 451; Marian Shaw, World's Fair Notes: A Woman Journalist Views Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition (St. Paul, Minn.: Pogo Press, 1992), 4.
19. Hughes, Networks of Power, 122-25; Barret, Electricity at the World's Columbian Exposition, 166.
20. Belfield, "The Niagara System," 1349-50; Hughes, Networks of Power, 137-39; Passer, Electrical Manufacturers, 292-93.
21. Andre Millard, "Thomas Edison, the Battle of the Systems and the Persistence