Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [91]
By the time of these deaths, the two firms with the most wires in the worst condition—United States Illuminating and Brush Electric Illuminating—were no longer independent companies; both had been acquired by Westinghouse Electric. This meant that most of the high-voltage overhead wires in New York City were under the control of George Westinghouse, who continued to resist efforts to remove them, make them safer, or place them in underground conduits.22
After the latest accidental death, Thomas Edison told the Evening Sun, "They say I am prejudiced, but if I had anything to say I would abolish the alternating current."23
SOME PEOPLE distrusted Edison's opinions on this matter because his money and his passion were tied up with direct current, but the same objection could hardly have been urged against alternating-current pioneer Elihu Thomson. Thomson feared alternating current nearly as much as Edison did, and he was just as outraged over the accidental deaths in New York and elsewhere. As the inventive mind behind the Thomson-Houston company, Thomson had sketched designs for alternating systems in 1885, but he delayed the work because he considered high-voltage alternating current too dangerous. Only after inventing and patenting a number of safety devices—such as fuses and "lightning arresters" to prevent dangerous shocks from reaching indoor wiring—did he consider the system safe enough to sell to the public. Unhampered by such concerns, Westinghouse had opened a large lead before Thomson-Houston entered the market. Despite the delay, Thomson believed his company had one clear advantage: It held the patents on all the important safety devices.24
As it turned out, those patents offered little leverage. Like the Edison and Westinghouse companies, Thomson-Houston made most of its money selling its dynamos, bulbs, and other equipment to utility companies, which then installed them and supplied light to customers. The manufacturing companies had little control over how carefully their equipment was installed. Most of the local utilities that bought the Thomson-Houston system did not purchase the safety equipment, and there were few governmental regulations that required them to do so. "In the general scramble for business there has been a neglect of proper precautions," Thomson explained.25
Thomson's private correspondence revealed his dismay. "The manner of installation in New York City is simply abominable," he wrote. The accidental deaths resulted from "gross carelessness and recklessness" on the part of the local lighting companies, and "it is only a wonder to me that fatal accidents are not more frequent." Even properly installed, however, such wires could not be safe, because "no insulation that has as yet been found is any too good." As Thomson saw it, the solution was to bury all of the wires used in heavily populated cities such as New York.26
Elihu Thomson
When the overhead wire battle heated up in the fall of 1889, some Thomson-Houston managers asked Thomson to pen an article reassuring the public about the safety of the firm's equipment. He refused: "I certainly shall not put myself in a position to be criticized as Mr. Edison has been criticized in what he has said about wiring, as only said in self-interest." Many of the Thomson-Houston systems in service—including many plants in New York—were nothing short of lethal, and Thomson would not defend them.27
When Thomson did issue a public defense of alternating current, it was couched in the most cautious of language. High voltages were necessary for the affordable transmission of energy, Thomson wrote in Electrical World, but the public needed to be protected through safety devices, better insulation, and the placement of wires in underground conduits. Thomson did not downplay the dangers of the current he sold: "Alternating current is much less safe than . . . continuous currents of equivalent potential."28
George Westinghouse never made a similar