Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [27]
But even if he was a deadbeat dad and a bit of a nut, Duffy had a dream as big as the Pacific Ocean and little could deter him. As a result, the Wave-Power Air-Compressing Company was incorporated in May of 1895. A florist-cum-inventor, Duffy, along with a small group of friends, offered a million dollars of stock. That is to say, they created a million shares out of thin air and offered them at $0.25, far below the “par value” of $1 each. The prospectus for the company begins by stating,
The perfectness of this modern piece of mechanism has been attested to by the best engineers in this country, they having pronounced it one of the greatest inventions of the age. By its use air is compressed into reservoirs, whence it is conducted to engines that operate dynamos, thus generating electricity. As “necessity is the mother of invention,” this wonderful discovery—enabling us to harness the waves of the mighty ocean—has come to the rescue of toiling humanity in the eleventh hour; for by its free and equal use man will be brought nearer to an equality in opportunity.12
It was big talk, but there’s no suggestion in the historical record that the wave motor ever became something other than the model that Goldberg may have seen. But in California at the time, it must have seemed like wave power was on the verge of a breakthrough. Starved for power, during the decades sandwiched around the turn of the century the state was home to a burst of wave motor experimentation that is startling in its intensity and seriousness.
In San Francisco, isolated even from the water power available to its easterly neighbors, the city’s promoters—who had much to gain from population increases—hungered for greater access to energy. Without it, the city could lose its spot atop the West Coast pecking order. Given the lack of cheap fuel or water power, having the Pacific Ocean sitting right there, uselessly pounding the city’s coastline, was rather galling. In fact, in 1895 the San Francisco Examiner held a contest asking its readers, “What shall San Francisco do to acquire one-half million citizens?” This was the question of the day, upon which fortunes depended.
Out of thousands of responses, the contest’s judges—including James Phelan, later mayor of the city and California senator—picked the following response: “Offer fifty thousand dollars ‘bonus’ to any inventor of a practical mechanism capable of commercially utilizing ocean ‘wave power.’”13 The suggestion had been submitted by one “Eureka Resurgam,” a mixed Classical pseudonym meaning, “I have found it” (Eureka) in Greek and “I will rise again” (Resurgam) in Latin. The contest’s selection was a powerful indication that San Francisco needed power—and that wave motors were considered a possible breakthrough technology that could get it.
But not everyone was buying what the wave motor guys were selling. “San Francisco is the home of the ‘wave-motor,’” one skeptic wrote in the magazine Machinery. “One comes around, as I am informed from one to three times a year. The external swell always rolling in here works the wave-motor man into an ecstasy of invention and he persuades an opulent friend to invest in the scheme.”14
Expecting such responses, wave motor proponents could snap back with the prediction of America’s leading inventor: “Edison said only a few years since that electricity would be the future commercial power of the world. That is true,” went one advertisement. “He also said the ocean waves would furnish the power of the future. That