Customer Reviews

Edison: Inventing the Century

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"The electric light is the light of the future- and it will be my light, unless some other fellow gets up a better one." - Thomas A. Edison

The author of lives of artist Man Ray and poet William Carlos Williams, Neil Baldwin chose to devote his third biography to a practical-minded genius: Thomas Alva Edison, one of America's most venerated icons. Beginning with the history of Edison's ancestors in the new world, this thick, 500-page volume has its subject come to life on page 17, and chronicles his prodigious accomplishments until his death in 1931, with numerous highlights on his two wives (the first of whom, Mary Stilwell, died at 29), children and in-laws.

The tone of the book is generally sympathetic, though Baldwin deliberately attempts to eschew the hero-worshiping of some earlier works in order to achieve a more "balanced" and sober view of the man. A lot of stress is laid on the consequences of Edison's incredible working habits on his family life and the emotional development of his children, and one cannot help thinking that the author blames him for his single-minded devotion to the pursuit of technological progress. Indeed, the metaphors used to describe Edison's industriousness and concentration are often borrowed from the vocabulary of pathology: he is presented as a "workaholic" rather than a hard worker, with "obsessions" rather than ambitions or passions. Even the division of labour in Edison's West Orange research center, says Baldwin, "physically epitomizes the schisms in Edison's psyche".

The book is not overladen with technical minutiae, as the author seems to be more attracted to period detail than to hardware. His understanding of the science underlying Edison's experiments and theorizing did not strike me as particularly deep, anyway. Quoting Edison's speculations about the origin of the solar system, for instance, Baldwin exclaims that he was "tantalizingly close to the fringe of a Big Bang theory". Of course, one should not demand too much from a PhD in Modern American Poetry.

The author's political philosophy is not too intrusive, but it annoyingly crops up at some points. For instance, he says that the great industrialists of the late nineteenth century might as well be called robber barons, "depending on which side of the dialectic is preferred". His presentation of Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, *Looking Backwards*, as part of his attempt to convey the intellectual flavour of the age, is extremely positive: Bellamy's society is described as "a place of abolished inequities and cultural efficiency, not wasteful production and underconsumption" where "the venerated 'unremitting toil' so characteristic of the competitive, unorganized and antagonistic 1880s would be supplanted by a commitment to equal sharing of the nation's wealth". This is more than slightly disturbing, considering that what Bellamy had drawn was a communist blueprint for America (see for instance Clarence Carson's *Flight from Reality* for an interesting analysis.)

But whatever the author's biases, they are completely overshadowed by the brilliance of his subject. Edison is simply a delight to read about, forcing admiration from his early childhood exploits to his discovery of an indigenous source of rubber in his seventies.

Everybody should read at least one biography of Edison, to acquaint himself with the possibilities open to man. Having only read this one, I cannot say whether it is the best choice. Edwin Locke, the author of *The Wealth Creators*, seems to favour Matthew Josephson's *Edison: A Biography* (1959), which is apparently less ambivalent in its admiration for its subject. As for the ABC-Clio CD-Rom on *American Business Leaders*, it also lists Ronald William Clark's *Edison: The Man Who Made the Future* (1977); Robert D. Friedel's *Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention* (1986); Ray Phillips's *Edison's Kinetoscope and Its Films: A History to 1896* (1997) and Wyn Wachhorst's *Thomas Alva Edison, An American Myth* (1981).

Edison has been an inspiration to many, including the greatest of all businessmen, his friend and admirer Henry Ford. But perhaps the most significant tribute that was ever paid to him, and the best characterization of his personality, was Ayn Rand's. In a letter to Tom Girdler dated 1943, she wrote: "No humanitarian ever has [equalled n]or can equal the benefits men received from a Thomas Edison or a Henry Ford. But the creator is not concerned with these benefits; they are secondary consequences. He considers his work, not love or service of others, as his primary goal in life. Thomas Edison was not concerned with the poor people in the slums who would get electric light. He was concerned with the light."

I stopped reading this book after about 150 pages, and resolved to find a better Edison biography. I had two problems with the book:

1. The writing is a bit muddled. For example, we find Edison at age 23 running an "invention factory" with 50 or so employees housed in a four story building in Newark. There is almost no explaination of how he got the backing to set up such an enterprise.

2. The author does not seem to have much understanding of the science behind Edison's work. He makes no attempt to explain how any of Edison's inventions operated - no diagrams or drawings, and he seems confused about the difference between electricty and magnetism.

The author's background is in poetry. At the risk of sounding mean-spirited, I think that an Edison biography is not a good fit for him.

Background into this important American figure in our century. So much of what we now have came from this man. His connections to Ford and the whole electric industry are monumental. This book describes the unfolding of this giant's life in witty, easy-to-read style. His emphasis on all the elements of the man's life without too much detail of the technical, kept me captivated.

This book does a good job of explaining Edison's personality, but a not-so-great job of explaining his achievements. The book is obviously carefully researched, but it would have been better if Baldwin had a deeper technical understanding is of Edison's inventions. Most of the invention description of his seem to be extracted from notebooks and patent disclosures with little insight into what is essential and what is incidental. Edison's wedding is described is greater detail than his phonograph, and his domestic problems are explained more clearly than his problems with the electric light bulb. The book is well written, and I enjoyed reading it, but a reader looking for an understanding of Edison's inventions will be disappointed.

In this biography of the great inventor, Neil Baldwin chooses to emphasize Edison the person rather than focusing on the inventions, as some earlier biographers had done. Perhaps for this reason, though the book is thorough, it reads somewhat shallow. Of all the inventions of Edison, Baldwin writes in detail only about 2 of them: the phonograph and motion pictures. He also spends a great deal of space covering Edison's work in the iron ore mine he owned in Ogdensburg, NJ, and his experiments with rubber, both of which produced negligible results. I found Matthew Josephson's 1959 biography on Edison to be much better.

I started this book with a lot of enthusiasm. I'm an Edison fan and figured I'd give it a go. But after the first 50 pages, I could not go on. The author's writing style made this book almost unreadable...and I have a master's degree. So it should have been a fun, easy read, right? Um. No. After run-on sentence after run-on sentence, each mixing sometimes three and four thoughts that would have to be re-read over just to come to some kind of understanding as to what was being referred to, and in the process, coming to some kind of conclusion that would lead one, impulsively, it could be argued, to start thinking in those terms, albeit wrong. So basically, the ENTIRE book is written like the crazy sentence that preceded this one. Get the idea? The author obviously did a lot of work. The editor must have been playing Tetris non-stop while proofing the manuscript. Yikes. Avoid.

Marge Simpson (tired of Homer's endless prattling about Edison): I bet Thomas Edison didn't talk about Thomas Edison all day.
Homer: Oh, that's not true Marge. He was a shameless self-promoter!

This is a mammoth book that seeks to provide the entire story of the world's most famous inventor. Baldwin takes us from Edison's birth to his deathbed, with equal parts of attention being paid to his personal life and his professional life.

Some people might be disappointed by the fact that Baldwin doesn't fawn over Edison the man, but I appreciated the objectivity. While Edison's famous work ethic and engineering genius earned him the mythic status that he holds in the public imagination, his home life was troubled, unsurprising for anyone who is at the top of their field. Bringing some of the less savory aspects of Edison into the light de-mythologizes him somewhat, but this is done in the service of truth, and I generally find that this makes for a better biography.

I notice that other reviewers have criticized Baldwin's lack of science credentials, but I didn't find that to be a problem, either. Edison wasn't a scientist himself, in the sense that a nuclear physicist or a chemist is a scientist. Edison was an inventor. He made things, and the basis of his creations was generally not an abstract scientific concept that would be difficult for laymen to grasp. That being said, I do wish that there were some diagrams and sketches, which would have given us a more clear picture of the nuts and bolts of Edison's work.

I was actually surprised to see the simplicity of most of Edison's inventions. It seemed that his real genius lay more in tinkering with an existing idea until the dream of a working practical application became reality.

Another big surprise to me was how much of Edison's role depended on his ability to market himself. He and the media collaborated to give him an extremely high profile. While I don't want to belittle his amazing acheivements, his profile is much higher than others who, it can be argued, made equal or even greater contributions to society.

My biggest problem with this work was that it was kind of boring. Baldwin has found some fascinating anecdotes and facts about Edison, but they are mixed in with too many dull details. The writing itself is generally quite dry, with more of a textbook atmosphere than some other successful modern nonfiction works.

Despite this, there are some fascinating and bizarre aspects of Edison that Baldwin gives their due. For example, in Edison's old age, when his hearing went, his wife used to keep him up to date on the dinner conversation by tapping morse code onto his thigh. He also lived on almost nothing but milk and the occasional bit of bread for the last two years of his life.

Overall, I would recommend this book to the person who is serious about getting the real story of Thomas Edison. If you're looking for a more entertaining read, or one which treads lightly around his mythic status, go elsewhere.

If this is your first look into Thomas Edison, find a different book. It was a constant struggle to finish this one, I had to force myself to go on. A cure for insomnia

Great representation of ideas. Reflects Edison as "the" personality of the century. Genius as he was, all his geniosity is brought out in the creation. Great work by Baldwin.

History buffs wishing to take a look at how yesterday's technology pioneers changed the way America - and the developed world - lived, worked and thought will find great satisfaction reading Edison: Inventing the Century. Readers will journey with the famed inventor from his mid-19th century itinerant boyhood as the telegrapher's assistant publishing and hawking his own newspapers aboard midwest railroad trains to his grand display of illuminated electrical light bulbs at the Paris International Exhibition of 1889 through his tireless pursuit of new technologies well into the 20th century. This exceptionally documented and broad-based portal to the past, intersecting names, pursuits and ideals of Edison contemporaries both in America and abroad, is certain to satisfy today's visionaries, cultural leaders and technology wizards with both sufficient historical substance and enough heady inspiration to know that they, too, can - and ARE - inventing yet another "new" century.