Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution [Hardcover]

L J Davis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1559706554 | ISBN-13: 978-1559706551 | Publication Date: March 2003 | Edition: 1

The electric revolution, which eclipsed the Industrial Revolution by the end of the 19th century and continues to this day, changed our world forever. FLEET FIRE tells us how it all began. In an engaging and entertaining narrative, L. J. Davis fields a cast of both prominent and forgotten characters, from dedicated scientists and mischievous rogues to enlightened amateurs who lit the sparks of discovery. Franklinís kite, Davenportís electromagnet, Morseís telegraph, Cyrus Fieldís transatlantic cable, and Edisonís phonograph are but a few of the achievements Davis discusses. Explaining the science in lucid prose, FLEET FIRE conveys the arc of discovery during one of the most creative epochs in the history of mankind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ben Franklin abandoned his research in the 1750s when he could find no practical uses for electricity. Yet Davis places him first in the succession of American entrepreneurial inventors who created the electric revolution. Skipping ahead to the mid-19th century, Davis follows the adventures of the blacksmith Thomas Davenport and his electric motor, the painter Samuel Morse and his inspiration for the electromagnetic telegraph, and the businessman Cyrus Field and the transatlantic cable. He devotes a third of the book to Thomas Edison and his rivals, who together made electricity a household technology in the 1880s. According to Davis, the revolution's first surge ended around 1900 as Guglielmo Marconi perfected wireless (i.e., radio) telegraphy and Reginald Aubrey Fessenden made the first voice broadcast. By juxtaposing the famous with the obscure, Davis shows that success depended upon an aptitude for business as well as mechanical genius. The winners in this story care less about understanding scientific principles than about figuring out how to make their inventions pay. A contributor to Harper's and other magazines, Davis (The Billionaire Shell Game) emphasizes the most astonishing anecdotes and eccentric characters, showing little regard for their historical significance. His best narratives, judging from the footnotes, derive from dated biographies; and he frequently interrupts himself with declamations about the lone inventor and the pace of progress. Patchy and distorted as it is, however, this account colorfully portrays the chaotic nature of the electric revolution and the men who made it happen. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

From Benjamin Franklin to Reginald Fessenden (a forgotten radio pioneer), this jaunty narrative regales readers with tales of the thinkers, tinkers, and tycoons who fiddled with electricity and made it profitable. Davis is both irreverent and serious--a tonal discontinuity that somehow works. The same could be said of the devices dreamed up by Davis' colorful gallery of characters; nobody really knew what electricity was, though a few, such as Franklin, Galvani, and Volta, delved into it through experimentation. Yet they got their nineteenth-century gadgets to function, somehow, through trial and error. Thomas Edison was the apotheosis of this haphazard method, and Davis has great sport dinging the icon's foibles and his bad head for business. Davis enlivens this factually steady history with the engaging flair of a novelist. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1 edition (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559706554
• ISBN-13: 978-1559706551
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,286,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars He Made It Up as He Went Along, September 23, 2004

By 

Keith Otis Edwards "Keith Otis Edwards" (Dearbron, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution (Hardcover)

Although L. J. Davis is an entertaining writer, this is a terrible book. Practically every page has a howler of a misstatement, beginning with page one in which he lists the four basic forces of the universe as (1.) magnetism, (2.) gravity, (3.) the weak force, and (4.) electricity. (Why did he include the weak force but not the strong force?)

It's shocking (NPI) that in a book about the history of electrical technology, Davis seems to lack an elementary understanding of his subject. In several places, voltage is defined as the speed at which electricity travels through a conductor -- higher voltage, the faster it goes. As an earlier reviewer noted, he even gets the Edison effect wrong. (It's not the dark spot on the inside of a light bulb, but that about one volt can be measured there.)

Davis states that the first use of arc lighting "came in 1846, when the new Paris Opera used it to light the skating scene in Meyerbeer's The Prophet." Unfortunately, that opera wasn't written until 1849.

The errors and omissions pile up toward the end (Lee de Forest and Edwin Howard Armstrong are not even mentioned) until by the time he describes the computer revolution, his history of the Apple computer is so utterly wrong (actually, Steve Wozniak had nothing to do with the development of the Macintosh, and Doug Engelbart invented the mouse) that you'd likely get more accurate information by stopping someone on the street.

This book makes me suspicious of other writing by L. J. Davis about economics and politics.

Even the book's index is inadequate.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good and Bad News., June 2, 2004

By 

William O. Schwennicke (Cambria, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution (Hardcover)

I agree that this book is comprehensive and entertaining -- when discussing the people involved. However, it is often laughably garbled and sometimes dead wrong in explaining the phenomena those people discovered and worked on. Enjoy the people; take the science and technical explanations with a large grain of salt. Two examples out of many: 1)The author says that parallel current-carrying wires repell each other. That's true if the
currents run in opposite directions, but the wires attract each other if the currents run in the same direction. 2)The author says that the dark surface that forms in a light bulb is caused by electrons, but it is a coating of metal that has boiled off of the filament.

5.0 out of 5 stars Where our technological living began, March 30, 2009

By 

Samantha Sue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution (Hardcover)

Hard to put down, easy to follow. Provides the details we have been missing. Brings the history of electricity together, and gives each inventor his due recognition. Amazing to see the relationships.