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Power Struggles: Scientific Authority and the Creation of Practical Electricity Before Edison
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The development of electrical technologies that laid the foundation for Edisons work: their invention, commercialization, and adoption.In 1882, Thomas Edison and his Edison Electric Light Company unveiled the first largescale electrical system in the world to light a stretch of offices in a city. This was a monumental achievement, but it was not the beginning of the electrical age. The first electric generators were built in the 1830s, the earliest commercial lighting systems before 1860, and the first commercial application of generatorpowered lights (in lighthouses) in the early 1860s. In Power Struggles, Michael Brian Schiffer examines some of these earlier efforts, both successful and unsuccessful, that paved the way for Edison. After laying out a unified theoretical framework for understanding technological change, Schiffer presents a series of fascinating case studies of preEdison electrical technologies, including Voltas electrochemical battery, the blacksmiths electric motor, the first mechanical generators, Morses telegraph, the Atlantic cable, and the lighting of the Capitol dome. Schiffer discusses claims of practicality and impracticality (sometimes hotly contested) made for these technologies, and examines the central role of the scientific authorityin particular, the activities of Joseph Henry, midnineteenthcentury Americas foremost scientistin determining the fate of particular technologies. These emerging electrical technologies formed the foundation of the modern industrial world. Schiffer shows how and why they became commercial products in the context of an evolving corporate capitalism in which conflicting judgments of practicality sometimes turned into power struggles.
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