As electricity shifted from being a game inventors could win to one better left to the balance sheets and business strategies of businessmen, Edison retreated from the limelight, leaving Insull to manage more and more of the inventor’s holdings. By 1892, when Edison had to admit defeat in the battle between his DC system and Westinghouse and Tesla’s AC system, retiring to his New Jersey laboratory to work on fluorescent lighting (a project that ended badly for him, blinding him in one eye and killing an assistant), Insull stepped firmly out from his august patron’s shadow and took up the
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