The Last Days of Night

by Graham Moore

“What did they love? The three of them? Edison loved the audience. For him, it was the performance. It was the crowd. He remains the most famous inventor in the world. I’ll bet he’ll stay that way for generations. He wanted the applause. That’s what he was fighting for. Now, Westinghouse…Westinghouse was different. He loved the products themselves. And he made them better than anyone. He is the ultimate craftsman, isn’t he? He didn’t want to sell the most light bulbs. He wanted to make the best light bulbs. If they were too expensive, if they were too late into production, he didn’t care. They had to be the best. The most useful, the most current technology. And he did, didn’t he? It’s his products that won out. He wanted to perfect the light bulb and he did it. Then there’s Tesla. He was the third leg in this tripod. He didn’t care a bit about Edison’s public, or Westinghouse’s products. No, Tesla cared only for the ideas themselves. Their promulgation did not matter. Tesla was his own audience, and his ideas were his product, for consumption by himself alone. He had the idea, then he was done. Once he knew he’d solved a problem, he moved on. He knew that he’d made A/C work; he knew that he’d made the bulbs work. Actually building the things was irrelevant. That was someone else’s problem.