The World: A Family History of Humanity

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Then he worked on the technology to generate and distribute the electricity. He did not get everything right. He insisted that direct current was the safe way to distribute electricity, but he employed a talented young Serb, Nikola Tesla, who left to work for his rival, George Westinghouse, to develop alternating current. Tesla was right. Edison was overtaken by Westinghouse and his bankers merged his businesses with others to create Con Edison and General Electric. But he was also experimenting with recording sounds (the phonograph that launched the music business) and transmitting voices (the carbon telephonic transmitter that became the telephone), the rechargeable battery and the movie camera (the Kinetograph, which created the film industry). He even founded Black Maria, the first movie studio, which made 1,200 silent movies. Later he toyed with a contraption for speaking to the dead. Perhaps he was joking, but it was only a