Celena’s Reviews > The Last Days of Night > Status Update

This newfangled marriage of business and science that would birth technology was precisely what Edison himself had created. It was his greatest invention.

From here we can only build incrementally. Improvements. Not revolutions. No new colours, only new hues.

We made wonders, boys. I only wonder how many of them are left to make.

Our age of invention, explained Edison. These days of handcrafted miracles...they won't last much longer. ...it seems likely that ours will be the last generation to ever gaze, wide-eyes, at something truly novel. That our kind will be the last to ever stare in disbelief at a man-made thing the Kay could not possibly exist.

Then there's Tesla. ...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 for him alone. Once he knew he'd solved a problem, he moved on.

Westinghouse was different. He loved the products themselves. And he made them better than anyone. He is the ultimate craftsman... He wanted to make the best light bulbs. ...They had to be the best. The most useful, the most current technology. It's his products that won out.

What did they love? The three of them? Edison loved the audience. For him, it was the performance. It was the crowd. ...He wanted the applause. That's what he was fighting for.

Don't take away my name. (Edison)

I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we come from, we will have failed. ~ Carl Sagan

There was a dissociative discrepancy between the magnitude of the event and the smallness of the moment.