Empires of Light Quotes

“For nine months, the engineers had been testing and calibrating and retesting all aspects of the system, especially the behemoth Westinghouse dynamos. Lead engineer B. J. Lamme described what happened during one early test in Pittsburgh of a giant dynamo when numerous little temporary steel bolts had “loosened up under vibration, and finally shook into contact with each other, thus forming a short circuit…. In a moment there was one tremendous [electric] arc around the end of the windings of the entire machine…. It looked, at first glance, as though the whole infernal regions had broken loose. Everybody jumped for cover.” One man managed to shut down the machine, and gradually the huge flaming electrical arc that had engulfed the dynamo subsided. Peering forth from their shelters, the engineers then rushed back and “someone climbed underneath to see what had become of our man inside … expecting him to be badly scorched…. He said the fire came in all around him but did not touch him.”30 No one present had ever seen such a sight.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“George Westinghouse, like Edison, thought money was important only as a form of “stored energy” to use as he wished in his work and expand his businesses. He was interested not in being rich, but in helping the world. He strove incessantly to deliver better, more reliable products.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“the Royal Institution that he amplified the exquisite notes he had taken during the quartet of talks, made numerous illustrations, compiled an index, and bound it all together into a lovely little book. This he sent along to his new idol, Sir Humphry Davy. Later Faraday would write, “My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the services of Science … induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy.”20 Sir Humphry, having risen to magnificent heights from his own humble beginnings, had been sufficiently impressed by the ambition, intelligence, and ardor of this twenty-two-year-old blacksmith’s son (and his jewel of a book) to hire Michael Faraday as his assistant. The job paid £100 a year, along with two upstairs rooms at the institution and a supply of coal and candles.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“Tesla had run into the problem that even if one system (his) was better, sheer inertia, habit, and the cost of the new could combine to thwart technological improvement.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“No competition means no invention.”20 In the wake of the Barings debacle, however, Villard had seen his German-funded North American Bank, source of much Edison GE electrical capital, collapse.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“The emblems of status may shift, but human nature generally delights in being first.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“His faith in the new industry, his advice, and his constant financial support were the factors that led to its spectacular development; otherwise it might have taken many more years for it to reach its tremendous proportions.”9”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“Yet Morgan was surprisingly patient. As an investment banker who had backed many railroads, which were continually absorbing new technologies, he seemed quite accepting that problems large and small were inevitable.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light

“A philosopher,” Faraday explained, “should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion but determined to judge for himself. He should not be biased by appearances, have no favourite hypothesis, be of no school and in doctrine have no master…. Truth should be his primary object. If these qualities be added to industry, he may indeed hope to walk within the veil of the temple of nature.”
― Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light