IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021 - 15

only footnote that is out of place, temporally speaking,
when one begins with the last chapter.
Another vexing problem with Morris's organizational
plan is that while he divided his chapters into
eight equal periods of ten years each (except the first
chapter, which covers a 13-year period), he has also
assigned a technology name to each chapter that best
characterizes Edison's activity during that period-
botany, chemistry, magnetism, light, sound, and telegraph,
natural philosophy, etc. Unfortunately, Edison's
discoveries within the date range covered by each
chapter do not always fit into the name of the discipline
that Morris assigned to that chapter, with the result that
the discussion of Edison's inventions pops up in the
most unlikely places. For example, the presentation of
Edison's wireless telegraphy concept for passengers to
communicate with the outside world while on moving
trains, which he developed in conjunction with his
associate Gilliland, appears in the chapter titled " Light
1880-1889 " rather than in the chapter titled " Telegraphy, "
where you might expect to find it, based on the
chapter title. Worse yet, it is tucked away in two paragraphs
that are randomly inserted in the middle of a
much longer discourse about Edison's relationship with
his new wife, Mina, a discourse subtitled with Edison's
pet names for Mina, " Billy, George, Tom, and Willie, "
which have nothing to do with wireless telegraphy. It is
painfully obvious that these two standalone paragraphs
about wireless telegraphy have nothing to do with the
surrounding text. Furthermore, Morris's description of
the wireless telegraphy for moving trains, known as the
" grasshopper " concept, is muddled at best. He says the
concept never flourished, but he fails to mention that
the concept worked successfully on the Lehigh Valley
Railroad for a period of five years.
What else is new in Morris's book? Clearly, he has
addressed Edison's personal relationships with his
wives, children, and employees in more detail than
most other biographers. However, based on the content
found in five other noted Edison biographies, it is
not obvious that there is anything really new and different
in Morris's book about Edison's personality or the
technologies he developed. Morris claims that previous
Edison biographies have not " offered much coverage
of the last decades of Edison's life, " but it seemed to
me that several previous biographies, such as the ones
by Paul Israel (1998) and Matthew Josephson (1959),
have adequately covered this period of Edison's life.
The inside of the front dust cover boldly claims
that " Morris sweeps aside conspiratorial theories positing
an enmity between Edison and Nikola Tesla and
June 2021
presents proof of their mutually admiring, if wary, relationship. "
What enmity? Morris presents only positive
vignettes about their relationship as if there were no
negative vignettes suggesting an enmity. In fact, I could
find no mention of enmity between the two in any of
the five existing biographies I searched. It seems to me
if Morris wanted to sweep aside conspiratorial theories,
he should at least identify the negative vignettes that
spawned the conspiratorial theories, and then sweep
them away. For example, as an indication that there
was no enmity between the two, Morris cites a positive
statement that Tesla made at his acceptance speech
for the Edison Medal, but Morris fails to mention what
Tesla said about Edison when B. A. Behrend, chairman
of the Edison Medal committee first notified Tesla that
he was to receive the award. Tesla's Pulitzer biographer
and long-time personal friend, John O'Neill, records
Tesla's diatribe delivered to Behrend:
You propose, Tesla replied, to honor me with
a medal which I could pin upon my coat and
strut for a vain hour before the members and
guests of your Institute. You would bestow an
outward semblance of honoring me but you
would decorate my body and continue to let
starve, for failure to supply recognition, my
mind and its creative products which have
supplied the foundation upon which the major
portion of your Institute exists. And when you
would go through the vacuous pantomime of
honoring Tesla you would not be honoring
Tesla but Edison who has previously shared
unearned glory from every previous recipient
of this medal [1, p. 231].
Tesla finally agreed to accept the Edison Award, but
on the evening of the gala affair that he was to receive
the medal, Tesla had second thoughts just before he
was to give his acceptance speech. O'Neill writes that
Tesla walked out of the building just before the ceremony
was to begin, with every intention of embarrassing
the committee by not accepting the medal.
Behrend chased after Tesla and finally persuaded
him to return to the building to accept the award, but
only after much pleading. That this vignette that took
place later in Tesla's life gives an entirely different view
of what Tesla thought of Edison than Morris projects
and clearly suggests that there was a lingering enmity
between Tesla and Edison.
To further support his thesis, Morris also describes
how well Tesla and Edison got along when Tesla was
first employed by Edison, but he does not describe
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021

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