#83 Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. Great indeed is the power of electricity. And in the final decades of the 19th century, three titans of America's Gilded Age were among the Promethean few who dreamed of the possibilities hidden in this force of nature. Its awesome power visible only in the wild rumble and slash of electrical storms.
Each Titan was determined to master this mysterious fluid. Each vied to construct an empire of light and energy on a new and monumental scale. Each envisioned radiant enterprises that would straddle the globe, illuminating the night and easing forever the burden of brute labor.
This is the story of the nascent years of the electric power industry and the rise of a new technology that completely transformed society. A tale told largely through three visionary figures, their triumphs, their blunders, and their caustic feuds.
All right, so that was an excerpt from the book that I read this week and the one I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Empires of Light, Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. So this one paragraph just gives you an idea of the time that this entire story is set in.
It says, the miracle of the great Atlantic cable flashed telegrams across the coldest depths of the ocean, where once letters from JP. Morgan's father, JP. Morgan actually plays an important role in this story. I didn't know that going into the, before I read the book.
Once letters from JP. Morgan's father in the London office took weeks to arrive. Now telegrams pulse through in mere minutes. The railroads had become mighty, creating new cities where there had been only marshland or prairie. And in just the past year, they had laid an astounding 10,000 miles of track. The 1880 census, that's where the story begins. It's gonna go all the way up until the early 1900s. Census showed 50 million Americans. JP. Morgan, unlike many of his old money peers, relished this new temper of the times. He admired men like Edison, who were bold, ambitious, hardworking and confident. So not only does JP. Morgan play a role, which I'll expound on later on in the podcast, in financing some of these electrical companies, but he also had the first, his house was the first private home in New York City that was lighted up and actually wired for electricity. And one of the main takeaways of this story that I was thinking about is how important it is to study, like the electrical industry is now massive and we could not imagine living without it. But at the very beginning, things look very different.
And so humans have the tendency to look at how things are now and extrapolate in the future that it's just gonna be the same. And obviously that's not the case. And so here is how individual houses were able to have electric lighting at the beginning of this industry. And think about how different this experience is taking place in JP Morgan's house, as it is in where you live.
It says they were run by generators. It says the generator had to be run by an expert engineer who came on duty at 3 p.m. and got up steam so that any time after 4 o'clock on a winter's afternoon, the lights could be turned on. Now think about that. We flip a switch. They had an actual person in the house and he had to be an expert engineer. He says this man, so it starts at 4 o'clock, this man went off duty at 11 p.m. It was natural that the family should often forget to watch the clock. So then at 11 p.m., all the lights turn off. He says the lights would die down and go out. Then there was a careful groping about in the sudden murk to light candles and kerosene lamps.