culture that they are. that's part of the story. the book is, has tragic heroes and tragic antiheroes, one of whom is in jail. and i wanted to avoid making in the story of him and yet in the end this man, who was briefly the richest man in russia, who ran the most successful private oil company in russia at the time of his arrest in 2003, this man has been in jail now for nearly ten years. in october 2013 he will have been in jail for ten years. and this very much is the result of a blood match with his nemesis, vladimir putin. and, of course, one of the big questions is, when will he get out?

no one knows. but the other question is, what exactly did he do? and there has been a great deal of coverage. and i didn't want to add to that whole literature. but what i have tried to do is to go into his company, and i've had interviews with a number of the players in that company to try to find out what was unique about that company that he built. what was unique about it that enabled it to double oil production within four short years, how was that done? and so you'll find there's a chapter on that side of the story. and then lastly, i have to say that this is a story of guilty love, which i'll come back to if you ask me. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> and now, ernest freeberg recounts thomas edison's creation of the incandescent

lightbulb b in 1879. this is about an hour. >> thomas edison was an american origin. he held 1,093 patents in his lifetime in everything from botany to the phonograph. no other american inventor has more. his collected papers at rutgers university number five million pages. scholars have been working on them since 1978. his final laboratory if west orange, new jersey, occupies 21 acres and is now a national park. on exhibit there, among other thing, is his personal desk that includes a pigeon hole labeled, "new things," which is crammed full of papers and notes on ideas he never got to. near the end of his life he said i put my money on the sun and solar energy. what a source of power. i hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

i wish i had more years left. perhaps edison contributed to us the next best thing. it's described by historian ernest freeberg in his brilliant new book "the age of edison." while the electric light is not a natural subject for the computer history museum, i've invited professor freeberg to have today's conversation because of his profound observations about the nature of invention and inventers, the lessons that he draws out speak across the decades to a time and place here and now in sill con valley for ed soften's approach and the success it produces are quite familiar. and in both cases the world has changed forever because of it. ernest is a distinguished professor of humanities at the university of tennessee. his documentaries are heard on public radio, and he lectures frequently for the organization of american historians. please join me in welcoming

ernest freeberg. [applause] >> welcome to the museum. >> thanks. it's great to be here. >> we're thrilled to have you here. let's talk about what the book is not. what the book is not is, first of all, a biography of edison. >> right. >> it's not a discussion of the invention of electricity. it's not a discussion to have competition between edison and tesla which is a favorite subject around here. [laughter] but we're not going into that today. but what it is and what i love about it is it's a social and, to a great extent also, a technological history of the incandescent light and the enormous impact the lighting of america had on our society and on the world. >> that's right. and i think it's, in many ways, a foundation of the modern economy that we live in and

shapes our louvres in ways that -- our lives in ways that are often ip visible to us just because light so ubiquitous. >> did you have a theory about edison going into the project? >> i think i began with the premise that shows up many our textbooks, that edison was the inventer of the lightbulb. i was not so much interested in edison's role as i was sort of what happens when the light bug b leaves his laboratory and goes out into -- looking at what isn't actually there, i began to realize the actually story of his invention process was a lot more complicated and interesting than i had expected. >> and you used the grade about past examinations of edison as often being, in your words, more hero worship than history. and while i want to get into the process of inventing in a minute, because that's a very important topic for us, why as a historian do you see it necessary to make that distinction? >> well, i think partly it's, we

need to understand how important it is for inventers themselves to turn themselves into heroes, that part of what they're doing when they're selling a product is selling their own identity. and edison was really a master at this. people, you know, gave him this phrase, the wizard of menlo park, and he cultivated that very conscientiously, and it was a very powerful tool for him in order to develop funding and to get the world to trust him that it would be a good idea to put this powerful, deadly force of electricity into their houses. >> and it did turn out to be a pretty deadly force in the beginning. we're going to talk about that. back to this hero thing too, for a minute, so there are parallels to the way that you talk about the evolution of edison finally perfecting the incandescent light x. the way we often talk about the evolution of computing as well. and you've actually spelled some of these out, and i just want to

get you to talk about those for a minute. first of all, you talk about and debunk really the notion that most great progress stems from the single brilliant inventer alone in the lab -- >> right. >> that there's a eureka moment, there's this flash of brilliance and that the innovation happens in that isolation and not so much in an ecosystem. all three of those things you take on early in the book, and you say that's not really what happened. it wasn't true in edison's time. can you talk a little bit about that and what you learned? >> partly, i think people long for that story, that great eureka moment story. it's exciting, and it's accessible the people. it's a lot more complicated to understand the exchange of ideas, the competition for relevant patents, the sort of battles over the marketplace. it's much easier to think of these great ideas as being passed down to us by a sort of mount rushmore of technological creativity. >> and in the case of edison and

the lightbulb, how did it happen if. >> well, first of all, edison entered very late into the search for a working incandescent bulb. there were five or six other rival inventors who held pat tents ahead of edison, crucial patents. all of them recognized the key elements of a vacuum bulb and a carbon fill filament. is edison was entering into a crowded field, and he learned a lot from the mistakes and successes of his rifles. and -- rivals. there was a lot of battling over the patents. >> who else was involved at the time? trying, competitively trying to achieve the same things that edison was trying to achieve? >> another fascinating character is hiram maxim, known for the maxim gun x. he beat edison to some crucial patents about how to treat the filament and had a working incandescent lightbulb in the field before edison did. joseph swan in new castle in

england also had a, was working for years on developing a working lightbulb and actually put one into the field, lit his house, lit a nearby mansion, set up the first outdoor street light in front of his shop in newcastle and had a pass tent six months before -- patent six months before edison did. the big test of this was in paris at the electrical exposition. and edison won the day when he arrived with this, but he was there with five other people who also had working incandescent lighting systems right at the same time. >> and were they all aware, as inventers might be aware today, of even other's work? >> yes. >> and the progress they were making? >> yes. and there were at least a dozen, if you go back -- the first person to identify the possibility of incandescent light was sir humphrey daley in 1810. and they didn't quite have all

the pieces together. it really converged in the 870s. but for more than half a century, people were trying to create the incandescent light. >> what did you discover about the way edison felt about these other incremental stages of progress that other inventors were making? >> well, i think, i suspect like many other inventers e had a real sense of rivalry. he announced quite arrogantly that when he entered the field that he had figured this out in a way that nobody else had, and his first big breakthrough was to suggest that they were all wrong because they were trying to create a carbon filament bulb, and he was going to create a titanium bulb. and when he announced this, stock markets for gas around the glob plummeted -- globe plummeted because people were so convinced if edison says he can do this, surely he can. six months later or he had to say i think i'm going to go back to carbon with the rest of the crowded field. >> and as we get into the

discussion of the technology, let's talk a little bit about a really wonderful phrase that you have early in the book which is that edison invented a whole new style of invention. did he almost invent the modern way we think of innovation happening? >> that's often been said. his model at pen low park was to create the first sort of research and development laboratory where he often was very, very critical of college education and was sort of proud of the fact that he was largely self-taught. but he knew enough to go out and hire university-trained mathematicians and people who understood the latest chemistry to help anymore this project. he also had to hire technicians who could realize his ideas. a glass blower, for example. he needed somebody who was able to realize the various ideas that they wanted to experiment with. so it really was the swire team working -- entire team working collaboratively, intensely, but

ed soften was the guiding intellect. many of them knew a lot more about their particular specialty, but edison was the one who set the agenda and also was the one who had to negotiate with the capitalists in order to get the money to pay for what turned out to be a very, very expensive research and development process. when edison launched this, he called this an invention factory, and he promised that he was going to come up with a minor invention every ten days and an amazing breakthrough every six months. he wasn't sure what those things were or what field it was, he was just going to create great ideas. >> he just announced this to the world. almost like the more's law of invention, i'm just going to continue to roll these things out. >> yes. >> well, he had two other things, you mentioned one, access to capital from his own considerable wealth, because he is of making tremendous royalties off a number of inventions not least of which was the phonograph, and wasn't he investing a lot of that back into -- >> the big chunk of money he

made was from the telecraft. -- telegraph. learned the business and figured out how to send transmissions both directions on the same wire which was a very, very valuable patent for western union. he got a good payoff for that. i don't think he made as much with the phonograph because people were fascinated, but they didn't really know what it was good for. people said this was his most, you know, ingenious but useless invention. [laughter] people bought tickets to see a phonograph on stage, but once you'd seen it, what's it good for? it took a while for people to recognize that music was the great use for it. edison, being deaf, didn't think about the value of music. >> must have been thrilling to sit and watch a phonograph on stage play -- [laughter] play a cylinder. >> once. >> and then the other thing that he had was a real commercial sense. he wanted to invent things that had commercial potential and really put them out into the market. >> absolutely. he was not a scientist. he drew very heavily on

scientists. he did the thing which many american inventers were doing at that time which was to borrow very heavily from european scientists, to take their ideas and find ways to make them much cheaper and more effective and put them into the marketplace and sell them around the globe. so that was very, very important. and edison very often even with the electric light, he had to go out and was always frustrated with the lack of capital support. so he had to very often go out and create his own electrical manufacturing companies, for example. and he had to market this. he had to work out the aesthetics of electric light to try and convince people this was not just going to be a more efficient light, but it could be beautiful in ways that gaslight could not be. ..

can gaslight from cool, which was an enormous and heavily capitalized business what edison was taking root. everybody recognize people wanted light it would pay an enormous amount. in the case of gas to put up with terrible inconvenience to have the benefit of late and add us to do there was a marketer. the gas lights were actually

pervasive. the rapid hot, pittsburgh, philadelphia, baltimore, boston. >> mackey was a terrible type elegy. the gas had to be kept under pressure at large takes, often in poor neighborhoods where they would explode periodically to cause terrible destruction. the pipe sleep so the soil became terribly poisonous. people were offered a 60 they did they just just rate. it oxygen out of the year cover he did approves terribly and replace the oxygen with noxious assets that did have damaging furniture. if you are wealthy enough to afford gas lake county also had to be wild enough to replace your furniture every couple of years because of the damage the lights would do the tier binding

fabrics and so forth. >> there was this tremendous hunger for an alternative. >> everybody do that, so at his head was struggling market. everybody knew there was money to be made. the bank is at acidity of the two scum need is the solution naturally? could be workable of marketable? speed by country davey to have been kinds of light in his experiment and he was interested in electrochemistry and not these is a commercial product. it was so expensive to generate electricity that it didn't save valuable until the typo came along later. he demonstrated the berkeley, which was a much more powerful, bright light rather than using a filament it uses to carbon rod

can close enough so the current jobs across the gap and creates a light many thousand times greater. >> whited abbasid wanted that the other to pursue as a way perfected this? be like somebody beat him to it. the person who let downtown streets of america was charles brasch, who had a similar tricia greeted his life. like is largely self educated, have access to site to take a mary kate and was hungry for the source of information. following the magazine's cover figured out how to make is a parkway. europeans are experimenting and he figured out how to make would it was cheaper, more efficient that anybody else had before.

so charles brasch, the great white way of, that was all done but are quite in charles brasch is not just the american market, but the global market. >> the way these were deployed its amazing. we've got these massive towers built in the hearts of cities in a biblical white house. >> one of the things and mention his good ideas that go bad and this is clearly one of those. san jose being a famous location for one of these towers. because they are expensive and so brilliant, you could create one artificial moon above the town and rather than putting lamps down low.

when erected one company discovered it would cast terrible shadows he had to do another tower in another. detroit was the high water mark. they had to put up 70 separate towers to get every spot in town into work so that they pretty see the tower started to fall down and they just let them go. >> individual solution was the solution being sought after but this refinement that addison and its other competitors wanted. >> was to was to make the life is about. one massive night of many thousands of candlepower. it was another to break into usable pieces you could bring indoors. when they brought indoors, which they try to do a fancy are the

sorts of things, the light made everybody cadaverous. every wrinkle and gray hairs stood out. so many people after attending events and i'm never going to electric i.d. can. is >> somehow in a given name frames versus pcs here. let's talk about the actual technology that enabled this to happen because the key development itself was the filament. so can you talk about the various attempts or try and what edison breakthrough was on this click >> it's a very complicated system in the filament was one of the missing pieces. is and it can test it every high temperature. he needed to have a bold and was late developments in the improvement of creating a vacuum that allowed a lot of these people to a breakthrough at the

same time. he needed to provide a steady current of electricity has a reasonable cost. what edison developed the filament company was working on the entire system is not made his entire system so successful. it would've been the the entire integrated system. >> he envisioned the whole thing from an event like >> even neater. he had to charge customers come and make sure they knew they were getting a good deal. he had to invent immuno to put on people's houses to know what they pay for. >> he thought in systemic terms about the problems. not simply in the breakthrough that would enable something hot and at one point of the system. >> at a something emerge out of this contest is the person we remember as the inventor of the

electric light, even though we had many rivals. to figure out how to create a marketable system and have some chance of taking on the gas companies for that market. >> let's talk about -- by the way, i just want to talk about his idea. he called it simply late. his notion was that this bolt had to be extraordinarily simple and had to be something that any average person could understand how to use and could use very easily in the light itself would be so pure and clean. >> in many ways it's the most complicated technical assistance that existed in the 1880s. before the consumer as the on-off switch. no matches, no cleaning of williams. he didn't even change your own label. you the contractor to come and it's an electrician to change the light bulbs. i'm lee. he's extremely technical systems

work best in the market place to do as little as possible. >> i just think that's brilliant. there are local and modern examples all over the place. >> i want to talk about the famous showdown at the paris exhibition in 1881 that utah about. he roughly brought the incandescent bold to live in 1879. is that about right? >> new year's eve 1879. he sought not perfected the system, but convinced a lot of people because those old select grade, but if you use later were all burned out. but this exhibition in 1880, he had something that could last much longer. >> by the way, what was that he figured out about the filament that wouldn't burn out so

quickly? >> well, he knew it was carbon. he happened to his approach for he would try anything. he's famous for saying i felt a million times and that's fine because i learned something each time. so he tried your hair fishing line and couric, whatever carbon element he could find conceptus laboratory full of every possible element and finally block in kamloops of bamboo filament. when he decided to do was going to be the key to his initial success, he hired with great fanfare three explorers and sent them around the globe to go find the best form of bamboo filament. it was a great form of publicity for him, especially when it's where he went to latin america never came back.

[laughter] the one who went to japan seem to make the most consistent favor said the break revolts were bamboo paper. >> it shows the extent to which he was determined to spare no expense and also get the perfect solution. and at the same time made it a public relations coup. talk a little bit about what he did in paris. i want to read which you write in the book about how he set up his own creation in there a lot to people in paris trying to show off their approach. so he built a 220-ton generating machine. he shipped it from america to paris. he designed a giantess leave the

grand hall was electric fridays and an electrified porch and of themselves. and next to bill shannon throughout the world ran the gold medal of honor for electric lighting. as a master stroke. >> in fairness, he did have the better system in the sense he brought the much more complex dynamo that he brought to 220-ton jumbo dynamo is more efficient has anybody thought possible at the turn. >> why was that? >> yet certain insights into the construction of the dynamo, took it apart and reconstructed it. he also had a breakthrough with the filament that he recognized

the fact you need to be high resistance filament, which is counterintuitive for reasons i don't quite understand. but it is counterintuitive to electrical experts at the time and not proved to be a stroke that made his much more efficient than others. so he did win fair and square, but he also did great since this is about showmanship and winning the gold medal would help him when the pat moyer that was coming when people were going to invest in technology and put their man in the spinning revolving picture of themselves. >> of course brash, russia's crushed by this. he says will, i have these working bulbs at fairmont, may be years before addison. why is he getting all the

credit? >> wherever he set up as our clay, people said is that the new edison light? >> was paris the knockout punch in the competition is to be not only the builder of the most efficient system, but also putting addison on the map is the man at the center of it. >> not really. it turned out to be very sick competition for at least a decade. there were people who found ways around and went on and on about control of this technology. soon appeared as the 1880s, six or seven companies in the business to addison had an advantage because he had visibility, more capital than others, but he had lots of lots of rifles and people were hungry for light.

there was this chaotic war industries over who is going to get the contract between all these companies. >> edison comes back to america appeared what is the next step? over the next decade, how does this play out in his own vision for how he will rule his own system now? >> he has to go into the manufacturing business. he always said i want to go back to the laboratory and be an inventor, that he felt as if he never got support from his backers to be free to run his factory. so he had to create a series of manufacturing come base in order to create the product. he had to work with lighting designers to think about chandeliers and various uses from using it in the theater. across the board he was trying to sell otherwise electric light was better than gas. so we had to do that in contracts with local companies willing to buy his equipment and go into the business.

as it turned out come at us and make money selling equipment come with the people who went in using his equipment found it much harder to make a living partly because there is lots of competitors going after the same business. >> did he have in hot where he really showed everyone what could happen if you had an electrified view of the world >> right, in downtown manhattan a fun place with major newspapers in his wall street backers, jpmorgan and so forth. this is a highly publicized place to show. this d.c. power. we think in terms of the grid

now and addison was in terms of a good, but a small grid. then you'd have to have another system. you have a power station every five blocks and that was his model. is >> so let's talk about the social of locations now with electricity being rolled out, edison system and others being proven. even talk about if it changes it brings to modern life. like a suddenly erupted on the scene. one of the things that begin to happen, especially in an urban setting where life comes to the average home. >> it doesn't arrive at homes except the homes of the wealthy at all. this is a common model where a

mess until the price comes down and it took decades for the average person to afford electric light. so factories are early adopters. there is a lot of investment in these new machine and the possibility of keeping this running 24 hours a day was very enticing. for labor there was a real battle. this is the point of labor unions are organizing to make a day shorter and along comes a tool that erases what they thought of as god's distinction between the period of rest. >> it completely changes the whole definition of the word. >> unions push for no network. the compromises and laborers were paid more. there is a real struggle over child labor. that was one of the things those early reformers managed to

battle fires was not eliminating child labor at the middle of the night. >> how successful was this pushback by labor during this period? >> successful enough to create is some extra night hours. especially for the transportation industry when it did create a transportation delivery system. add to that point, train travel was limited at eight because passengers did want to trust themselves to a train that couldn't see down the track very far for understandable reason. they have ships moving much faster, so electric light macy's travel much more safe in this

period. things like 24 hours a day accelerated the economy of this. >> many workers left the electric light. it is dangerous to workers in terms of opening the possibility that the work they would never read. but office workers, people and many skilled occupation, postal clerks are so happy to not be working under gaslight that they welcomed the electric light. >> he spent a fair amount of time talking about safety in the book, not working with electricity, which i want to talk about in a minute, but just making city safer, neighborhoods safer, the facts i could be brought back from a giant arc light, but really to the street level. >> recalled that the streetlight of policemen on the pole.

this is a way to open up spaces is so working people who got off work and enjoy parks and skating rink in toboggan slide and it really opened up the city, made it available in a way that was inconceivable it to point. >> let's talk about the profession because it's easy to forget today as you point out in the book there were no electricians. there were no standards. electrical engineering was an entirely new idea. there were no electrical engineers until this all started to come about architects building with electricity and city planners as we've been talking about. there is a whole generation of jobs that open up as this phenomenon is forward. >> one of the other things he had to do was create a school to train his employees about how to use electricity.

there is increasing pressure on universities to develop the first electrical engineering programs. many cities have electrical clubs where young and would pay a small membership see them get to hear lectures on a periodic basis and often have a laboratory room where they could try experiments have not sort of thing. it was largely people self-taught of the first-generation, which produced an awful lot of safety problem. people were learning the hard way. >> they really were. the electrical connections and the lightning strike were not on power lines. they were in some cases not fired by the average person had, what they? that strikes me as incredible. why was it done that way? >> there were no regulations.

the guidelines for how to do this. this has started with the telegraph wires and the burglar alarm wires, fire alarm wires. the 18 century cities with wires sticking out of the polls. >> kids love to grab them and break them because they give you a little tingle. once these fires started to cross with those, it became extremely dangerous. these are unregulated. there'd be five or six in a given city is looking for a market. it didn't cost that much money to buy a dynamo and they just started to throw wires over people's houses and tack them to trees and mail them to people's houses without permission. was he put those things together, people started to be electrocuted in very graphic ways. >> you have graphic examples in your book. a lot of the research was done with newspapers of the era and

they loved the stories about meals being tied electrified polls. >> especially on by the gas companies. but what were the other things you discovered in the media's reporting of the phenomenon, not the danger necessarily, but just a wonder of coming to america. talk about that. >> my favorite part was going back and finding at one point in every city town was the night the light came on and people would show up by the hundreds into downtown street and wait for the flip of a ceremonial switch. there'd be speeches on the lebanon. there'd be cannon blasts in cheyenne, wyoming. the whole town broke into song,

thanking them for bringing the gift of electricity. so there is enormous sense of excitement and people wherever they were stepping into what they saw as a new era in the modern world when the electric light came on. even though wasn't in their homes. for many decades, electric light was something you've visited. you may see a network and a downtown and amusement parks. it would be in the city square, but you go home to a kerosene lamp or gaslamp. >> what was the social impact of that distinction between homes they couldn't afford electric light and homes to which it came much later? >> it was often greeted as a great democratizing invention. it wasn't something the rich want it to work to themselves, but rather the value was more

and more people could be brought online. even though it was something that is fairly good, up until the 1920s, people aside a sunday reaching down into the middle class and ultimately into working-class homes. at the same time commit to sharpen the line between the haves and have-nots. especially in the growing division between rural america and urban america in this. these are the years when americans move from thinking of themselves as jeffersonian farmer's to thinking of themselves as part of an urban nation analogically created very sharp divide between the old world and the new one that was emerging and you can see time and again in the journals that they're very aware of the fact somewhere out there our cities are people staying up late and go to night baseball games at

coney island and the whole world they are missing out on. so that distinction was there right from the start. >> what's happening to addison at this point? is he now held at the stitching genius at the age to an even greater level than he had been at that point because now the democratization was making his own image that much greater? >> it's an interesting story because he was so committed to the d.c. power system and that it's replaced very, very quickly by the westinghouse takes over at edison himself because he bet on the wrong horse loses control emerges in the commons general electric. >> said he thought of the leading business a decade and in fact, that was as he's leaving the business, he gets a very

nice payoff and says i'm going to take my money, go back to invent teams and come up with something so amazing that no one will remember it was associated with electrically. which didn't happen. >> kicked out of his own company. >> he continued to be remembered as a great expert on electricity and spent the rest of his life as a scientific pundit. everybody wanted to know at edison thought about whatever new technology came on and he was happy to play that role. >> out vigorous business site on the direct versus alternating current battle? >> is most famously known for pushing the idea of using the electric chair for prisoners. if you're going to do that you have to use westinghouse ht system because that will work

best to kill people. and to demonstrate his, he had a system that would be willing to watch an electric keep them to this. >> that's a sad we are really not that familiar with. >> he was a ruthless competitor. >> at the time the people in the street were dying from ac power. he was reckless and would discredit entirely. so he had a personal vested interest in d.c. power, which clearly clouded his government. at the same time, there is no such thing as fire installation in those days. basically they put coffin paint on high-powered lawyers and also work as installation.

so many people were disturbed by these very public and city streets and 90 cents out the continued, ultimately the public would reach a point where it was not willing to go forward with electricity. european engineers came to america. they saw the chaos of the waters and sad how can you put up with this? fair trade. we have violated the united states than the rest of europe died. is >> looking at the questions passed out from the audience. there's some really, really great questions we just touched on ac versus d.c.

i'm going to ask you a couple here. was this element and a light bulb, was standardized very quickly once the more or less perfect technology had been decided upon. >> addison's bamboo filament for a very brief. had to byerly pat and go into the partnership at this great rival back some have figured out how to use a gasoline treatment to treat the bamboo, which was necessary to make it last longer. another rival pioneered the idea of creating a cellulose base and made it test of filament and the band are five or an ultimately repays to. this is an evolutionary process. a lot of people working on this got better and better until it

culminated in a metallic filament that was developed in germany and ashley in tiny emirate by general electric, which totally changed everything in a way because they is so much more efficient than the old carbon filament. that was the breakthrough that allowed electric way to really compete against guys. general electric said this is addison's stream finally realized. this is three decades after addison launched the bull promising this was an pundit, cheap form of light that everybody was going to enjoy. it wasn't until the 19 teens as they started to enter into the marketplace. there is a similar entry price. if you have carbon filaments in your bold, the electric company would exchange the wolves for you. if you wanted the more efficient

bulbs, you have to buy your own. so that slowed things down. but it was so much more efficient to within a decade or so, everybody switched over to metallic element. >> that is so interesting because there are modern parallels they are but as transformational as a piece of technology he can be come it can still take a long time to get penetrated broadley commented inexpensive inexpensive to be except able to many people. that was just as true for electricity as it is for computing. >> in 19 dirty the estimate to 70% of urban homes are wired for electricity. that's 50 years just to get the wire into people's houses. that was created by the building boom in the 1920s. people were reluctant to tear up the walls and install, so his

new housing a 1920. electricity was the standard. >> you touched on the very next question is going to ask, which is is the nature people were afraid of wiring their homes click there something that held us back to my people about what electricity to come in because of the danger represented. >> yes, although everybody recognize how nasty gaslight was. in comparison to come the people saw the electric light is safer and cleaner, but there is a resistance to put into deadly force into your house. i was especially a problem initially. the most famous is when is one of the early years is one of the vanderbilts and rather than ripping up the walls, they would

run the wires and interacted badly with how it spread in the wallpaper it basically set the room on fire. the other backer, jpmorgan, one of the first desk lamps. it also had a short had burned his desk descenders. yet he remained enthusiastic. >> even after that is the kind of investor you want. [laughter] is >> edison's management style. i want to touch on that to the extent you uncover that in your research. obviously he's at the center of this, but had a factory with

thousands of people in his laboratories were populated with many researchers from the brilliant individuals under him. how did he manage that? do we know how edison took to task on in this context? >> a change as industries became router. the menlo park group is a fairly small group. about 20 people working with him. so he had a personal intent relationship, working essentially 24 hours a day. he would sleep odd hours here and there, but all night long would be working at in his entire team would expect to be working within. almost all of them, including many who do about word about the scientific elements of this always credited edison would've been the guiding spirit of their enterprise, that he manage to create a spirit of teamwork that most of them remembered for the

rest of their lives. >> one of the questions i was going to ask is who the audience. the mystical idea that this is fire inside a bottle, did you run across that at all but they were also people who were intrigued by that or who were afraid of that. both here and in europe have heard that story told. did you run across that? >> i did not. time and again journalists explain to readers what an incandescent bulb with a. they always found it to be incredibly beautiful and they used a lot of a lot of organic metaphors that look to them like a droplet of fire in a teardrop for an italian sunset or a flower and they were drawn really to its beauty above all

else and they love to look at it. you are supposed to look once you got to metallic filament. that's a whole part the story had not expected to sign. it was so bright that leading reformers had to teach people to use lampshades. people said rushed ip money for light and put a top on it? they have to say it's not good to stare at the light. of course it's unconscionable to look right at it here they were manuals that would show you to put the lights here and cast it to your book here. this is how you do this because there is a real concern of the world have become so bright people's eyes would be damaged. >> what is the most surprising

things? lower the things that surprised you the most that she didn't expect to uncover? >> is the development of this illumination engineering. in the early 20th century, people decided there is too much light in the entire focus had been on called third and people were beginning to think about shaping the light. it's all another invention of the electric light as these lamination engineers try to work out the details of what each interior space we move in and out of ought to feel like. this is one window designers figured out how to use light should make them alluring as

possible. it uses bolts to create effects that had not been possible before. and you get loose in the 1880s and it was fiancée because it was brilliantly lived. by 1920 you could tell us a great restaurant because it was very dark. so we moved in and out of the is carefully worked out by illumination engineers. they had to think about things like what should a church look like and catholics have different ideas and protestant mormons about what might ought to look like be sacred and whether or not electric light was an intrusion on their secret base our way to enhance their secret base. i thought all these things something we take for granted. we moved to a room, it lighting

is designed to make us feel a particular way. without stopping to think about all the intentionality that was involved in that. >> this is a great question, one that i applied some incentive. the friendship between edison and henry ford, you talk about that in the book. can you go into that? it's fascinating to think of edison import existing side-by-side, bringing so much to society. >> edison at one point them toward ford was always grateful for that afterward that latest episode when he created his museum in dearborn, michigan. he not only gathered he could ever find that even pick up the topsoil that carry two-way

affair. to assume that their life they would go a long camping trips together with you both to announce they had done so much to create. we're going to get away from it all. the world is too bright and hectic and were just going to go fishing and of course it became a celebrity event to carry out the camping equipment, so they couldn't quite let it go. [laughter] >> was that an important part of the social history you're trying to tell? >> really more a part of thinking about a wide movement to afford an edison participated in to suggest a country gone too far in creating artificial

systems. that was the part that interested me the most. for certainly did everything he could to submit advantage of edison as a great hero that we started our powerstation talking about. >> so we are coming out to that point whereas he said, edison starts to reflect back on these things then there's this great quote in the book when you talk about him going on vacations. he said i don't want to be near electricity. i want an old suit, multi, a few french novels and a fishing hat. the business as he seemed long to that simpler time i wanted to get away from the complex agent himself again. >> many people were grappling with -- there a lot of critics. as much as people are hungry for it and it created this public spaces in network safer and more

effective, many people were dissolution. they said this is a terrible trade. would have a much more beautiful nighttime, but we've made it clear daytime is that these poles and wires and other signs. why would we trade day for night quakes many people were concerned about that. they're worried about the psychological effects. for things we know about the circadian rhythms and sleep. people are more energized by electric light, but also more exhausted by it. ..

>> a whole piece of human experience. and he studied children and felt like children who lived under too much life became irritable and lacking any kind of spiritual dimension. >> did you find any indication that at his and at the end of his life was reflecting back on that at all our was always for him just about pushing forward, the future, the next great thing? >> edison was right to the and a great defender of artificial life.

he said you put someone under artificial light and they will improve. this is somehow going to make you a better person. more energetic, he never was clear on exactly how it would make it better but he was pretty convinced it would. >> so he's been called the greatest innovator of the stage. would you agree with that statement? >> he certainly deserves enormous credit. but really the book is designed i think to suggest the fact that the age itself is more interesting than edison. than in some ways it's the agent that invaded edison rather than edison shaping the age. and edison is obviously an important figure but in many ways important because he is representative of a much broader sort of enthusiasm about invention and a sense that human beings have entered a new stage in human history where intervention is not something that just comes along once in a while but you can create a factory in churn out new ideas all the time.

edison is important that way but not unique. >> one final point is he created what you called a kind of expectation of perpetual innovation. he didn't personally created, but the sum total of this age was that we would get me moving into an era when innovation which is be something we really with day after day for the rest of our lives. this was an entirely new concept spent and americans particularly embraces. they were enthusiastic consumers of the new technology of the also very proud of their growing reputation as a nation of inventors. and consider this to be particularly an expression of democratic values. if you educate people broadly, if you create an open patent system that encourages innovation, that if you remove barriers between workers and

thinkers, that edison seemed to embody the ability to do both, that this was in a sense america's gift to history. not high culture, not literature, but things are material objects that the whole world wants to have. >> and, indeed, we did in into that good of perpetual innovation and it seems be going right on. thank you so much for being with us today, ernest freeberg. a great pleasure, thank you. >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers to watch video and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. stephen next, we hear from dean hampton. in her book "little red," ms. hampton profiles three graduates of the little red schoolhouse and elisabeth irwin high school, a school in new york city synonymous with

progressive politics. this is about a half-hour. >> i'm going to start off by sayinsaying what i we say at the settings, and the reason i always say it's because the truth is the truth. and the truth is that the corner bookshop has been an incredible friend to this class over, to count how many are scum i think the first event in january 1998, so it's been 15 years, and dozens of books that come out into the world to meet the raiders and their buyers. no writer could ask for a better set of friends then everyone who was here and to curate new books coming out so carefully, and that's the case so eloquently for them.

so it's wonderful as always to be back. and we have several efficient students after listening to one of the students from the class of 1999 and every book has its own story and every writer its own journey to publication. and in dina's case this book is monument to both the amazing history of the little red school house, which i will dina to tell you about, but also to her amazing persistence which i will tell you something about. i have known dina since i was low shot about the fact that the book is dated 2013 and her diploma is dated 1999. i don't think that's anything at all to feel an expedition. i think it deserves praise. because one thing i'll always say to my students is that

there's no words to the fastest book. i am you. there's only an award for the best book. it took her 20 is to write. when it's all done in the book as a conduit things that matters is the quality and the grit of the author. instinct to all the lonely work that it takes to get through a night like this. and dina is a living testament to an author who kept believing in the book and the importance of its subject, public affairs, publisher is a great testament to publishers who kept faith with an author when in these days a lot of publishers probably would not have. and makes a special, special cause for celebration here tonight. so with all due -- i will turn this over to dean hampton. [applause]

thank you. thank you so much. and i'm so excited to be here tonight to talk to you about the lives of three extraordinary people in this book, tom hurwitz, elliot abrams, and angela davis. and the extraordinary school that they found themselves in, somewhat against the odds considering their different backgrounds come in the early 1960s. the founder of the school as many of you know, because many of you have connections with the school was elizabeth irwin. she was born in 1880 in brooklyn to a well-to-do family. after attending smith college, she moved to greenwich village in 1903, and found himself among a group of artists and radicals and social reformers of every strife that were at the first

blooming of the greenwich village is in bohemian flowering. she started as a freelance reporter and then studied as a psychologist and a social worker. and inspired by john dewey, she and a partner, lewis, ran a series of model classes in schools within the public education system. based on the progressiveness theories of john dewey. irwin and her compatriots railed against the role of rote memorization and strict discipline of the day. she believed that children should read and write and do sums on their own timetable. it was even harmful to force them to do it faster. she believed that their developer was important as their intellectual development. she said that the most important thing that a school could do was get children into the habit of being happy.

most importantly, she believed, and her fellow progressive educators believe that a school must instill in children's mind the ability to think independently so that they could participate fully in the american democracy. in 1932, elizabeth are once classes were at ps 41 which many of you probably know on west 11th street, still is in the village. and the city at that point was due its funding from the experiment. and the parents were so upset that the children would not be able to take classes with elizabeth irwin that they banded together, and in something famous in the school laura, at a ice cream parlor, they got together the money can start to get together the money to start their own school. and so in september 1932, little red school house opened on baker

street. 10 years later, in 1942, shortly before elizabeth arlen's death, untimely death, elisabeth irwin high school open on charleston street. a few blocks south of little red in what would later he, so. so then a few years later in 19 come in the 1950s, the parent body of elizabeth irwin and little red, they had a roll call of the cultural and artistic society of the day, playwright arthur miller was a period there. woody guthrie was a parent there. walter bernstein who wrote magnificent seven, screenplay writer, and many of the well-known screenplays was a parent there. also a parent was able, with his

wife, had adopted the children of julie and healthful rosenbe rosenberg. april also under the name louis allen was -- that billie holliday made famous. remarkably talented group of parents there. so the parents of tom hurwitz who is one of my antagonist can his parents were among that group. leo hurwitz was a documentarian of sort of a radical strife, and his mother was a printable in market and dance troupe. so i will read you a little bit about him. >> as a young man, tom looked at

his parents wild ride through the depression within the. with his down eyes and full lips and his brown hair brush into submission and parted on the side, tom, like his father, didn't dare concede a point. in some ways he was a typical child of 50s. dissuade letter jacket. he had the biggest collection of toy guns of every sort. i spoke to my analyst about it. he said let him have been. people wanted anymore than when he grows up. but the death of the rosenbergs was an ongoing and unspoken turn that pervaded tom's childhood. one day he summoned up the courage to broach the subject with his father. could they get you and mom, he asked? know, his father reassured him.

we are artists. of the leo's response was not particularly on point, tom was somewhat comforted by this response. times fears were stoked. he and his classmates spent many saturdays picketing, protesting the filing time segregated lunch counter policy in the southern states. nicotine will worse was an unofficial requirement. -- picketing will worse was an unofficial requirement. a middle-class boy, his mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an immigration lawyer, and they were middle of the road democrats, new dealers, and his mother enrolled elliot in the school in ninth grade, having heard of the school's

reputation. in most american high schools in the early 1960s, politics would put elliot to the left of his classmates. at elizabeth irwin whose equipment of a republican. -- equivalent of republican. like most of his classmates he was jewish, but unlike most of his classmates who came from secular families, elliot's family was observed and and kept a kosher home. as the months went by, elliot began to react to what he perceived to be the knee-jerk left wing orthodoxy of the school. browsing the magazine rack in the libra, he saw progressive publications. why it passed could the school not achieve some balance in the publication it displays? why not start a magazine like

the "national review"? the culture summary by right wing politics scorecard, we don't need more of in our school. in at least do, the history teacher for fun aside -- personified the school. his analysis of historical movement seemed absurd. why do countries acquire colonies? because countries needed economic markets. who in the hell in those impoverished colonies was in a position to buy anything, abrams wandered? in 1964, the word around school was kershner had voted for lyndon johnson in the presidential election for the first time so the whispers what had ever cast in a mainstream vote for fear that a victory for conservative republican barry goldwater would bring fascism to america. in elliot's opinion, that fear was a bit overblown.

increasingly appalled by the school's ideological point, alia begin to vocalize film political views. he debated with his classmates in the basement cafeteria his chief opponent was tom hurwitz. is equal and intellectual and their love of a good fight. the impromptu discussions often ended in shouting matches between the two. a hot topic in those lunchroom debates with cuba and fidel castro would come to power in 1959. most of the students are cast as a romantic revolutionary who would bring economic and social justice to its people. angela davis, the third antagonist. that class included robert de niro for a time. and kathy, later became involved

in the 1981, she took part in the 1981 brings robert in which a guard and two policemen were killed, and certain years in prison for that. angela grew up in birmingham, alabama, at the height of jim crow, and to escape from the wretched segregated school system, she entered the i in her junior year on scholarship from the americans friends committee. and i will just read a short passage about her. when she ended the school, although angela graced itself, she had not foreseen for tennessee to be over solicitous of the few black acquaintance, she wrote in her autobiography. angela did not question the communities decide to eliminate racism. and she knew that bring it to the school was an earnest action toward that end.

but from day to day she questioned the motives behind any overtures what if the patient's to visit her classmates own profit by the genuine friendship or feelings of obligation, killed, or attempts to display their little largest. go time she would arrive at a classmates apartment. the family would invariably call for a housekeeper, but they angela, that was the semantic. a housekeeper, she thought, was, in fact, a serving and that major acute and come to a. between the committees about how to deal with his come in and just shyness and consciously very stance towards her house, there was limited opportunities for meaningful connections and she felt the constant unease pictures not alone. the feeling of not alone, not know where one was instead, we shared by the handful of her fellow african-american schoolmates. so in the book i follow these

three people through their unbelievably event packed and dramatic lives. tom went to columbia where he played a part in the occupation of the school in the spring of 1968. he then moved to california where he was an activist and an organizer among other things in the g.i. movement, which i think is an underreported phenomenon in the annals of vietnam protests. where people supported and organized the soldiers going to sit towards the war. extended around g.i. coffeehouses were places where the soldiers could meet and share the concerns and their growing protests. those coffeehouses were first founded by sid gardner who was class president of 9059 at literally. he returned to nuke city in the 1970s and became a successful

cinematographer, still lives. and often with films of social content, one of the first films he worked on was harlan county u.s.a. elliot went to harvard, and after four years of elizabeth irwin i think he thought he could find more like-minded associates, which he did, and they would go on to become the core of the neoconservatives, which would in the '80s really sort of fight against a lot of the advancements, that the counterculture of the '60s had made. and t the spring of 1969, a year after columbia, those friends formed a committee to keep harvard open, and to this day eliot talks about that as the high point of his university

career. but it's important to know, enter the word for reagan's election, and then when you get into the administration and wast very quickly, then he became a republican. in the administration he became embroiled in the iran-contra scandal. angela attended brandeis, another east coast mostly white school which didn't help or feelings of alienation. and she joined me -- joined the common his par u.s.a., and she rose to national prominence when she was taken in with governor ronald reagan in california, when the board of regents fired her from her first position as a professor for membership in the communist party. she was then very soon after, again, the concentration of events in these people lies in

the '70s was remarkable. she was charged with murder and kidnapping and conspiracy in connection with an attempted jailbreak in the marine county courthouse in northern california. she went underground to evade capture. she was captured and spent 18 months in prison before her trial, which was covered the world over. so i will just read you one more piece. this is when she gets captured. reentering the motel in the late afternoon, angela noted in passive dark suited men milling about the lobby. she was probably imagining things, angela told herself. life as a fugitive had taken its toll put at this point every white man in a suit seemed are like an fbi agent ready to pass.

resolution it away across the lobby and into the elevator. exiting on the seventh floor she spied a man peering out of one of the doors in the hallway. another man to enter the elevator with her followed her out. suddenly agents burst out of every room on the floor and converged on her shouting, are you angela davis? are you angela davis? one of them pulled a gun. moments before when angela realized that her cash was imminent, an unexpected sense of calm had possessed or. now the was a sickening moment of tear as she pictured her corpse sprawled and bleeding on the cheap hallway carpeting. a broader to the fbi headquarters on east 69th street, which is kept for several hours before being driven downtown to the women's house of detention on sixth avenue in greenwich avenue, a massive 10 story brick building, that jefferson liber stands there now, that loomed over the townhouses and tenements of greenwich village. disoriented as she was, angela

still recognized it. she had walked by countless times on the way to elizabeth irwin as a teenager and vividly recall the den made by the female inmates as they rained down curses in place from the mini window jail. still handcuffed, angela was placed on a bench in a grimy waiting with room. as angel's eyes adjusted to the demott, she saw her image on a paper flyer under the words wanted by the fbi. if that weren't surreal enough, directly next it was a poster picturing her former classmate, kathy boudin. i graduated from little red in the late 1970s. but i really, i didn't have -- [inaudible] i had no sense of the history of the school at that point.

and it was only when i was sharing years later as alumni director that i began to appreciate the history of the school. my fascination with the 1960s graduates begin when i was, organized an event, the events for the reunion we can of the class of 1961. the first thing they did was to gather in grand central station, and board a train to visit kathy boudin. and was then better realize that this was a unique group of people. [laughter] so that's about all. i want to thank you all so much for coming. i want to thank the bookstore for being such wonderful hosts, sam, for taking time out of a very busy week, to come and introduce me. and public affairs for being so wonderful. my editor, kathy -- my editor lisa is here.

and if you have any questions i would love to take them. thank you so much. oh, and i'm going to ask you, lose weight until the gentleman with a microphone comes to you. [applause] thank you. any questions? >> dina, when you spoke with all these people now after they left the school, where their feelings? if they see the school as being formative in their lives, or do you think that they would have become who they were regardless of where they went to school? >> i think that many of the students who went there have come from families who were very progressive, and left oriented,

and so those already a predilection to the. but i know that many of them have told me that the school would reshape their lives and was, you know, really, and they track that back. victor talked about his classes. he was in a class of 50. lots of people really see that as a real mark in their lives. and the people who graduated, like elliot, who reacted against it, wrote a book about the rosenbergs, that would've brought to light the fact of the parents culpability. they reacted very much against this. they were in many cases very bitter about it. wait, wait.

[inaudible] people were allowed to express themselves so freely and have a background and home in that way that abrams could become -- [inaudible] it's incredible to me. can you say more? >> i think one of the things eliot, and he said that one of the things he found in school, he loved being in the opposition. [laughter] he loved, he loved being a counterpuncher, you know? now, i don't know, i think that he really believes very strongly what he believed, but i think somehow the mesh of his character, i mean, and his beliefs really came into focus their and was reinforced when he went to harvard and found himself still under siege. so yeah. and it is also important to note

that he wasn't punished or penalized for his views at little red. he was made the editor of info, the school magazine. and made many friends there. but those friends really became bitter about him when he became a republican. site think they moved away from him or than the other way around. [inaudible] >> i'm just curious, do they talk about randy smith at all? he's the one who made this environment possible because he went before -- >> right. he was the director, the director of the whole school. for many years. he took over after elizabeth irwin died. right, and 44 or a couple