Identical editorials from Brown had appeared in four other East Coast papers. Westinghouse’s first commercial A/C system, based on Tesla’s ideas, was set to be installed in only a few weeks’ time in Buffalo. The department store Adam, Meldrum, and Anderson had already taken out advertisements touting the 498 A/C-powered bulbs that were soon to shine from its Italianate ceilings. Unless, that is, Harold Brown succeeded in having such a system banned.
“It isn’t true,” said Westinghouse. “A/C is not more dangerous than D/C. Just the opposite. Why would the Evening Post print such a bald-faced falsehood?”
“Do you know who owns the Evening Post?” said Paul.
“I do not.”
“Henry Villard.”
“Who is…”
“Some middling newspaper tycoon. But a middling newspaper tycoon who happens to have quite recently come into possession of some two thousand shares of stock in Edison General Electric.”
Westinghouse stopped his pacing. “Edison gave him shares in exchange for denouncing me on his paper’s front page?”
“We’ll never be able to prove it,” said Paul.
“Can he do this? Can he really get the state legislature to ban my current?”
“It depends.”
“Damned lawyers,” grumbled Westinghouse. “Just give me a straight answer: Can he do this or can he not?”
“I sent inquiries to Albany from the station. It appears that Edison has already gotten a friendly New York state senator to submit just such a bill.”
“I’ll hazard a guess that Edison has found a way to compensate his state senator as well?”
“Having failed to produce a better product than you, he’s now going to use the law to make your product illegal. I’ve already sent a message to my state senator. I’ll argue your case before the legislature myself. He can’t bribe all of them.”
Westinghouse lowered his gaze to the floor. “A/C is better,” he said quietly. “My work is better than his.” Whoever he was talking to, it was not Paul.
“Can you help me to understand it? I’m a layman. Talk to me like a layman. Your alternating current runs at twice the voltage of his direct current. You told me so yourself. Well, to a layman: twice the current, twice the danger. It sounds like common sense.”
When Westinghouse next spoke, his voice was low. “But this is the very thing about electricity. Nothing about it makes any common sense at all.”
Westinghouse summoned Reginald Fessenden for help with a demonstration. After only a few months here, Fessenden appeared to have aged a few years. He seemed exhausted. Whatever work he was doing, and whatever stresses were being placed on him, was quickly graying his temples.
A smallish generator was attached to something Westinghouse called a capacitor. The thing was about six inches long, shaped like a cylinder, encased in a material—rubber?—that was smooth and perfectly black. It looked, to Paul, something like a French dessert.
At Westinghouse’s request, Fessenden gave a few spins to a hand crank at the machine’s side. It whirled with a soft hum.
“And now,” Westinghouse said, turning to Paul, “I’d like you to place each of your hands on one of those leads there. Yes. Those are the ones.”
Paul looked at these “leads”—open-ended strips of cable—with trepidation. He remembered the flaming workman above Broadway.
“Sir…won’t that electrocute me?”
“Yes. When you put your hands on those leads, one hundred ten volts of alternating current will shoot right through your body.”
Paul blinked. This sounded like a certain death.
Westinghouse registered Paul’s fear. “You don’t trust me?”
“It’s not that, but…” Paul looked at the machines. These deathly, futuristic things. Paul took a long, slow breath, and grabbed as hard as he could at the wire leads.
A popping sound.
A sharp yell from deep within Paul’s throat.
And in under a second, it was over.
Paul waved his hands in the air, wriggling his fingers to shake off the sting. The pain was akin to that of catching a baseball without a mitt.
There’d been no flash of light. No spark. No caged lightning unleashed upon his flesh.
“Oww,” said Paul finally, when he remembered to speak.
“So,” said Westinghouse patiently, “what have we learned?”
Paul turned to Fessenden for an answer.
“Voltage,” supplied Fessenden dutifully, “is not the same as power. A/C may run at higher voltages than D/C, but it does so with a variable amplitude. I can show you a notebook full of equations to explain this if you’re curious.”
“Aha!” said Westinghouse. “We’re teaching Paul some science, at long last. Now: What is it about the very nature of alternating current that makes it less dangerous?”
Paul again turned to Fessenden.
“Right,” said Fessenden. “So, it’s called alternating current, you’ll remember, because it literally alternates direction hundreds of times per second. While direct current remains constant. Now, in response to electrical current, the muscles of the human body contract. As yours just did. This is why people are electrocuted to death. They grasp the current, and they can’t let go, because the current contracts the very muscles that are holding on.”
“The brain wants to let go,” said Westinghouse, “but the muscles won’t comply. Just now, as soon as you felt the shock, what happened?”
“I let go.”
“You were able to let go because as the A/C changes its direction each of those hundreds of times per second, there is actually an infinitesimal pause in the current. Think of it like a carriage: It goes in a circle clockwise as fast as it can, then to turn around it has to slow, and then stop, and then speed up again in the other direction. Such is the case with alternating current.”
“Except for the slowing-down part,” corrected Fessenden.
Westinghouse agreed. “Electricity lends itself poorly to metaphor. Gravity, centripetal motion—much easier phenomena to explain by way of literary analogy. If Newton worked in poetry, we’re left to toil in prose. I have pondered this on occasion.”
Paul took in all that he’d been told. How could they explain all of this to potential customers without demanding that each of them try sticking their hands inside an A/C generator to see for themselves?
Having a better system than Edison’s would do no good if they couldn’t explain to the public why it was better. Reality mattered not at all; perception was the whole of business. Edison had realized this before they had. While Westinghouse was using Tesla’s discoveries to develop a superior product, Edison had skipped straight to developing a superior story.
And stories were supposed to be Paul’s expertise.
As if he’d been reading Paul’s train of thought, Westinghouse spoke again. The professorial tenor was gone from his voice.
“Paul,” said Westinghouse quietly, “I rely on you to see this kind of thing coming.”
Westinghouse’s words were a cold breeze. They were so soft as to be almost inaudible, and yet they froze Paul in his place.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Westinghouse,” said Paul. “I knew that Edison was going to respond to our hiring of Tesla and our adoption of A/C. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t think he’d go this far.”
“This is your job,” continued Westinghouse. “You are not, if this situation is to be any indication, doing it as well as I might hope.”
Embarrassed, Paul looked to Fessenden. But the engineer was busying himself with the documents in his hands, conspicuously avoiding eye contact.
“You’ve made the mistake,” said Westinghouse, “of underestimating the villainy of Thomas Edison.”
“I have. And what I can promise you today is that I will never do so again.”
Paul was dismissed a few minutes later. He and Fessenden left the inventor to the quiet of his dark and empty laboratory.
“He’ll get over it,” said Fessenden as they walked side by side toward the mansion, across the moonlit lawns of the estate. The muggy air threatened to burst into a summer storm above the country oaks. “I’ve been on the receiving end of that same look. He has a way of making you feel six inches tall. But don’t worry: He’ll be on to someone else’s failures tomorrow.”
“How’s Tesla doing?” Paul hadn’t heard any complaints about Tesla in a few weeks, which he’d taken as a positive development.
At the mention of Tesla’s name, Fessenden grimaced. “Well…I’m afraid that’s going to be a bit difficult to explain.”