“Yes,” said the boy.
“But,” added one of the associates who Paul was certain was neither Beyer nor Bynes, “that’s not even the best part. All that proves is that Edison lied to the press.”
“Which is not a crime,” said the one with the mustache.
“Right,” said the fourth of the associates. “So then what if we can show that Edison lied on the patent itself?”
“That would be something, Mr….?”
“I’m Beyer,” said the boy.
Paul had a hard time believing that to be the case, but it could not have mattered to him less.
Beyer continued. “The bulbs that have been coming out of Edison General Electric plants use bamboo filaments.” He showed Paul a sketch of the device in question. There was no mistaking the material that composed the filament, even to a layman’s eyes.
“First he told the press it was platinum,” said Paul. “Then he told the patent office it was cotton. But it’s actually bamboo.”
“Yes.”
“He was just making things up. He didn’t actually get the bulb working with bamboo till after the patent was granted.”
This was the moment Paul had been waiting for. The four associates tried to hide their proud smiles behind professionally blank expressions. They’d done well, and they knew it. But they seemed to feel that convincing Paul of their competence required masking their youthful exuberance. Watching these boys pretend to be older than they were made Paul feel even older himself.
“What will you do now?” asked the mustached associate, who was probably Bynes.
Paul did not try to hide his smile. “I think it’s time that we took the deposition of Mr. Thomas Edison.”
Everybody steals in science and industry. I’ve stolen a lot myself. But I know how to steal. They don’t know how to steal.
—THOMAS EDISON
FOR OVER A year, the name Edison had haunted Paul’s days. He had met Thomas Edison only once, and yet the inventor was ever present in his thoughts. His daily life was a groove in the invisible orbit around Edison’s solar mass. Practically every slip of paper that crossed Paul’s desk bore Edison’s name. Edison’s presence dominated the work of Paul’s waking hours and often his sleeping ones. He had spent many times more hours dreaming of Edison than speaking to him.
Paul arrived early for the deposition. At barely seven in the morning, he entered Grosvenor Lowrey’s Broad Street law offices. The wallpapered rooms crackled with activity. Assistants, apprentices, secretaries, and errand boys flitted about in preparation, bursting with energy. As Paul waited, the whole office primped itself for the great man’s arrival. The brass was polished with vinegar, the wood rubbed with alcohol and wax, and every stray paper was tucked into a drawer or filing cabinet.
When Edison finally arrived, late, Paul was instantly struck by the change in his appearance. He’d aged in the past year. His hair had gone almost completely gray. He’d grown plumper around the middle. His clothes had been applied haphazardly.
He was, in short, a human being. And that seemed strangest of all. The devil himself could barely knot his own bow tie.
Edison sat at the long table as if this deposition was but one of the many chores to which he would be forced to attend that morning. No doubt it was. He whispered a few words to Lowrey, his attorney, who took the seat to his left. To Edison’s right sat the court secretary, here to transcribe his every word.
“All right,” said Edison. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Good morning,” said Paul, fastidiously laying out his papers on the table.
“And you are?”
Paul stopped. Edison smiled. The inventor was taunting him. Trying to rattle him before the questioning had even begun. Edison’s act was terribly good. He would feign a discombobulated indifference to these worldly affairs before lashing out at just the right moment.
“I am Paul Cravath, attorney for Mr. George Westinghouse.”
The court secretary dutifully typed as the men spoke.
“Grosvenor Lowrey, attorney for Mr. Thomas Edison.”
“And I am Thomas Alva Edison.”
“Please state your place of birth, for the record,” said the court secretary.
“Ohio. But I grew up in Port Huron, Michigan.”
“And the place where you currently reside?”
“I have an estate in West Orange, New Jersey. I have my offices at sixty-five Fifth Avenue, New York City.”
The secretary nodded. “It is March eleventh, 1889,” she informed the room. “Mr. Cravath, you may begin.”
Paul had been practicing his questions for days.
“What was the first thing you invented, Mr. Edison?”
Edison laughed. “It was a…well, it’s called an automatic repeater.”
“And when was this?”
“Is George Westinghouse planning on claiming that he invented that now too?”
“What year was it?”
“Eighteen sixty-five. I’d been a butcher boy before that, selling candy on the rails. Left home with a single bag to my name. Rode the line for a few years. I learned the trains well. Found odd jobs, here and there. Things that needed fixing, repairing. I’ve always had a way with machines.”
“So it would appear.”
“I became friendly with the Western Union men at the stations. Now, they had some fun devices, didn’t they? I started to do what it is that I’ve always done. I tinkered. I asked a lot of questions. Some the men could answer, some they could not. If not, then I was required to develop my own answers. There were things they would discuss—I would overhear their conversations. If only we could loop messages automatically. If only we had a device to relay the signals. But then they wouldn’t do a thing about it. They would just move along, drown their complaints in their beer. So I did what it is that I have done ever since: I recognized a problem, and then I set about solving it. There was use for a small machine that might automatically relay telegraph messages? Fantastic. I spent a few months fiddling until I’d built one that worked.”
“And then,” said Paul, “you sold the design to Gold and Stock. For two hundred dollars.”
“You know this story?”
“You’ve recited it many times to the press.”
“It’s a good story.”
“It’s a very simple one,” said Paul. “But your tales of invention always are, aren’t they?”
“This is what your kind—and let the record reflect that by ‘your’ I am referring to Mr. Cravath and by ‘kind’ I am referring to idiots—can never wrap your brains around. It genuinely is simple. I identify the gap in existing technology and then I plug it. With these hands right here. Oh. I just realized. You were trying to get a rise out of me, weren’t you?”
“If Mr. Cravath is being argumentative,” offered Lowrey, “I can instruct the court—”
“No, no, Grosvenor,” said Edison. “Mr. Cravath and I are just having a bit of fun with each other, aren’t we?”
Paul agreed, silently. He had expected some sparring. He would have been disappointed without it.
“This process you’ve described,” said Paul. “Your plugging. You’ve applied it ever since?”
“After the repeater, Western Union made me a deal. I invented a number of things for them. And then I came to New York, where I opened up my own shop. A place to tinker.”
“You were a teenage vagabond. Riding the rails. And by twenty-two, you’d made it to New York.”
“And by thirty I was a millionaire. People seem to find some value in my tinkerings, it would seem. From the telegraph to the telephone to the phonograph to the light bulb. They were all problems, out there for the solving. I did so, and have—no thanks to your efforts—been comfortably compensated for it.”
“You invented the telephone?” asked Paul.
“Yes.”
“Funny. I thought Alexander Graham Bell did that.”
“It’s a lie,” said Edison, “but so far the courts have failed to recognize the truth of what happened. I invented the telephone, not him. I had the idea; I crafted the device. He just got his application to the patent office before I did.”