“You don’t much like lawyers, do you, sir?” said Paul.
A curious expression overtook Westinghouse’s face. Paul had gotten his attention.
“I don’t blame you. Yet right now you are very much in need of one. And I need you to help me do my job.”
“Very well.”
“It is among my jobs to identify any course of action that might serve your interests. Especially if you might not previously have been aware of it.”
Westinghouse sat back in his chair. Paul couldn’t tell whether he’d impressed his client with his speech or simply his gall.
“I would like us to begin to ponder a compromise,” suggested Paul.
“A compromise?”
“That serves you, and that best serves your products. Fair or not, this is the world in which we live.”
“What precisely do you mean by a compromise?”
“That’s not for me to say,” said Paul diplomatically. “There are any number of different ways that some sort of compromise might be arranged. We can take some time to determine which might be most beneficial to you.”
“Such as?”
“A merger, for instance. The Westinghouse and Edison Electrical Company. Or call it the American Electrical Company, maybe; take both of your names off it for simplicity’s sake. Or—how about this? A licensing arrangement, such as we’ve made with Sawyer and Man. You sell Edison’s generators and pay him a royalty, while he sells your far-superior bulbs and pays you a royalty. Or you each sell each other’s bulbs and each other’s generators, under a similar royalty scheme, and the consumers decide which they prefer.”
“Mine are better.” Westinghouse’s simple, earnest statement tore a hole in their conversation.
“All right.” What else could Paul possibly say?
“Edison’s bulbs break constantly. His generators need repair even more often than his shoddy telegraphs. Do you know, the light bulbs he sells last half as long as mine? And produce three-quarters the brightness? A product inferior in all ways. And yet people buy them by the cartload. He outsells me four to one, despite the poverty of his constructions. Who knows why? Can’t people tell that Edison is without the patience, not to mention the skill, the craft, to build quality products? EGE makes so very many things, of such unprecedented breadth, and yet each one is, pardon, shit. They’re shit. Edison makes shit and he sells so much shit that no one notices that it’s all shit. Shit is what Thomas Edison invented. I invented the light bulb. I perfected it, built it. It is the best in the world and it is only getting better.”
Paul’s client reminded him of no one so much as Edison. The two men were perversely alike. Each was so confident of his own genius as to be disdainful of the other’s.
Westinghouse’s ego was no smaller than his enemy’s. Paul’s first task, he realized, would not be to negotiate with Edison. It would be to negotiate with his own client.
“I know, sir,” said Paul. “But what does it gain you to be the best if doing so drives you into bankruptcy? You run a business. It is one of the largest in this nation. And this business is presently facing a great variety of possible futures. You have options. It is my professional duty to see that you’re aware of them.”
Westinghouse’s charcoal coat had been hung by the door. Without looking at Paul, he went to it and removed a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket. Gingerly, as if it were an object far more delicate than one of his machines, he carried it back and handed it over.
“Six months ago,” said Westinghouse, “I wrote to Edison. This was before you came on board. I suggested to him just such a ‘compromise.’ I harbor no romantic dream of playing David to his Goliath. I know the odds against us. Everyone loves an underdog, but that doesn’t mean he’s a sound investment. So I wrote, and I attempted conciliation. This was his response.”
Paul looked down at the letter. It was from Thomas Edison himself, and it consisted of one word: “Never.”
“So, kid,” said Westinghouse after Paul had spent a few moments taking this all in. “You’re supposed to be some kind of legal virtuoso. Prove it.”
I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that don’t work.
—THOMAS EDISON
WHO INVENTED THE light bulb?
This was the topic at hand. Technically, the litigation was between the Edison Electric Light Company and the Mount Morris Electric Light Company, but everyone knew that these were subsidiaries and legal proxies for their parent companies. Even the attorneys litigating this $1 billion case called it simply Edison v. Westinghouse. The issue before them: U.S. Letters Patent No. 223,898, granted to Thomas Edison on January 27, 1880, which described the invention of an “incandescent electric lamp.” Quickly nicknamed the Light Bulb Patent by the press, it was without question the most valuable patent ever granted in the history of the United States. And George Westinghouse was accused of infringing on it.
Yet, as Paul pointed out to his client, even a problem so simply put might yet admit to many layers of unraveling. In fact, the question hinged on one’s precise definition of the terms involved—“who,” “invented,” “the,” and, most importantly, “light bulb.”
The first electric lamps had actually been invented almost a century before, Paul had learned when he’d first begun to research the case. Sir Humphry Davy had publicly demonstrated early “arc lights” in 1809. By attaching a battery to two charcoal sticks, he’d caused a U-shaped thread of electricity to “arc” across the gap between the sticks. The explosion of light was blindingly bright; perfect for lighting dark outdoor areas, if it could be tamed into safety and reliability.
And over the following decades, tamed it was. Michael Faraday created the first hand-cranked electrical generators in the 1830s by moving magnets through fields of coiled wire. The improbably named Belgian inventor Zénobe-Théophile Gramme improved upon Faraday’s generators and then created the first electrical motor—by simply building the generator’s inverse—in the 1870s. By 1878, the American Charles Brush was selling massive outdoor arc-lighting systems to cities and towns all around the nation. Across the globe, a Russian named Paul Jablochkoff was selling what he called electrical “candles.” Much smaller than Davy’s original arc lights, but constructed on the same principle, these “candles” were almost suitable for indoor use…
…Almost. None of these early iterations were fit for the home—no wife in America would sanction the installation of a lamp that was confusing to use, expensive to repair, and more likely than not to set the drapes on fire. Plus, there was the quality of the light itself. It was horrific. Ugly. Displeasing to the human eye at close quarters. The electricity that arced between the sticks remained too elemental. The heat seared too violently. Gas lamps remained far safer and far more beautiful.