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THE TRIANGLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE GOLDEN AGE 1 The Triangle of Technology in the Golden Age Invention, Investment and Drive Monica Clemens October 13, 2019 Arizona State University Professor: Dr. Schnoll THE TRIANGLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE GOLDEN AGE 2 The Triangle of Technology in the Golden Age Our inventors, investors and engineers worked together to advance telecommunication during America’s golden age of technology by creating significant partnerships founded on original inventions. These partnerships created a dynamic triangle between inventors, investors and engineers that were pivotal to each other's success. As networks became more elite, business arrangements became more tactical and the world started to notice that not only was America blossoming, it was efficient and ingenuous too. Introduction Networks are defined as the many tributaries leading tangible or intangible information along a medium to one main campus. The main campus then disseminates and reassembles information for delivery to its grid or single recipient. Tangible networks could include physical mediums such electricity harnessed by wire and pole, salmon and creek, or star and moon, while intangible networks could be high frequency wireless transmissions, or sub-atomic particles floating in the air. The most profitable inventions of technology during the Golden Age were raw, intangible, conceived by a single thought, and difficult to explain to investors. Nonetheless, whether investors understood ideas or not, they raised the capital necessary to back inventions. Promoting Complex Networks to Raise Capital The triangle of inventor, investor and engineer came together in various patterns before the element of electricity was introduced into the competitive fold. As America expanded versions of great partnerships were led by visionary investors who could convince people to put up their fortunes for just cause. In 1817 New York’s Governor Dewitt Clinton nearly single handedly convinced New Yorkers to fund and build the Erie Canal, a water network that would monopolize agricultural shipping from the Great Lakes to New York. Clinton harped on New Yorkers (in his Atticus papers) that “no produce of the soil (could) bear the expense of THE TRIANGLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE GOLDEN AGE 3 transportation by wagon from the western states to a navigable river.” The concept of the Canal was sold to New Yorkers to accommodate “millions of people beyond the western limits of this State” (Atticus. 1816, p. 1). Clinton mesmerized investors to bet millions in favor of building the Canal across 363-miles of dense forest and rock. The alternative, he argued, was to place “the state of Ohio and all our western territory into the arms of Great Britain for all commercial and useful purposes,” (Atticus. 1816, p. 2). Keeping prosperity away from Great Britain sealed the deal with New Yorkers and the State came up with the money. Whether investors understood the theory of the water network or not, the vision and promise of significant control of intrastate commerce and the monopolization of the Hudson was enough to make New Yorkers invest. Once money was injected into the concept of the Canal, German masons and immigrant workers created the marvel of civil engineering. They moved mud by the ton, cleared tree stumps, shooed away mosquitos, and worked nearly around the clock with primitive equipment and unproven designs. In all, the 363-mile Canal was a speculative miracle, and at the height of its career, the Erie controlled thousands of shipping boats from the Great Lakes to Hudson. Theories and inventions did not always have great mascots, which was to the detriment of inventors who seemed born to tinker rather than do business. For example, in 1791, when French telegraph engineer Claude Chappe developed an optical telecom relay system, or pendulum with arms, it was usurped during wartime the France. Chappe’s telegraph grew so popular that it became difficult for the inventor to control. Eventually, post-war Paris adopted the telecommunication network with little fanfare to Chappe. (Holzmann & Bjorn. 1995). Nevertheless, Chappe was the root inventor and developer of the optical relay telegraph. But Chappe’s invention needed perfecting to survive American ingenuity and the storm that was brewing with electricity. THE TRIANGLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE GOLDEN AGE 4 Samuel Morse, an artist from Yale, built upon the French telegraph model a single wire telegraph system that would transmit his language of dots and dashes down the wire in relay. He filed his first patent in France in 1838, forty-seven years after Claude Chappe invented the pendulum telegraph. (Morse. 1914, Vol. 2, p. 92). Morse also battled for rights to his invention amid fast growing piracy and would be inventors. These battles “proved itself to be an upward” fight “as claimants arose on every side” (Morse. 1914, Vol. 2, p. 1). According to Morse (1914) inventors learned to fight the disdain of piracy by creating dynamic partnerships that were built on “virtue, steadfastness, integrity, and loyalty,” (Morse. 1914, Vol. 2, p. 1). As electricity evolved it proved to be the most popular conduit for inventors. Along with it came great inventors, electrical and mechanical engineers who maintained cordial and necessary relationships with investors. Thomas Edison was unlike Chappe or Morse, as he was not a single-patent-inventor. Edison was many times a work-for-hire engineer that was paid to devise ways around patents holder’s rights. Edison was unusual and competitive in the inventor’s world, because he did not rely on one invention to make ends meet. During Edison’s lifetime “he received nearly 1,100 patents” for inventions, which he sold in quantity to American speculators. (Adair. 1996, p. 11). The son of a Canadian political refugee, and at best home schooled, Edison joined the workforce selling candy and newspapers on the railroad between Lake Huron and Lake Erie (Adair. 1996, p. 17). At age thirteen, Edison was taken under the wing of a Michigan stationmaster who taught him the basics of telegraphy. With the increased cash-flow from the money he made working the job of a “tramp telegrapher” Edison was able to finance his own experiments (Adair. 1996, p. 30). He traveled with portable chemical labs and experimented between long shifts working as a telegraph operator in “filthy, cramped, cluttered offices” filled with other telegraph operators and their crude humor (Adair. 1996, p. 49). Edison was eager to invent and to sell patents, and his self-education gave him an unhinged kaleidoscope perspective. THE TRIANGLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE GOLDEN AGE 5 He also liked to tinker with patents held by other inventors. In his patent re-dos, Edison had an audience. In 1873, while working for competing business entities, Thomas Edison approached William Orton, the President of Western Union, about an idea Edison had to perfect Joseph Stearns’ duplex messaging invention. Since Western Union held the rights to Stern’s invention, it was a matter of protocol to receive Western Union’s blessing. Within the year Edison perfected Sterns duplex, by utilizing the impulses in grey space on the wire. He then created a derivative of the duplex system that could send “four messages at once, two in each direction” (Adair. 1996, p. 50). Yet even though Orton bankrolled Edison’s duplex experiments, he was not trustworthy about paying him. Orton “haggled for months on the price” of Edison’s device and “drove him into the arms” of one of Western Union’s many “sworn enem(ies),” Jay Gould, who was even less gentlemanly than Orton (Adair. 1996, pp. 50-51). Thus, as competitive innovation rose, the antics and reputations of ruthless businessmen became more obvious. In many ways Edison was vulnerable and unskilled in the dark-side of business. He was easily drawn into legal battles from copying or creating derivative patents, which kept his bank account full. He learned to “leave bills unpaid until creditors were [ ] pounding at the door,” and became dependent on the purse of Western Union to finance his inventions. Further, he was reliant upon the skills of his dutiful drafters and engineers who could physically build upon his theoretic imaginings. Fortunately for Edison he surrounded himself with teams of engineers who holed up with him in his lab and kept his “impetuous style” under control. Batchelor and Kruesi were two members in Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory that could work on multiple inventions with Edison while keeping him focused. They were reliable, secretive and found to be Edison’s “greatest resource” because they could “translate Edison’s rough ideas into detailed drawings . .” (Adair. 1996, pp. 56-57). THE TRIANGLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE GOLDEN AGE 6 Nonetheless, the marvel of business competitors fighting over patents and inventions, continued to dominate the telegraph business, and the cast of characters expanded. In the case of Orton’s relationship with Edison, rather than create a trustworthy bond with the important inventor, Orton (and later Jay Gould) reduced payments to the inventor, attempted to restrain and dominate the market by buying patents, controlling production, and owning majority shares of telegraph inventions. As the invention of the telephone began to take shape on the horizon, the telegraph and Western Union scrambled for control. Western Union bet that Edison would “come up with a version that would get around Bell’s patents” (Adair. 1996, p. 60) because “Bell’s telephone was a relatively simple device, easily imitated” (Garnet. 1985, p. 15). But there were more inventions to come from Edison besides copying and building upon Bell’s telephone patent. One day while laboring for his investors experimenting with the telephone, Edison got the “idea of attaching a pin to a diaphragm and placing a ribbon of wax paper beneath it.” He then “rigged up an instrument hastily and pulled a strip of paper through it, at the same time shouting ‘Halloo!’” (Adair.

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