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The Last Days of Night FEATURE CLE: THE LAST DAYS OF NIGHT CLE Credit: 1.0 Thursday, June 14, 2018 1:25 p.m. - 2:25 p.m. Heritage East and Center Lexington Convention Center Lexington, Kentucky A NOTE CONCERNING THE PROGRAM MATERIALS The materials included in this Kentucky Bar Association Continuing Legal Education handbook are intended to provide current and accurate information about the subject matter covered. No representation or warranty is made concerning the application of the legal or other principles discussed by the instructors to any specific fact situation, nor is any prediction made concerning how any particular judge or jury will interpret or apply such principles. The proper interpretation or application of the principles discussed is a matter for the considered judgment of the individual legal practitioner. The faculty and staff of this Kentucky Bar Association CLE program disclaim liability therefore. Attorneys using these materials, or information otherwise conveyed during the program, in dealing with a specific legal matter have a duty to research original and current sources of authority. Printed by: Evolution Creative Solutions 7107 Shona Drive Cincinnati, Ohio 45237 Kentucky Bar Association TABLE OF CONTENTS The Presenter .................................................................................................................. i The War of the Currents: Examining the History Behind The Last Days of Night .................................................................................................... 1 AC/DC: The Two Currents that Power the World ................................................ 1 The Wizard Invents a New Technical Standard ................................................... 2 Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse .............................................................. 5 Dead Dogs and Old Sparky ................................................................................. 7 Alternating Current Pulls Ahead in the Race to Light the World ........................... 9 Alternating Current Wins the Battle .................................................................... 12 The Last Days of Night Historical Timeline .................................................................... 15 THE PRESENTER Graham Moore Los Angeles, California GRAHAM MOORE is a New York Times bestselling novelist and Academy Award- winning screenwriter. His screenplay for The Imitation Game won the Academy Award and WGA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2015 and was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. The film, directed by Morten Tyldum and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Mr. Moore's first novel, The Sherlockian (2010), was published in 16 countries and translated into 13 languages. Among other complementary things, it was called "sublime," "clever" and "delightful" by the New York Times, and "savvy" and "entertaining" by the Los Angeles Times. His second novel, The Last Days of Night, was published in August, 2016, by Random House and described as "a fascinating portrait of American inventors" by Entertainment Weekly and "a model of superior historical fiction" as well as a "brilliant journey into the past" by the Washington Post. Mr. Moore lives in Los Angeles. i ii THE WAR OF THE CURRENTS: EXAMINING THE HISTORY BEHIND THE LAST DAYS OF NIGHT Lori J. Alvey Graham Moore's novel, The Last Days of Night, begins in 1888 and describes the battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to establish and control a new standard for electric power in the United States. The story is told from the perspective of Westinghouse's newly-hired attorney, 26-year old Paul Cravath,1 fresh from Columbia Law School2 and completely in over his head defending Westinghouse against Edison's patent infringement claim. The Last Days of Night is a work of historical fiction, and Moore notes at the end of his novel that the story's timeline is compressed into two years, from 1888 to 1890.3 The actual "current war" took place between 1888 and 1896,4 and what follows in this paper is a brief summary of the main historical events underlying Moore's novel. Also included is a timeline taken from Moore's website that compares how the events in the novel correspond to historical events.5 AC/DC: The Two Currents that Power the World Most matter contains a balance of positive and negative charges, a stalemated tug-of-war that prevents electricity from manifesting itself. Only when these charges are out of balance do electrons move to restore the equilibrium, allowing electricity to show its face. Electrical current is the flow of negatively charged electrons from one place to another in order to restore the natural balance of charge.6 In an alternating current (AC) circuit, the current alternates directions, "flipping back and forth through the wire dozens of times per second."7 AC is the type of electricity that comes out of your wall outlet, and it powers all of our major appliances, light fixtures, traffic signals, etc. "The 120 volts of electrical pressure that come out of an AC wall outlet are more than sufficient to kill a human being under the right circumstances."8 In 1 Moore, Graham, The Last Days of Night, (New York: Random House, 2016), at 3. 2 Id. at 17. 3 Id. at 359. 4 Id. 5 The full timeline is available at https://mrgrahammoore.com/books/the-last-days-of- night/historical-timeline/. As Mr. Moore states, "Please note: 'Historical spoilers' abound, so don't read this until you've finished the book!" 6 McNichol, Tom, AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War, (San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 2006), at 5. 7 Id. at 3. 8 Id. 1 2016, electric shock was the sixth leading cause of occupational death in the U.S.9 Alternatively, direct current (DC) "moves only in one direction, from the positive to negative terminal."10 DC powers car batteries, cell phones, laptops, cameras, iPods, and is "also utterly essential to contemporary life."11 The current war: pitted Thomas Edison and his tried-and-true technology of DC . against Westinghouse and Tesla's new and experimental AC. It is the archetypal corporate struggle, a modern industrial epic where American business titans battled to dominate and control a world-changing technology, to create whole new Empires of Light.12 The Wizard Invents a New Technical Standard In 1869, after spending his early professional years as an apprentice telegrapher,13 Thomas Edison announced to the world via publication in a trade journal that he was devoting "'his full time to bringing out his own inventions.'"14 "He was granted 38 patents in 1872 and another 25 the following year, many of them having to do with improvements in the telegraph."15 In 1876, Edison built a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey to work on his inventions. The laboratory "could be considered the first modern research and development center in the world."16 "There Edison planned to develop 'a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so.'"17 After he invented the phonograph in 1877,18 "[t]he press dubbed him 'The Wizard of Menlo Park.'"19 Edison became focused on inventing a new lightbulb after witnessing the arc lights installed in John Wanamaker's department store in 1878.20 "Arc lamps were the 9 Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI), "Workplace Fatalities and Injuries 2003-2016," available at https://www.esfi.org/resource/workplace-fatalities-and-injuries-2003-2016-644. Last accessed May 23, 2018. 10 AC/DC, at 3. 11 Id. at 4. 12 Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, (New York: Random House, 2003), at xiv. 13 AC/DC, at 32. 14 Empires of Light, at 35. 15 AC/DC, at 36. 16 Id. at 37. 17 Empires of Light at 52. 18 AC/DC at 37. 19 Id. at 39. 20 Id. at 41. 2 predecessors of incandescent lights, producing illumination by sparking (or arcing) of high current between two carbon electrodes."21 Although the lamps were smoky and unreliable, they were "the state of the art in electric lighting at the time."22 Edison sought to create a new incandescent lamp and an electrical system that would power them along with other future electrical inventions.23 He viewed the gas lighting companies, which dominated the lighting market, as his main competitors.24 In 1875, there were over 400 gas lighting companies in the U.S.25 "To build a successful rival to gas, Edison would have to come up with a way to 'subdivide' direct current to power individual lamps, just as the gas companies apportioned small units of natural gas to customers."26 He quickly created a prototype bulb with a filament made of platinum that would burn for a mere ten minutes before going out.27 Nevertheless, on September 16, 1878, Edison proclaimed via an announcement in the New York Sun that he had discovered a system for providing "cheap light, heat, and power by electricity."28 The Edison Electric Light Company was established on October 16, 1878, with 3,000 shares of stock.29 "Edison was assigned 2,500 shares worth $250,000 for his electric light patents – those pending and in the future – leaving 500 shares worth $50,000" for the initial investors.30 After experiencing problems with the platinum filament in his initial lamp,31 Edison began experimenting with different materials to find the proper filament. "About 1,600 different materials were tested until Edison finally hit upon an unlikely winner – a strand of ordinary cotton thread" he baked in a high heat oven until it carbonized.32 He tested this filament extensively on October 21-22, 1879.33 The carbonized piece of ordinary thread tested on lamp number 9 glowed to incandescence for 13½ hours before breaking, by far the longest- 21 Id. 22 Id. at 42. 23 Id. at 43. 24 Id. 25 Empires of Light at 45. 26 AC/DC at 43. 27 Id. at 44. 28 Empires of Light at 55. 29 Id. at 57. 30 Id. 31 AC/DC at 49-50. 32 Id. at 51.
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