February 2008
Intermediate to advanced
192 pages
4h 1m
English
Most people would agree that the incandescent electric light was Edison's iconic achievement as well as his single most important invention, but Edison never considered it a stand-alone device. As Edison conceived it, whatever else it was, cheap electric indoor lighting was a reason to transform whole cities (and, later, the countryside as well) into a set of customers for a brand new business: the electric power industry.
The mere availability of electric lighting would create, Edison believed, a universal demand for electric power. Yet even Edison realized that such an extensive installation of infrastructure would require an ambitious exercise in mass marketing. His approach was to use the existence ...