Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution

Rating:
Summary: He Made It Up as He Went Along
Review: Although L. J. Davis is an entertaining writer, this is a terrible book. Practically every page has a howler of a misstatement, beginning with page one in which he lists the four basic forces of the universe as (1.) magnetism, (2.) gravity, (3.) the weak force, and (4.) electricity. (Why did he include the weak force but not the strong force?)

It's shocking (NPI) that in a book about the history of electrical technology, Davis seems to lack an elementary understanding of his subject. In several places, voltage is defined as the speed at which electricity travels through a conductor -- higher voltage, the faster it goes. As an earlier reviewer noted, he even gets the Edison effect wrong. (It's not the dark spot on the inside of a light bulb, but that about one volt can be measured there.)

Davis states that the first use of arc lighting "came in 1846, when the new Paris Opera used it to light the skating scene in Meyerbeer's The Prophet." Unfortunately, that opera wasn't written until 1849.

The errors and omissions pile up toward the end (Lee de Forest and Edwin Howard Armstrong are not even mentioned) until by the time he describes the computer revolution, his history of the Apple computer is so utterly wrong (actually, Steve Wozniak had nothing to do with the development of the Macintosh, and Doug Engelbart invented the mouse) that you'd likely get more accurate information by stopping someone on the street.

This book makes me suspicious of other writing by L. J. Davis about economics and politics.

Even the book's index is inadequate.

Rating:
Summary: Good and Bad News.
Review: I agree that this book is comprehensive and entertaining -- when discussing the people involved. However, it is often laughably garbled and sometimes dead wrong in explaining the phenomena those people discovered and worked on. Enjoy the people; take the science and technical explanations with a large grain of salt. Two examples out of many: 1)The author says that parallel current-carrying wires repell each other. That's true if the
currents run in opposite directions, but the wires attract each other if the currents run in the same direction. 2)The author says that the dark surface that forms in a light bulb is caused by electrons, but it is a coating of metal that has boiled off of the filament.

Rating:
Summary: Good and Bad News.
Review: I agree that this book is comprehensive and entertaining -- when discussing the people involved. However, it is often laughably garbled and sometimes dead wrong in explaining the phenomena those people discovered and worked on. Enjoy the people; take the science and technical explanations with a large grain of salt. Two examples out of many: 1)The author says that parallel current-carrying wires repell each other. That's true if the
currents run in opposite directions, but the wires attract each other if the currents run in the same direction. 2)The author says that the dark surface that forms in a light bulb is caused by electrons, but it is a coating of metal that has boiled off of the filament.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and entertaining history of electricity
Review: In a breezy, readable style reminiscent of James Burke's Connections, the author tells the story of the harnessing of electricity, from Benjamin Franklin's kite to Guglielmo Marconi and the beginnings of radio. Playing no national favorites, the book debunks some popular myths about Morse and Edison, and places developments in Britain and Europe in context with those in America.
Morse and the development of landline telegraphy have their own 52-page chapter, and the story of Cyrus Field and the Atlantic Cable occupies a further 49 pages. Covering all aspects of the history of electricity, Fleet Fire is an entertaining and informative study. The book has endnotes, a bibliography, and, appropriately, a web-page listing of related material.

Rating:
Summary: With little-known facts, anecdotes, and insights
Review: L.J. Davis' Fleet Fire tells of the interactions between various scientists and inventors who contributed to the discovery of electricity and the revolutionary changes instigated by its use. Little-known facts, anecdotes, and insights accompany these capsule features of inventors ranging from Ben Franklin to Thomas Davenport and Cyrus Field.

Rating:
Summary: A Crooked Road to Electrical Power
Review: The recent outage of electrical power in New York and other states has highlighted the importance of electricity. Without it, we cannot work, travel, or communicate, or at least we cannot do these things with the efficiency we have come to expect when we have easily available current. With electricity so demonstrably vital, it is a good time to learn just how we got it. _Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution_ (Arcade) by L. J. Davis is not just Edison's story, but the story of electricity going back to the Greeks. It is a story filled with odd characters; given the peculiarities of so many of them, it might be thought improbable that delivered electricity could have ever become so universal.

America was involved in electrical experimentation from the beginning of scientific evaluation of such things. Ben Franklin, of course, is forever associated with the start of electrical investigations, and to him we owe such terms as battery, discharge, and condenser. Investigating electricity, however, proved to be a great disappointment for the practical Franklin; he may have invented the lightning rod, but he could not make electricity do anything practical. The great step toward practicality was made in 1796 when Alessandro Volta stacked zinc and lead and made a powerful and useful battery; experimenters no longer had to rely on iffy static charges in a Leyden jar. For almost eighty years, most of the world's electrical power came from batteries. This was despite the invention of the dynamo generator by Faraday in the 1830s. It was not until 1873 in an exhibit in Vienna that dynamos were wrongly connected and someone noticed that one dynamo could turn another dynamo into an electric motor. A few years later, Thomas Edison sensed the opportunity of sending electricity into homes to do motor work. He also worked hard on the light bulb, but Davis makes the case that "The light bulb destroyed Menlo Park and it wrecked Edison as a major inventor." The problem was direct current, and much of the book involves the vituperative competition between Edison for direct current, and Westinghouse and the extremely weird Tesla for alternating current.

Davis gives many examples of inventors who because of petty jealousies or greed did not get credit for their work; if you have never heard of Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, you have heard his radio, the one that sends voices rather than the mere impulses Marconi managed. There were so many wrong turns taken by brilliant men on the way to find good ways to make and use electricity that Davis's tale is an exciting (I will not say shocking) account of human foibles. It is good to be reminded, once again, that scientific knowledge cannot be gained in an orderly or planned fashion, but is accumulated catch-as-catch-can, the way humans perform even the most serious endeavors.

Rating:
Summary: A Crooked Road to Electrical Power
Review: The recent outage of electrical power in New York and other states has highlighted the importance of electricity. Without it, we cannot work, travel, or communicate, or at least we cannot do these things with the efficiency we have come to expect when we have easily available current. With electricity so demonstrably vital, it is a good time to learn just how we got it. _Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution_ (Arcade) by L. J. Davis is not just Edison's story, but the story of electricity going back to the Greeks. It is a story filled with odd characters; given the peculiarities of so many of them, it might be thought improbable that delivered electricity could have ever become so universal.

America was involved in electrical experimentation from the beginning of scientific evaluation of such things. Ben Franklin, of course, is forever associated with the start of electrical investigations, and to him we owe such terms as battery, discharge, and condenser. Investigating electricity, however, proved to be a great disappointment for the practical Franklin; he may have invented the lightning rod, but he could not make electricity do anything practical. The great step toward practicality was made in 1796 when Alessandro Volta stacked zinc and lead and made a powerful and useful battery; experimenters no longer had to rely on iffy static charges in a Leyden jar. For almost eighty years, most of the world's electrical power came from batteries. This was despite the invention of the dynamo generator by Faraday in the 1830s. It was not until 1873 in an exhibit in Vienna that dynamos were wrongly connected and someone noticed that one dynamo could turn another dynamo into an electric motor. A few years later, Thomas Edison sensed the opportunity of sending electricity into homes to do motor work. He also worked hard on the light bulb, but Davis makes the case that "The light bulb destroyed Menlo Park and it wrecked Edison as a major inventor." The problem was direct current, and much of the book involves the vituperative competition between Edison for direct current, and Westinghouse and the extremely weird Tesla for alternating current.

Davis gives many examples of inventors who because of petty jealousies or greed did not get credit for their work; if you have never heard of Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, you have heard his radio, the one that sends voices rather than the mere impulses Marconi managed. There were so many wrong turns taken by brilliant men on the way to find good ways to make and use electricity that Davis's tale is an exciting (I will not say shocking) account of human foibles. It is good to be reminded, once again, that scientific knowledge cannot be gained in an orderly or planned fashion, but is accumulated catch-as-catch-can, the way humans perform even the most serious endeavors.

Rating:
Summary: Untold, fascinating history with an entertaining twist
Review: This is an eye-opening book, not only wonderfully entertaining but filled with fascinating details of one of the most important periods in scientific discovery. And much of it took place right here in America. This is a cast of characters you never knew but whose achievements we benefit from daily. I couldn't put it down. Much of the time as I turned the pages I kept thinking that with all the useless television we face daily and wondering why someone didn't think about telling these stories before since this book provides wonderful insights into these great modern scientific explorers, their inventions and their times. Hopefully, the talented and very humorous Mr. Davis has plans underway to write more books on the history of invention since this must-read leaves you wanting the history to go on and on like a great novel.