1. WHERE DO NEW INVENTIONS COME FROM? Not telescopes and CAT-scans, I mean, every day things? Like, forks? Or, like tin cans! But, what if there is an argument about which new invention is best…. Edison vs Westinghouse….

3. A blade from a Saxon scramasax knife of about 1000 CE, and a reproduction blade made for collectors. The inscription reads “Gebereht owns me” as this would have been a prized possession.

4. Thomas Coryate, an Englishman who travelled in Italy around 1600 published this account of his travels in 1611. He notes that while English polite society eats meats by slicing off portions with their table knife while steadying the meat with their fingers, in Italy they “do always at their meals use a little fork when they cut their meat…so that whosoever he be that stting in the company of any others… should unadvisedly touch the meat with his fingers…he will give occasion of offense unto the company as having transgressed the laws of good manners, insomuch that for his error he shall be at least brow beaten if not reprehended in words… “ (see Petroski The Evolution of Useful Things)

6. Professor Petroski’s hypothesis that devices evolve the way they do because of a dis- satisfaction on the part of the user in the way the current system works. Or, to use the author’s words, ‘form follows failure’. His second thesis is that ‘luxury’ not ‘necessity’ is the mother of invention… We can eat without forks, but if we are going to have a fork, then we want a good one!

7. Professor Petroski’s hypothesis that devices evolve the way they do because of a dis-satisfaction on the part of the user in the way the current system works. Or, to use the author’s words, ‘form follows failure’. His second thesis is that ‘luxury’ not ‘necessity’ is the mother of invention… We can eat without forks, but if we are going to have a fork, then we want a good one! What causes new ideas or inventions to be created? Petroski suggests that the traditional explanation of why we have new inventions generally has amounted to two points: 1) that new designs and objects require new tools to make and operate them, and the new tools then lead to new objects in a kind of evolutionary circle; 2) that inventors are artists and create new inventions as an artist makes art, as a kind of creative outlet or skill. But, do we really need hundreds of different kinds of forks, or as existed as early as the 19 th century, over 500 different kinds of hammers, as noted by Karl Marx, or over 130 different kinds of knives as were advertised in the Montgomery Wards mail order catalog in the mid 1800s. Rather, he tends to the ideas of David Pye who says, “Nothing we design ever works.” “All designs are in some degree failures.. The designer and his client have to choose in what degree and where there shall be failure.” Then, we notice the failure and we try to eliminate or fix it. We can’t. but in doing so, we find new compromises that work better in some ways. One of the most interesting books ever written about inventing and creativity is “Inventing for Fun and Profit” by Jacob Rabinow. A son of Jewish immigrant parents, Rabinow studied at City College of New York, eventually got a job in the National Bureau of Standards and eventually owned over 200 patents on a wide variety of different kinds of machines. He said, “Inventors are people who not only curse, but who also start to think of what can be done to eliminate the bother… When I see something that I don’t like, I try to invent a way around it.” Another famous inventor is Marvin Camras, a Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology who hold over 500 patents in electrcal devices. Petroski notes that when Camras was asked what he noticed about inventors, he said, “They tend to be dissatisfied with what they see around them… in my case, when I see something that is clumsy or inelegant, I always wonder why it was made that way… a lot of things seem clumsy to me. I like to have things simplified.”

8. Thomas Edison 1847 - 1931 “Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! Any other bright-minded fellow can accomplish just as much if he will stick like hell and remember nothing that’s any good works by itself. You’ve got to make the damn thing work! …” “I failed my way to success. “

9. L'Art de conserver pendant plusieurs années toutes les substances animales et végétales. Nicolas Appert Nicolas Appert 1749 – 1841 While imprisoned during the “Terror” of the French Revolution he was able to carry out some experiments on food and discovered a way to preserve food in bottles. He created a factory in 1802, wrote out his method in an 1810 treatise, and by 1811 had been awarded a major cash prize of 12,000 francs from Napoleon’s government. His factory was destroyed during the war and he retired to Paris where he continued to experiment with food, inventing condensed milk before his death. “Appert successfully preserved food by partially cooking it, sealing it in bottles with cork stoppers and immersing the bottles in boiling water. His theory of canning was all his own—Pasteur's discoveries regarding bacteria were still almost a half-century away. But Appert assumed that, as with wine, exposure to air spoiled food. So food in an airtight container, with the air expelled through the boiling process, would stay fresh. It worked. “ “Samples of Appert's preserved food were sent to sea with Napoleon's troops for a little over four months. Partridges, vegetables, and gravy were among 18 different items sealed in glass containers. All retained their freshness. "Not a single substance had undergone the least change at sea," Appert wrote of the trial. He was awarded the prize in 1810 by the Emperor himself. Like all good national heroes, Appert soon wrote a book called The Book of All Households: or The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances for Many Years. It described in detail the process for canning more than 50 foods and was widely relied upon.” (from Can Manufacturers Institute website)

10. Peter (or Pierre) Durand learned the art of preserving food by heating and sealing containers from the work of Nicolas Appert, but he was aware that the bottles used by Appert were fragile and could not stand up to the rough environment of a military campaign or a sea voyage. He replaced the bottles with strong metal cans made of iron covered with tin plate to resist rusting. He received a patent from the English government in 1811 at the same time that Appert was receiving a prize from the French government for his invention. Durand sold his patent to two businessmen, In 1812, Bryan Donkin, a successful engineer and inventor, and his partner John Hall, established Britain's first canned-food factory in Bermondsey. According to the website of the Can Manufacturer’s Institute, by 1813, Donkin's tins of preserved food were supplying the British army and navy. The Royal Navy used as many as 24,000 large cans—nearly 40,000 pounds—on its ships each year by 1818. The father of the can manufacturing industry in the United States was an Englishman who immigrated to the new country and brought his newfound canning experience with him. Thomas Kensett set up a small canning plant on the New York waterfront in 1812 and began producing America's first hermetically sealed salmon, lobsters, oysters, meats, fruits and vegetables. Kensett began his operation using glass jars but, finding glass expensive, difficult to pack and easily broken, soon switched to tin. He and his father-in-law, Ezra Daggett, were awarded the U. S. patent for preserving food in "vessels of tin" by President James Monroe in 1825. http://www.cancentral.com/hist_empire.cfmhttp://www.cancentral.com/hist_empire.cfm

11. It was the gruesome fate of the Donner party in 1846, an 87- member group reduced to cannibalism when deep snow trapped them in the Sierra Nevada mountains, that set one determined inventor to work on a canned food innovation. Gail Borden was inspired by the need of travelers for nutritious food that took up little space. He first tried a meat biscuit—condensed meat and vegetables—which was a culinary and financial disaster. Borden became an overnight success however when he hit upon canning condensed milk. Not only was Borden's Eagle Brand the most palatable, it was the most promoted. In 1856, he set up a cannery in Connecticut and began to target the New York City market. In those early days of urbanization, the milk that reached the city was often of poor quality. Cows at dairies on the outskirts of the city were fed waste from liquor distilleries and other dubious sources. The milk often required adulteration to make it look more like milk. What's more, it was sold in bulk in open barrels in crowded, dirty stores and transported to market in uncovered containers on the back of a horse-drawn wagon amid the filth and dust of city streets. Borden advertised his product as cleaner, purer and fresher than anything else New York residents could buy. (Can Manufacturer’s Institute)

13. Early cans were very heavy and thick, and were very difficult to open. The instructions on many cans simply said, ‘Use a hammer and chisel to open.’ When steel became available the iron was replaced with steel which could be made thinner, but was more flexible and subject to bending. Ezra Warner’s 1858 design is basically the same as many hand can openers sold today, say, on this deluxe pocket knife…

14. And the popularity of the new cans and openers led directly to…

16. Two problems existed with steel cans: they needed openers and they started to get expensive. Tin plated steel rose dramatically in price in the 1950s so several companies started researching the production of aluminum cans. After years of research the aluminum cans can now be made very efficiently – one pound of aluminum can yield over 30 cans and the metal can be recycled. However, after using cheaper aluminum, there was still a problem. What if you are at the family picnic with plenty of beer and no opener? You can try to open a can using the bumper of your car and get sprayed with foam and shout out “There must be a better way!” That’s exactly what happened to Ermal Fraze in Dayton, Ohio in 1959. Petroski reports that Fraze went home and in 1963 earned a landmark patent for the tab opening aluminum can.

17. Edison 1890 60w bulb

18. Edison vs Westinghouse As everyone knows, Thomas Edison invented the modern light bulb in 1879, and in order to be able to sell light bulbs he had to invent the entire rest of the electrical apparatus that would be needed for creating, distributing and managing the electricity, from generators to wiring to sockets to fuses… Electricity had been a popular interest since the days of the Shelleys! And interest focused even more on electricity when Michael Faraday developed the concept of the dynamo or generator starting in 1831. When asked by an important English government official (William Gladstone) what possible use could be made of electricity, Faraday replied, “Why, you soon may be able to tax it!” The practical knowledge of electricity advanced rapidly after Samuel Morse started his telegraph company in 1845 and electrical installations, wiring and batteries were part of the structure of every self-respecting town in America and Europe. Edison foresaw that electricity and electric lights and devices would be a giant industry one day. He favored simplification in design, but he forgot a cardinal rule – you should make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. Everyone had known since Faraday’s time that electric motors and generators for direct current – DC – were easy to make and maintain, and light bulbs could be powered by DC currents. So, Edison designed his entire system for DC power. This idea was opposed by several inventors, notably Nicolas Tesla. Tesla and the others felt that AC – alternating current – was the smarter choice for powering practical electricity projects. What was the argument?

19. George Westinghouse 1846 – 1914 (left) shown here with Lord Kelvin the electrical scientist. Westinghouse’ first great invention was his 1869 design for air powered brakes to replace manual brakes on railroad cars. He invented more than 300 different devices for railroads, many involved with safety. Within 25 years his air brake was required by law on all US trains. By that time Westinghouse had become involved with electrical engineering, had formed Westinghouse Electric in 1886 to develop his ideas, and had hired the brilliant but eccentric Nicolas Tesla to lead the research.

22. AC vs DC DC – easy to generate, simple generators and motors. The electricity flows constantly in one direction. AC – harder to generate – requires more complicated generator and motors, but works OK for incandescent lightning. Does not work for fluorescent or some other devices. So, you must be able to convert the AC to DC to use it in many devices. The AC electricity flows alternately in opposite directions, changing direction about 100 times per second (cycles) back and forth. A special set of devices is needed to deal with this change. ------------------------ Electricity leaks out of wires, it leaks out proportionately less if the voltage is very high. So high voltage is needed to prevent leakage, but high voltage is very dangerous in a home. AC can easily be converted from higher to lower voltage. DC cannot. So, AC has the advantage that it can be produced at the electric power plant at a high voltage (today often 400,000 volts) and then stepped down to a lower voltage (usually 11,000) in a neighborhood, and then stepped down again to 220 or 110 volts in a home. DC cannot be handled the same way. It leaves the power plant and arrives at the home at the high voltage. To transfer it a long distance, it would have to be a very high voltage, and that would not be safe at the home, so the plan with DC is to produce it in many neighborhood power plants and only transport the electricity a short distance – that way a lower voltage can be used. This was Edison’s plan. Keep things simple, but to keep things safe, local power production of DC would be needed. Tesla and Westinghouse said, use more complicated machinery, but use safer, more efficient AC.

23. Edison began design work on the light bulb in 1878 funded by a $42,000 capital investment from the JP Morgan bank. After testing over 6000 models, he had a working bulb. He then had to design all the other components of the system. A brilliant engineer who had done some work for the Edison company in Europe, fixed an important problem for them and been shabbily treated, Nicolas Tesla. However, after arriving in America, Tesla agreed to go to work for Edison. He wanted to design AC equipment, but there was no opportunity for that in Edison’s lab. He was again assigned a very difficult problem and solved it brilliantly, having been promised a $50,000 reward. Edison reneged and paid him nothing. He left the room and never spoke to Edison again. For a year Tesla worked as a common laborer in New York, but he bumped into a businessman, A.K. Brown who wanted to start a company to compete with Edison. Brown and Tesla became partners and Tesla started work on the AC system he had been thinking about for years. Within one year Tesla gave a talk to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Brown had arranged that in the audience was the millionaire inventor George Westinghouse. They became great friends and Westinghouse offered Tesla a $1 million advance for his machines and a very lucrative contract for royalties from future inventions which if it had not been squashed by legal technicalities in later course cases would easily have made Tesla the richest man in the world. The sordid story of the competition between Westinghouse and Edison is recounted in a book by Michael White “Acid Tongues and Tranquil Dreamers.” While Tesla was enjoying his new-found wealth and fame, Edison had been influenced by another engineer, Harold Brown, to try to discredit Tesla and Westinghouse’ machines. Brown organized a series of lecture demonstrations in which he demonstrated the killing power of AC currents. At the Columbia School of Mines and in other sites he repeatedly showed how dogs could be killed with AC currents. Over the protests of the audiences and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, he killed more dogs, a calf, and a horse in public demonstrations. Back at Edison’s labs hundreds of dogs were killed in experiments with electrocution that sent howls of agony echoing through the neighborhood. In 1888 Brown wrote a book financed by Edison “The Comparative Danger to Life of the Alternating and Continuous Current.” A few months later Westinghouse published a book, “Safety of the Alternating System of Electrical Distribution” White reports how the low point of this entire demeaning series of events was reached in August 1890. The previous November Harold Brown published a magazine article in which he described a painless new method for executing prisoners, using AC current, of course. Brown then persuaded the NY superintendent of prisons, Austin Lathrop, to authorize an experimental execution by electricity. Twenty- six witnesses watched the axe murderer William Kremmler strapped into the chair. The description of the execution is gruesome – witnesses vomited and fainted while the prisoner was burned to death - his hair flaming alight and the smell of roasting human flesh filled the room as black smoke poured from his ears. Edison and Brown’s demonstration had backfired. People did not want to hear anymore about the dangers of electricity. They wanted lights and electricity, and Westinghouse was giving it to them in an inexpensive, efficient form.

24. The end of the battle between Edison and Westinghouse came with two decisions in 1893 and 1895. First, Westinghouse’s AC system was chosen to light the fabulous White City at the gigantic 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. It was the ultimate demonstration of both the effectiveness and safety of electricity, as 96,620 bulbs were illuminated in an unprecedented display. Then in 1895 Westinghouse and General Electric won the contracts to provide power for the city of Buffalo using generators at Niagara Falls. AC had won over DC. Tesla had revenged himself, and although a series of business complications led him to sell back the royalty contracts he had earlier received, he still had a large amount of money, if only he could manage to hold on to it.

25. In 1893 the White City was lit by 10,000s of bulbs. In 2003 I was in Guatemala and drew this sketch of a local woman grinding corn on a stone mortar and baking her corn bread in a small mud oven over wooden coals. Her family pig looks on in front of their stick and straw home.