 From: Jed Rothwell <ub-gate.UB.com!compuserve.com!72240.1256>
 Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 14:57:25 GMT
 Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
 Subject: Edison

To: >INTERNET:fusion@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG

Richard Blue comments:

"...your portrayal of Edison and the Wright brothers as
unappreciated scientists is not historically accurate."

Oops. You shouldn't have said that Dick. You are playing in my
court. You do neutrons, I do history. Both the Wrights and Edison
met a firestorm of establishment scientific opposition, which
went on for years and years. That fact is well documented. I just
read the best "warts and all" biography of Edison I have ever
seen, titled "A Streak of Luck," by Robert Conot.

Let's have a quick look at the situation in 1879, 3 years after
Bell invented the telephone, and about six months after Edison
got serious about the incandescent light. He had gone through
four design iterations, open air, vacuum, partial vacuum... He
and his crew were doing "teeth grinding" all- nighters, and he
was getting nowhere. His design goal was to produce lights that
could be "subdivided;" that is, run in parallel circuits, and not
just serial. The eventual solution, as we all know, was to use
high resistance 100 ohm filaments instead of 5 ohm arc lights,
but in 1879, no scientist on earth imagined that a high ohm light
could exist. When Edison later claimed he had one, very few
scientists believed him.

Edison had revealed the phonograph April 1878. He was proclaimed
the scientist of the ages, he showed the phonograph in the
offices of Scientific American, and at the White House... The
reporters found out that he had patented 158 inventions, and by
the fall of 1878 he was acclaimed the "Napoleon of Science" and
"Wizard of Menlo Park." Arc lights and other experimental
incandescent lights had been around for about 15 years, but they
were not practical or economical compared to gaslight. There was
no question that the phenomenon existed, and there should have
been no question that if anyone could bring it to commercial
reality, Edison could. But he hadn't done it yet, he was being
lambasted in the press and the scientific establishment. He was
busy doing science by press conference: "popping into the
newspaper pages like a vaudeville announcer going onstage to
usher in each new act, Edison set off a scientific brouhaha of
unprecedented proportions... William Siemens, who had worked on
electric lighting for a decade, declared: 'Such startling
announcements as these should be depreciated as being unworthy of
science and mischievous to its true progress.'" (p. 129)

By and by, of course, Edison got the thing to work, so he strung
up several lights on poles around his laboratories. Ordinary
people came every evening from miles around to marvel. The
scientists stayed home. They knew the answer already, they didn't
bother replicating, they did not even bother going over to have a
look at a public demonstration. The drumbeat of daffy skeptical
opposition continued. Professor Henry Morton, who knew Edison
personally, lived nearby, and could have driven his buggy over
any time, "felt compelled 'to protest in behalf of true science.'
The results of Edison's experiments, he asserted, were 'a
conspicuous failure, trumped as a wonderful success. A fraud upon
the public.'"

The "prestigious" Professor Du Moncel said, "One must have lost
all recollection of *American* *hoaxes* to accept such claims.
The sorcerer of Menlo Park appears not to be acquainted with the
subtleties of the electrical science. Mr. Edison takes us
backwards." A letter in Scientific American attacked the light
bulb and the newly improved dynamo, saying it would be "almost a
public calamity if Mr. Edison should employ his great talent on
such a puerility." Edwin Weston, a respected arc light specialist
called Edison's claims, "so manifestly absurd as to indicate a
positive want of knowledge of the electric circuit and the
principles governing the construction and operation of electrical
machines." (p. 162)

The reaction in Europe was even more negative, and the "English
Mechanic" journal declared "all anxiety concerning the Edison
light may be put to one side. It is certainly not going to take
the place of gas." (Anxiety?)

Finally, the light began to dawn (as it were). For one thing,
people realized that Edison was, after all, a world famous
inventor applying for a license to illuminate a neighborhood in
New York, and he was getting huge amounts of carte blanche
financing from the world's most canny, successful investors,
including J. P. Morgan. People who had their head screwed on
straight began to wonder whether J.P. knew something they did not
know. People realized that J.P.'s men had good technical
judgement -- just as any sensible person in 1993 realizes that
when MITI and Toyota start spending $50 million a year, it cannot
be because they have accidently mistaken 20C for 80C, or 0 watts
for 100 watts.

Gradually, the "daffy skeptic brigades" swung into absurd denial,
phase II. 'Okay,' they admitted, 'maybe these weird effects do
exist after all, but we see now that they will never be of any
use to anyone.' Here is a mind- boggling warning from the New
York Graphic:

     "When the phonograph was invented and the telephone was
     paraded before the admiring public, promises of magical
     results were lavishly made. How signally they have failed of
     perfection everyone now knows."

Three years after the telephone had been introduced, the daffy
skeptics were busy writing it off as a useless toy! 'It may
exist,' they said, 'but it is marginal, don't sell your telegraph
stocks yet!" They knew that Bell had been wrapped up in
litigation for years, and could not raise capital, and could not
get to work, and they knew that he was fighting the biggest, most
powerful vested interest in the world: Western Union. They knew
that the development was tied up in knots by hostile opposition
and severe technical challenges, but they figured three years
should be enough to bring it to fruition no matter what the
obstacles. It was all over, they said, the telephone was a
failure. This is the same nonsense we hear today from Dieter
Britz, who expects people to conduct and publish clean, beautiful
CF experiments even though he knows that there is not single
dollar of money; that most universities strictly ban all work
(even when the researchers offer to pay for the equipment); that
workers face unending hostility and accusations of fraud; and
that no Editor will print even a short letter about CF. It's all
over, he says, because the number of articles has declined.

Phase II denial always kicks in after a while. The establishment
lambasted the Wrights for five years as bluffers, frauds, and
liars, and never bothered to send a reporter to Dayton. The
Scientific American and the New York Times never acknowledged the
photographs and affidavits from the leading citizens of Dayton
(just as today they refuse to acknowledge videos, data, and
letters from MITI). Occasionally, a positive note would creep
into S.A., but it would immediately be countered by another
strong denial. (See: "The Wright Brothers" by Fred C. Kelly, the
"authorized biography.") The experts made up their minds
instantly, the moment they heard the news in 1903, and that was
that. Even after the 1908 demonstration flight at Ft. Myres, VA,
one of the leading skeptics jumped up and said 'okay, it's real,
but they will never be able to carry a passenger.' They already
had carried a passenger, and they did it again a week later.
History does not record what the skeptic said after that, but I
am sure it was something like: 'okay, but it is unreliable,
dangerous and expensive; it will never be practical.'

So, here we are 115 years after the incandescent light, 90 years
after the airplane, and we have just entered "absurd denial phase
II" with CF. Here is Dr. David Williams, Professor of Chemistry
at University College London, lambasting cold fusion in Physics
Today:

     "Indeed, it is important to say that there do seem to be
     some good measurements which indicate the possible
     occurrence of an interesting phenomenon. But what profit is
     there in such an inefficient, unreliable, dangerous and
     expensive energy storage method?"

- Jed


