The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Maury Klein’s book The Power Makers is a history of power from the Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine to the foundations of America’s electric grid.

Unlike many historians who look at the history of electric power, Klein gives a lot of attention to steam. We haven’t had steam engines directly powering industrial plants for decades, but steam turbines are still central to the production of most electricity in the United States. Even nuclear power plants use steam turbines to run their generators, they just use the heat from nuclear reactions rather than from the combustion of coal or natural gas to boil water and heat the steam to more than a thousand degrees.

Klein gives attention to many lesser known names in the history of power. He shows that Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse had rivals other than each other, such as Elihu Thomson. Nikola Tesla is well known as the genius who invented the AC motor, but other engineers helped develop his prototype into a commercial product, such as mathematically talented engineer Benjamin Lamme. Many talented inventors tried their hands at making electric lighting and power systems better. Only some of them had the vision, business sense, good partners and luck to turn their ideas into successful products. Few of them are widely known today.

Electrification had clear, direct effects in industry and transportation. Klein discusses how it’s influence reached into other sectors of the economy. Corporate management and finance changed to meet the needs of a growing new technology. For instance, Edison General Electric was able to take advantage of a new New Jersey law that allowed corporations to own businesses in other states. Electric companies grew, expanded and consolidated through numerous mergers and acquisitions. They had a demand for capital that nearly rivaled the railroads, another transformative technology that had shortly preceded electric power.

As the availability of electricity grew, certain industries were able to grow, too. Some chemical and metals manufacturing required abundant electric power to catalyze chemical reactions or generate the high temperatures of electric furnaces. Manufacturers flocked to Niagara after a lager hydroelectric power station started operation there in 1895.

Klein brings the many thread of his story of power together by reflections on three great fairs: the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the first, a giant steam engine that powered exhibits by means of belts and pulley was a significant attraction. By the second, electricity was on display, and the White City fairground was a model for testing AC power systems. By the 1939 fair, large power utilities of the type we would recognize today were becoming common. By then it was no big deal to flip a switch or pull a lever and get power so, unlike the previous to fairs, no dignitary undertook a show of doing it; the power was on from the start.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Grid by Gretchen Bakke

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

The Lighthouse Stevensons by Bella Bathurst

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

1939 by David Gelernter

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe 

Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

Klein, Maury. The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.

You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

Jen Sincero believes you can live the life you really want. She writes about how in You are a Badass.

Much of what you’ll find in Sincero’s book can be found on other self-help works. Sincero admits as much. Her tone, which is often humorous, is skeptical of the religious-tinged “woo-woo” stuff you’ll find in much of the self-help ouvre. Even so, she desparately wanted to change her life and was willing to try things that seemed silly to her. She wanted in badly enough to spend hard-earned money on books, seminars and workshops at which you whack pillows with bats. It worked.

The basic principle is the law of attraction. Your thoughts attract or create from the stuff of the universe by some means the life you have. If you want a better life, you need to change your thinking so that you are clear about what you want, have a willingness for action and keep a positive mindset. This concept has been around for a long time, though it was popularized anew a few years ago by the widely popular book (and related media) The Secret.

Sincero branches off in many directions from this central idea. Each chapter presents a related idea and tools for implementing them.

The good life starts with a decision. Decide what you want and that you’re willing to do what it takes to achieve it.

She encourages readers to love themselves. Appreciate that you are a unique person with a special place in this world and treat yourself with some respect.

She says people should do what they love. You only live so long and it is important that you enjoy life. In addition, don’t get hung up on a single purpose for your whole life. As you grow and you circumstances change, your purpose will change as well.

Your relationships with other are important, too. Surround yourself with people you want to be like. On the other hand, don’t compare yourself to others; it is a recipe for disappointment. Forgive others and yourself so your past doesn’t drag you down.

Even though it can be corny, do some of that old-fashioned self-helpy stuff. Use affirmations. Visualize your ideal life. Make a vision board.

What set’s Sincero apart from others is her tone and humor. She presents herself as a person who is not interested in mysticism. She’s interested in making a better life and she is concentrating on what works. If it works, she doesn’t care if it’s advocates are a little freaky. She sprinkles her book liberally with humor and spices it with a little foul language.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Acres of Diamonds by Russel H. Conwell

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Make Miracles in Forty Days by Melody Beattie

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

The Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

The Success Principles by Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer

Write It Down, Make It Happen by Henriette Anne Klaus

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Sincero, Jen. You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2013.

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

Alexander Graham Bell is obviously known for his invention of the telephone. He started his career teaching the deaf to speak using a set of tools developed by his father. This career lead the Scotch-Canadian teacher (Bell became an American citizen in 1882) to meet an American girl, Mabel Hubbard, who he would marry. Helen Elmira Waite tells the story of their life together in Make a Joyful Noise.

Mabel Hubbard lost her hearing at the age of five after being ill with scarlet fever. Her parents were determined that she would continue to speak and understand speech. They were encouraged by news from Germany that schools there were teaching the deaf to speak, but there was little support for it in the United States. Even so, they arranged for a teacher who had the courage to try and Mabel learned to speak and read lips.

Gardiner Hubbard, Mabel’s father, was a businessman and politician in Massachusetts. He became an advocate for the education of the deaf, especially oral education (speech and lip reading). As a child, Mabel testified to a committee of the Massachusetts legislature to demonstrate what a deaf child could learn.

Bell set us a school for the deaf in Boston. Here he was introduced to Mabel, whose family hoped his techniques could help her achieve a more natural speech. He began experimenting with the idea of pushing more signals down telegraph wires, which lead to his invention of the telephone. Gardiner Hubbard became one of Bells backers in these efforts. Even though Bell grew to spend more time developing his telephone, and later testing designs for aviation, he always remained active in education for the deaf.

The Bell family authorized Waite’s biography. The advantage of this is that she had access to family records and the recollections of the Bells’ children and grandchildren. The possible downside is that Waite may have been inclined to present the Bells in the best light. Waite may have been inclined to do this anyway. In his preface, Bell’s son-in-law, Gilbert Grosvenor, mentioned that he and his wife Elsie, Bell’s oldest daughter, had read Waits biography of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan (the Bells knew these ladies and Bell himself encouraged Keller’s parents that she could be educated and connect to the wider world).

Waite does admit to Bell’s stubbornness and sometimes-excessive sense of propriety. If the Hubbards, particularly Mabel, had not pushed, persuaded, coerced, and even tricked Bell into promoting, protecting, and commercializing his invention, he may have tinkered in his shop making a better telephone that no one would use.

Waite’s style is almost conversational; she’s telling a story. I think Make a Joyful Noise is accessible to many younger readers. It is also interesting in that the book is as much about Bell’s private life, particularly his romance and marriage with Mabel, as it is about his invention. In addition, she demonstrates that Mabel was a remarkable and capable person on her own.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Waite, Helen Elmira. Make a Joyful Sound: The Romance of Mabel Hubbard and Alexander Graham Bell. Philadelphia: MacRae Smith Company, 1961.

The Gentleman Scientists by Tom Schachtman

The period of time around the American Revolution coincided with the Enlightenment. In Gentleman Scientists and Revolutionaries, Tom Schachtman endeavors to present a history of American science during this time and show how scientific ideas influenced the founding fathers.

Shachtman starts with the colonial period. Because many of the formally educated people in America, including clergyman, had studied in Europe, Enlightenment science was taught to many of the founding fathers to some degree in their youths. As frontiersman, even in American cities and upper class, practical knowledge was considered to be an acceptable subject along with classical subjects. At the time, they wouldn’t have used the word “science,” nor would they have strongly distinguished the study of science from the professions of engineering, architecture and medicine or even agriculture and skilled trades.

Americans were well-read, and the many newspapers of the time introduced common people to scientific debate. In particular, Philadelphia newspapers (including one operated by Benjamin Franklin’s brother) sensationalized the debate over variolation (inoculation) to prevent small pox. The American reputation for science was slow to develop in the colonial period, but Franklin’s success in studying electricity proved that the colonies could produce scientists to match the European adepts.

The Revolutionary War did not bring scientific study to a stop, but it necessarily diverted a lot of attention. Even so, people continued to seek scientific and technological advances, especially if they might help the war effort.

After the war, the United States continued to develop its scientific talent. Schacthman culminates his book in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson and the period shortly after it. By this time, the nation had a depth of scientific talent and could mount and expedition to the western edge of the continent, start a steamboat line, and demonstrate that meteors originated in outer space.

Scientific ideas of the time shaped the founders’ political thinking. In particular, the Enlightenment was a period when many people abandoned the notion that knowledge was received from authorities. Knowledge could be discovered through observation of nature and the application of reason. In particular, people might discover the laws of effective government in much the way that Isaac Newton discovered the laws of motion.

A related idea was that knowledge was tested, adjusted and improved by experimentation. They did not imagine that they were creating a perfect government, they were instead applying the lessons they learned from previous experiments in ancient and European governments to a new experiment that may or may not produce the results they hoped for. In some ways, Americans are

still participating in that same experiment.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

46 Pages by Scott Liell

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis

Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe 

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Schachtman, Tom. Gentleman Scientists and Revolutionaries: The Founding Fathers in the Age of Enlightenment. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.