The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

For those of us who can remember a time not so long ago when we didn’t have telephones (computers really) in our pockets and the Internet was something few were connected to, even of those few who had computers in their homes, the current state of communication technology can seem revolutionary. This is tame compared to the changes wrought by technology that seems commonplace to us now. In The Age of Edison, Ernest Freeburg describes the amazing changes brought about in the 50 years following the introduction of electric lighting.

Though Thomas Edison is a huge figure in electric lighting, especially in the United States, Freeburg is careful to avoid the myth of the solitary inventor bringing an idea out of thin air. Many people were working on electric lighting.  Edison’s incandescent bulb had advantages over other lights, especially because he conceived of a complete lighting system with power sources, distribution and controls in addition to lamps. There were predecessors in the field, so Edison was working in a social context of seeking to provide superior lighting.

These competitors were not only other electric light inventors, but also older technologies, especially gas. Because electric power did not reach rural areas until the 1930s, much older artificial lights, like kerosene lamps, persisted even as electric lights became common in middle-class urban homes.

The first customers of electric lights were not homeowners, but businesses and cities who were already customers of lighting systems. These lights transformed cities, which various economic forces were causing to grow. From public lighting, electric systems were adapted to retail businesses, arts, entertainment, and science.

The early electric lighting market was competitive, unregulated, and wild. Electrocutions and fires were too common and widely publicized. Light companies were forced to improve safety by a political movement that supported municipal government control and ownership, and insurance company interests. This led to electric codes, the founding of the Underwriter’s Laboratory (UL) in 1893, college programs in electrical engineering, and the unionization of electrical workers.

Commercial interests dominated the early development of electric lighting. This was not the only reason electric lights had critics, but it was a significant reason. Intellectuals criticized the unartistic randomness of commercial messages seeking outshine each other. They were not especially successful in curbing electric lights, but the industry began to mature in this context and develop more attractive, effective and efficient lighting systems that were adapted to uses in homes and businesses.

Freeburg wraps up with Henry Ford’s 1929 jubilee of the invention of the incandescent electric lamp. In 50 years, the invention transformed almost every part of American life, especially urban life that was quickly becoming more common as people left farms for opportunities in cities. One of the telling things is that the event was broadcast on radio. In 1879, people huddled around candles and lanterns if they had to have light when the sun went down, but well within the span of a lifetime electric lights became dominant and electric appliances were common enough that radios were in homes and many were able to participate in a distant celebration of a transformative technology. It is hard to imagine how amazing these changes were to the people who experienced them.

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

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Freeburg, Ernest. The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America. New York: Penguin, 2013.

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

Repcheck, Jack. Copernicus’ Secret. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

Copernicus is famous for kicking off the scientific revolution by proclaiming his heliocentric (sun-centered) theory of the universe. Someone who reads much about the scientific revolution that came about in the 15th and 16th centuries will come across his name. Even so, there are many misconceptions regarding the astronomer.


The main misconception is that Copernicus was prosecuted for his heliocentric theory. Though his book on the subject was eventually banned by the Roman Catholic Church for about two centuries, he was an official of the church who had taken first orders and he was mostly well received in both the scientific and religious communities of his day. His primary book on the subject wasn’t even published until the very end of his life.

Copernicus had his share of troubles. One he brought on himself by keeping a mistress. His ordination included a vow of celibacy. The other came from being an official of Catholic government in a territory surrounded by recently converted Lutheran countries.

Oddly enough, it was Lutheran mathematics professor who helped the Catholic astronomer prepare is book for publication. Joachim Rheticus was educated at Wittenberg where he taught astronomy and astrology (astrology was widely accepted at the time and practiced by almost all astronomers). He was given a leave of absence, which he stretched out for three years before returning to his duties, and took it upon himself to find Copernicus and become his student.

This was a dangerous situation for Rheticus, Lutherans were banned from Copernicus’ home territory of Warmia, and doubly so for Copernicus because of his role as a church and civil official. That he housed a Lutheran seemed to have been tolerated better than his long affair with a woman.

Copernicus’ Secret is an interesting look at the astronomer’s professional life and its development. It touches on his personal life, especially his long-term relationship with the mistress who lived with him until he was forced to break off the relationship, but this part is much weaker. This may be because Copernicus was a private person. Even so, Repcheck show’s that trouble Copernicus faced had more to do with his personal life and the political tensions of the day than with his proposal of a heliocentric universe.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
The Science of Leonardo by Fritjof Capra

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

Lithium is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. It is also in important part of the small, light, energy-packed rechargeable batteries that make our portable devices possible. It is also likely an important part of future batteries that might make longer-running electric cars and large-scale energy storage possible. Journalist Seth Fletcher describes the history of lithium as a battery material, especially in batteries for electric and hybrid cars, in Bottled Lightning.

Fletcher goes way back to the batteries made by Alessandro Volta in 1800 and, possibly more important, the first rechargeable batteries made by Gaston Planté in 1859 (a lead acid battery).

Fletcher treats this older history briefly. Like his readers, he is not as interested in batteries as in the uses of energy batteries enable. One of these uses is transportation. Many early cars were electric vehicles (EVs) that were powered by batteries. The technology of the time required large batters to hold relatively modest charges, which limited the range of the cars. Gasoline held much more energy than batteries, was widely available and cheap. For most motorists, gasoline beat batteries hands down.

Of course, priorities and technologies change. The energy crisis of the 1970s, along with a growing environmental movement, pressured automakers to develop electric car concepts. The technology of the time probably wasn’t up to the task for what most drivers wanted, and in combination with a return of low oil prices and automotive industry inertia the electric car development of that era came to an end.

Technology rolled on, as it does, and the development of cell phones—and the portable, networked computers they have become—put pressure on the battery industry to come up with lighter, longer lasting, rechargeable batteries. They found the answer in lithium-based batteries, especially the lithium-ion type that is common today.

When the automakers were again needing to look at alternatives to oil, mostly for fuel economy and emission control reasons, the new lithium-ion batteries changed the equation for the effectiveness and affordability of electric and hybrid cars. It is yet to become cheap, as attested by the price of the high-end electric cars made by Tesla. Even cars marketed for the mass market like the Chevy Volt is expensive without subsidies. (The Volt is technically a plug-in hybrid, but for the majority of drivers who travel less than forty miles a day it can be all-electric.)

There is a lot of potential for advance batteries becoming the industrial driver of the future. A growing electric car market will create a demand for a lot of batteries. The increased uses of renewable energy, and the eventual retirement of coal-burning and other fuel-consuming power plants, depends on energy storage to even out the waxing and waning of energy sources that vary with the cycles of the sun and the whims of the weather. The 2009 stimulus bill put a lot of money into new battery research and manufacturing, but Asia is still ahead of the U.S. in manufacturing capacity if not in innovation. If America wants a piece of this revolution (we’re going to buy a lot of these batteries, so maybe we should reap some of the benefits of making them), we’ll need to invest in these industries (as China is) and not leave to Asian manufacturers to lengthen their lead.

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

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

Professional Amateur by T. A. Boyd

Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

Fletcher, Seth. Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cards, and the New Lithium Economy. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.

Life's Matrix by Philip Ball

Water is a chemical essential to human life and culture, and it is possibly the oddest common substance. Physicist and science writer Philip Ball describes the nature of water, both scientific and cultural, in Life’s Matrix (originally published in the United Kingdom as H2O: A Biography of Water).

Ball begins at the very beginning—the big bang. Hydrogen, the simplest atom and most abundant element in the universe, appeared early in the universe. Oxygen is forged in stars and has become the third most abundant element. There is water in space. Ice seems to be common in the far reaches of the solar system. It has been found on the moon and stars and a few molecules appear in the cooler spots on the sun.

We have found no worlds yet that have as much liquid water as ours. The water cycle has shaped Earth. Our weather comes largely from the interplay of water and energy. Even the water locked up in the ice of our poles and glaciers shape the land, influence the weather, and affect the movement of heat, water and salt in ocean currents.

Ball tackles all phases of water, including a few exotic forms that only occur in extreme conditions created in laboratories. That water exists as vapor, liquid, and solid within the fairly narrow range of temperatures that are common on Earth make it unique. This is just one of its unusual properties. The structure of the water molecule is described in the book along with the physics that explain its behavior, to the degree that such things are even known.

Our understanding of water as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen is a relatively recent thing. For a long time, water was thought of as an irreducible element. This makes sense on some level. Water is essential to life as we know it. It is irreplaceable. From the perspective of living creatures, and in almost every culture, water is a fundamental material.

In the final chapter, Ball moves away from the hard sciences to culture, economics and policy. Water of the quality needed for drinking, and even the lesser quality needed for other things, is scarce and unevenly distributed on the planet. To take a serious look at water is to be drawn to issues of health and wealth. Growing population and changing climate will put increased demands on the available fresh water, and we need to consider how we are going to manage it. Ball takes a look at some of the hot spots.

The book is intended for a broad audience. I think it is probably more accessible to someone with some education in the sciences, especially chemistry or physics, but someone had a high-school level class in these subjects they should be able to follow along.

In addition, the book is 16 years old, so necessarily out of date in some respects. I suspect that much of the physics, chemistry and biology described is still sound. Similarly, there is unlikely to be discoveries in history that would seriously outdate the book, even in the interesting section on dead ends and “pathology” in water science.

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

The Big Necessity by Rose George

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Elixir by Brian Fagan

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

Water by Marq de Villiers

Water by Steven Solomon

When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

Ball, Philip. Life’s Matrix: A Biography of Water. 1999. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.