"The Last Days of Night" by Graham Moore
Above: "The Last Days of Night," by Graham Moore. 371 pages.
I enjoyed the novel as a riveting page turner, as a compelling study into the nature of invention, as a cogent review of the intricacies of patent law, as a comprehensible tutorial on electricity, for raising the question in my mind about the role of skullduggery and subterfuge in business, and for fostering vigorous reflection on the nature of technological progress.
I completed reading this book today.
"The Last Days of Night," by Graham Moore, is a historical novel about the introduction of electricity to the United States.
Late 1880's. New York City. Thomas Edison, with a patent for the light bulb in hand, sues Pittsburgh based George Westinghouse for patent violation. Westinghouse claims to have a better, and technologically different, "mouse trap." The stakes are high. Which company, Edison's or Westinghouse's, will lead America into the electric light age?
Young lawyer, Paul Cravath, is engaged by Westinghouse to fight Edison's suit and to countersue based on idea that Edison had fudged his own patent e.g. had obtained his patent before he had actually made his product work. Why did George Westinghouse pick a young, inexperienced lawyer like Cravath? Because most of the better-known lawyers in New York had been tied up by Edison. At the time he was hired by George Westinghouse, Cravath had worked as a lawyer only two years post graduating at the top of his class at Columbia Law School. He was beholden to no one because, effectively, he had worked for no one. In his countersuit against Westinghouse, Cravath raises the question of "what is a patent?". Take the light bulb. Does the patent embrace a specific design for the light bulb? Or does the patent cover light bulb, broadly conceived?
The novel details "the distance problem." Edison's direct current (DC) current doesn't travel very far but powers his proven light bulb. For DC current to work, generators need to be close to the light bulb. Only the wealthy could afford to have a generator in proximity to their home or business. On the other hand, Westinghouse's Nikola Tesla enabled alternating current (AC) does travel far. Westinghouse had entered into a licensing agreement with the mercurial AC inventor Tesla (very lucrative for Tesla) to advance AC current as the national standard. Think of a power plant powering the electrical needs of a small town. But any light bulb Westinghouse comes up with to work with AC current is stymied by Edison's patent attack on Westinghouse developed light bulbs. For the technically inclined, Moore does a great job, in as lay terms as possible, explaining the dynamics of electrical current, DC versus AC.
In the wake of a compelling deposition given by Edison on the nature of invention, Cravath's plan to expose Edison as a patent cheater falls apart. Things look grim as bankruptcy looms for Westinghouse. Edison also seems to always be one step ahead as he frustrates Cravath's and Westinghouse's plans. From whence derives Edison's seeming prescience?
Cravath's friend and client on another case (and secret love interest), Met Opera singer, Agnes Huntington, suggests Cravath seek the advice of the only person alive who has bested Edison on a patent suit: Alexander Graham Bell. Edison had repeatedly challenged Bell, without success, on his patent on the telephone.
Agnes and Cravath visit Bell at his remote Newfoundland estate. Bell reveals to them Edison's Achilles heel: Edison's monomaniacal focus on winning his case against Westinghouse has caused him to spend significant legal fees hurting the performance of his company. Would, muses Bell, uber banker J.P. Morgan, who owns 60% of Edison General Electric (EGE), be interested in a solution that would get EGE back on track thereby significantly increasing the value of his (Morgan's) holdings?... like say a withdrawal of all suits by both parties and mutual licensing agreements where EGE could employ Westinghouse alternating current tech and Westinghouse could build a better light bulb outside of legal pressure? Of course he would.
Cravath and Agnes return to New York. With Agnes' help, Cravath waylays Morgan at the Met Gala. Morgan buys into Cravath's idea. The plot is hatched. Morgan and minority EGE directors boot Edison out of his EGE CEO job. A new CEO, Charles Coffin, is appointed at EGE. Much to Edison's personal distress, at Coffin's insistence, EGE's corporate name is changed to General Electric Corporation (GE). Cravath, who had lost every legal battle to Edison, now emerges victorious. To make the new partnership between GE and Westinghouse work, Cravath talks Tesla, for whom money seems incidental, and not central, to his invention pursuit, out of his ongoing, significant, royalty payment from Westinghouse for the use of his AC current technology. In return Tesla is given an apex lab in lower Manhattan. Agnes, Tesla's conscience, is livid at this "disservice" done to Tesla. Tesla continued to invent and live reasonably well for a time, but he died penniless in New York City in 1943. It is not without irony that the inventor of, arguably, the most important component of American electrification, alternating current, died as a pauper.
The book is based on historical fact, but an afterword in the book outlines where it has strayed from historical accuracy. For example, the timeline has been compressed.
Among peripheral plot lines are Cravath's developing romantic liaison with Agnes Huntington, Cravath's ambivalent relationship with his upstanding father, Erastus Cravath, in Tennessee, the founder of Fisk College, and Agnes' surprising care giving bond with the fragile genius, Nikola Tesla as he recuperates from trauma incurred in a fire in his New York City lab set by, astonishingly, his own patron, George Westinghouse.
There is skullduggery and subterfuge in the Edison/Westinghouse saga. In addition to the aforementioned fire set in Tesla's laboratory, Cravath himself, breaks down the door of the lab of DC current promoter Harold Brown to try to find evidence of a personal linkage between Brown and Edison (he succeeds). Brown had widely publicized arguments to the public on the putative life-threatening dangers of DC current. For example, Brown sponsored public demonstrations showing how AC current would kill a dog, where supposedly comparable levels of DC current would not. Where is Kristi Noem when you need her? How does Edison seem to be one step ahead of Westinghouse? Canny 60% EGE owner J.P. Morgan has put a spy in the Westinghouse organization, senior engineer, Reginald Fessendon. Charles Bachelor, Edison's number two, operates as Edison's fixer. He knows where the bodies are buried. Bachelor puts his knowledge and comfort with subterfuge to good use, securing, after threatening to reveal deep secrets better left unsaid, a position for himself in the post Edison, Coffin run company. The question is raised: Are subterfuge and skullduggery essential ingredients in business success?
Readers familiar with New York City will enjoy Moore's observations about well-known New York City features in the 1880's. One example: During his recovery from injuries received in the Tesla lab fire, Cravath looked through the window of his hospital room at Belleview Hospital at Brooklyn, across the East River. Moore characterizes Brooklyn as a city of immigrants where 95% of its residents were born outside of the United States.
Moore's narrative treats the nature of invention. The process of invention is varied. Tesla was only interested in ideas and liked to work alone. Edison was a manager of invention. He built a process of invention involving hundreds of engineers who used a "ten thousand times" trial and error process. Westinghouse liked the products themselves and spent a lot of personal time on the factory floor working directly with his engineers on solutions. The invention process can be messy. Two steps forward one back. And, considering the varied approaches of the inventors in this narrative, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
As Moore chronicles in the final chapter of the book, Tesla, Westinghouse, Edison, and Cravath meet years later. The meeting was at a product introduction ceremony at Niagara Falls. The men had lost touch with one another, but in a mutual acknowledgement that they had been participants in a great business battle, they gathered in the Niagara Falls viewing area to reminisce and reflect. In conversation they wonder if electric power will be the last civilization transforming technological advance that the world will see. They seem to agree that the answer is yes. Yes, their consensus stipulates, there will be breathtaking scientific breakthroughs in the future, but more in the way of new hues and not new colors. A century and a half later, Peter Thiel agrees with them... and thus the book lays the groundwork for a contentious debate on the nature of technological progress.
Post his experience with Edison, Westinghouse et al, Cravath went on to found one of the US's most important law firms, Cravath, Swaine and Moore. Cravath is credited with developing the Cravath System, a set of business management principles adopted by virtually all white shoe law firms, fifty years before the phrase white shoe came into popular use. The Cravath System has been adopted by many leading law firms and strategy consulting agencies. Agnes got over her anger about Cravath's negotiating Tesla's royalty away. She married Cravath. Agnes gave up her opera singing, and she and Paul became major philanthropic players in New York City society.
I enjoyed the novel as a riveting page turner, as a compelling study into the nature of invention, as a cogent review of the intricacies of patent law, as a comprehensible tutorial on electricity, for raising the question in my mind about the role of skullduggery and subterfuge in business, and for fostering vigorous reflection on the nature of technological progress.