And a few pages later, he thanks legal historians Adam Mossoff of George Mason and Christopher Beauchamp, now of Brooklyn Law School. In the author’s note at the end, Moore discusses historical sources and intentional fictionalizations for the sake of narrative.

And to the mute ingratitude with which you’ve repaid me, I will say only one last thing.”Įdison leaned back in his chair before he loosed his final words. If the word ‘invention’ is to maintain even a semblance of rational sense, then it must be said that the light bulb was my idea. Well, I say this: The light bulb is mine. And you hate me because my name is on the poster. The “you can’t handle the truth” scene of Cravath’s deposition of Edison is a trifle over the top, but easily captures the tension between Edison and Westinghouse, inventor and improver: Dozens of researchers and engineers and developmental tinkerers labored beneath Edison in a carefully constructed hierarchical organization that he founded and oversaw. His genius was not in inventing rather, it was in inventing a system of invention. Edison had formed a laboratory that had invented many. Eli Whitney and Alexander Graham Bell had each made his name by inventing one brilliant thing. Rather, he was the first man to build a factory for harnessing cleverness. Thomas Edison was not, Paul thought, the first man to become rich by inventing something clever. Here are a couple of memorable bits (and slight spoilers):

And Nikola Tesla is the “flash of genius” inventor who invents for the love of inventing rather than for material rewards. Westinghouse embodies the practical aspects of invention–the need to take a technology and make it into a commercial reality. Edison personifies the corporation-as-inventor, with his organized system for inventing. Among them are divergent views of the role of patents in technological development. The book is historical fiction (which means that it consists of made up/condensed elements set within the broader landscape of historical evidence), but many of the themes within it ring true today.

I recently read Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Night, a tale about the patent war between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse from the point of view of Paul Cravath, the young lawyer representing Westinghouse (and yes, that Cravath).

The last days of night book