The day of the funeral was October 21, the day Edison demonstrated his invention of the incandescent light exactly 52 years earlier
Eight-five years ago, on October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, died.
The Wizard’s passing was big news nationally and internationally. Though Al Capone was convicted that day for tax evasion. And though a hundred thousand Nazi storm troopers rioted in Braunschweig, Germany.
President Herbert Hoover urged all Americans to turn out their lights for one-minute at 10 p.m., the night of Edison’s funeral. Similar observances took place throughout the world.
The day of the funeral was October 21. Everyone knew that day was meaningful. Edison demonstrated his invention of the incandescent light exactly fifty-two years earlier, on October 21, 1979.
Edison’s legacy for our industry today? The Wizard was lauded as the consummate inventor. Yet, like Steve Jobs in our time, he was most essentially a genius at serving the public’s needs. Even those not yet perceived to be needs.
And like his close friend Henry Ford, Edison strove passionately to serve universally. For Edison, to make light and motive power affordable and available to all the public, not just the wealthy.
This passion drove him to network central station generators, in what we call a grid, so that everyone could and would connect.
As the magazine for commentary, opinion and debate on utility regulation and policy since 1928, Public Utilities Fortnightly fosters vigorous arguments on the hottest issues of our day, and occasionally reflects on the arguments and issues of our past.
Steve Mitnick, Editor-in-Chief, Public Utilities Fortnightly
E-mail me: mitnick@fortnightly.com
