First Draft:
Juliene Rios
Professor Weyn
First Draft – Distant Waves Summary
February 19, 2023
In chapters 2-3 of Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn, we are given the opportunity to experience a normal day in the park turned into a startling/unforgettable moment for a particular family. The narrator’s family had trekked the streets of the SOHO district after unwinding in Washington Square Park. Recently moving to their grandmother’s brownstone home in Brooklyn because of the father’s unfortunate death and being low on family income, the family took a trip to the city, taking note of the beautiful sights such as the tall buildings that they would not see in their hometown of New England. This took a turn for the worse, however, when a sudden earthquake shook the district. Windows exploded, buildings were shaking vibrantly, and most of all pedestrians were put at major risk considering that items falling from the sky. This included the narrator’s family is put at risk until a man insisted they come inside his house where he saved them and explained the reason for the disaster since he had caused it. This man was Nikola Tesla who had been quite the trending scientist at the time because he brought electricity from Niagra Falls to people’s homes running on an alternating current. The narrator’s mother takes note that the man she was speaking to is indeed Tesla and they began discussing his rivalry with Thomas Edison (a fellow electrician/inventor). Based on this conversation it is evident that the tension between Edison and Tesla is present. Although this is the case, it can be noted that Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison were two individuals with similar aspirations but their distinct theories got in the way of them building upon the theories together.
Tesla and Edison had very different upbringings considering their geographical standpoints which may denote the stem of their feud. Tesla, a man of a Serbian background growing up in Croatia, desired a path of engineering from an early point of adolescence. Because of this desire, as well as to avoid being put into combat by being drafted into the army, Tesla left his hometown and moved just a couple of miles south to Tomingaj, Croatia. This led to him enrolling in the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz where he pursued his desired occupation but later dropped out in his third year due to financial troubles. Henceforth, To utilize his already earned knowledge of the field through schooling and beyond, Tesla relocated to Budapest, Hungary in 1881 to work at the Budapest Telephone Exchange where he was promoted to the chief electrician position. In 1882, he started creating designs and making improvements for electrical equipment while working for the Continental Edison Company in France; This spanned for two years until 1884 when Tesla left to work for Thomas Edison across the Atlantic in New York City. Edison on the other hand had been cultivated and rose to world-renowned electrician stardom in the United States. Unlike Tesla who had certified schooling up to the point of his third year in college, Edison had quite the opposite since he had been homeschooled by his mother for practically his entire educational life. He worked jobs such as the Associated Press Bureau where his position was at the newswire. He then began inventing his own products in Newark, New Jersey such as the automatic repeater and his well-known phonograph in 1877. His success with the inventions he had created, allowed him to open the Continental Edison Company (the company for which Tesla was employed) in New York City which manufactured and marketed electrical equipment.
Tesla and Edison’s employee/employer relationship began after Tesla’s former supervisor credited his intellectual capability with being up to par with Edison’s, resulting in a letter of recommendation being written so that Tesla would be given the opportunity to work alongside Edison. When this was brought to the attention of Edison, he was had respected Tesla’s notion but had a sense of revulsion, labeling the accolades, and ideas as “splendid” but “utterly impractical.” One would presume that this was due to Edison’s prideful nature of not accepting the fact that someone could match or possibly surpass his expertise. In essence, he did not enjoy being wrong, symbolizing that he was not someone who desired constructive criticism. In the eyes of Tesla, his time to prove his theories were put up to the test when he was offered fifty thousand dollars by Edison to revamp his generators and machinery. Because of the belief and actuality of certain ideas of Tesla’s being more reasonable, he took up this bet working himself day and night close to exhaustion. However, when the job was finally complete and ready to present to Edison, he was made to look like a fool after being told that the bet had only been a matter of Edison fooling around and that it was all a part of American humor. This evidently was a shot thrown at Tesla because of being a foreigner, subsequently made to attack his pride. Nevertheless, he made the right decision of leaving the franchise in view of his energy being put into something that his boss truly did not care to take into account.
The conflict of electric currents had been arguably Tesla and Edison’s most disagreed subject. In essence, Tesla theorized that Alternating Current (AC) had been the viable option in terms of bringing electricity to people’s homes due to it being more practicable to occasionally shift the direction of the energy flow when delivering huge amounts of energy needed by a large metropolis or industrial hub. But Edison said that the Direct Current was the way to go although it had not been reasonable due to more energy being lost due to high voltages in electrical power transmission. Because of Edison’s opposing stance, this had large reasoning for why he viewed Tesla as impractical. “His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.” Considering the mere fact that Edison had been homeschooled, it would not be far stretched to correlate his decision-making when it came to inventions with his underdevelopment of thoughtfulness and reasoning. Yes, Edison was a highly intellectual individual who had created such discoveries that weren’t conceived prior. However, this could be aligned with his stumbling upon these discoveries as Tesla had noted. It doesn’t seem feasible that Edison’s mother had the potential to teach him basic characteristics that can only be retained in school such as focused professional evolution or a high level of family and community collaboration. This might explain instances of his techniques when experimenting such as cruel animal testing.
When Edison was attempting to disprove the Alternating Current theory, he showed its dangers by sending the currents through animals which would ultimately kill them; Expressing a lack of thoughtfulness on his behalf of other living beings. His methodology should never be resorted to but as is the case with other highly valued figures throughout time, the illusion of capital interferes with reason. In Distant Waves, when the narrator’s mother was questioning Tesla’s reasoning for not earning revenue after his work in Niagra Falls, he goes on to mention how he is an American citizen but not a capitalist like other Americans such as Edison. Tesla’s morals and principles are based upon the ethical reasoning of not earning based on naturally occurring resources such as water or air. However, Edison is the complete opposite by doing whatever it takes to earn the superficial source that grows his influence in society. This is based upon cultural differences that are instilled in people from a very young age. Americans are known across the globe as a Western/Industrial Nation that believes in individualism; Signifying that they will do whatever it takes to prosper at all costs (the majority of the time). Eastern Nations, on the other hand, are collectivist cultures that take into account what their family, culture, community, etc believe. Additionally, collectivist cultures tend to avoid animal sacrifice since it is viewed as demeaning and overall a sin due to their religion. This may be the barrier between Edison and Tesla. Two men who maintained similar occupations were born on opposite sides of the globe, playing a part in what they found fitting when testing their hypotheses.
Overall, it is evident that although Tesla and Edison’s professional relationship did not turn out the way that the two may have hoped, they were still two people with comparable goals who were unable to advance their goals together due to divergent philosophies. The reasoning for this comes based on notions such as pride, geographical fostering, and philosophies. It is understandable that disagreements would arouse between two great minds but it should never happen in this fashion. Moreover, the conflict should have been resolved while it can because if it had been, then who knows where the world would be now in terms of its technological advancements. People as a whole should take this story into account when having a disagreement with a coequal and understand that there is a greater purpose for their being, and this purpose has the potential of being determined as a collaborative unit.
Sources:
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Edison_vs_Tesla
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30140/acdc-tesla–edison-feud
https://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/nikola-tesla-a-soho-story/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1010598-his-thomas-edison-method-was-inefficient-in-the-extreme-for
