From: Jed Rothwell Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 14:57:25 GMT Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion Subject: Edison To: >INTERNET:fusion@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG Richard Blue comments: "...your portrayal of Edison and the Wright brothers as unappreciated scientists is not historically accurate." Oops. You shouldn't have said that Dick. You are playing in my court. You do neutrons, I do history. Both the Wrights and Edison met a firestorm of establishment scientific opposition, which went on for years and years. That fact is well documented. I just read the best "warts and all" biography of Edison I have ever seen, titled "A Streak of Luck," by Robert Conot. Let's have a quick look at the situation in 1879, 3 years after Bell invented the telephone, and about six months after Edison got serious about the incandescent light. He had gone through four design iterations, open air, vacuum, partial vacuum... He and his crew were doing "teeth grinding" all- nighters, and he was getting nowhere. His design goal was to produce lights that could be "subdivided;" that is, run in parallel circuits, and not just serial. The eventual solution, as we all know, was to use high resistance 100 ohm filaments instead of 5 ohm arc lights, but in 1879, no scientist on earth imagined that a high ohm light could exist. When Edison later claimed he had one, very few scientists believed him. Edison had revealed the phonograph April 1878. He was proclaimed the scientist of the ages, he showed the phonograph in the offices of Scientific American, and at the White House... The reporters found out that he had patented 158 inventions, and by the fall of 1878 he was acclaimed the "Napoleon of Science" and "Wizard of Menlo Park." Arc lights and other experimental incandescent lights had been around for about 15 years, but they were not practical or economical compared to gaslight. There was no question that the phenomenon existed, and there should have been no question that if anyone could bring it to commercial reality, Edison could. But he hadn't done it yet, he was being lambasted in the press and the scientific establishment. He was busy doing science by press conference: "popping into the newspaper pages like a vaudeville announcer going onstage to usher in each new act, Edison set off a scientific brouhaha of unprecedented proportions... William Siemens, who had worked on electric lighting for a decade, declared: 'Such startling announcements as these should be depreciated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress.'" (p. 129) By and by, of course, Edison got the thing to work, so he strung up several lights on poles around his laboratories. Ordinary people came every evening from miles around to marvel. The scientists stayed home. They knew the answer already, they didn't bother replicating, they did not even bother going over to have a look at a public demonstration. The drumbeat of daffy skeptical opposition continued. Professor Henry Morton, who knew Edison personally, lived nearby, and could have driven his buggy over any time, "felt compelled 'to protest in behalf of true science.' The results of Edison's experiments, he asserted, were 'a conspicuous failure, trumped as a wonderful success. A fraud upon the public.'" The "prestigious" Professor Du Moncel said, "One must have lost all recollection of *American* *hoaxes* to accept such claims. The sorcerer of Menlo Park appears not to be acquainted with the subtleties of the electrical science. Mr. Edison takes us backwards." A letter in Scientific American attacked the light bulb and the newly improved dynamo, saying it would be "almost a public calamity if Mr. Edison should employ his great talent on such a puerility." Edwin Weston, a respected arc light specialist called Edison's claims, "so manifestly absurd as to indicate a positive want of knowledge of the electric circuit and the principles governing the construction and operation of electrical machines." (p. 162) The reaction in Europe was even more negative, and the "English Mechanic" journal declared "all anxiety concerning the Edison light may be put to one side. It is certainly not going to take the place of gas." (Anxiety?) Finally, the light began to dawn (as it were). For one thing, people realized that Edison was, after all, a world famous inventor applying for a license to illuminate a neighborhood in New York, and he was getting huge amounts of carte blanche financing from the world's most canny, successful investors, including J. P. Morgan. People who had their head screwed on straight began to wonder whether J.P. knew something they did not know. People realized that J.P.'s men had good technical judgement -- just as any sensible person in 1993 realizes that when MITI and Toyota start spending $50 million a year, it cannot be because they have accidently mistaken 20C for 80C, or 0 watts for 100 watts. Gradually, the "daffy skeptic brigades" swung into absurd denial, phase II. 'Okay,' they admitted, 'maybe these weird effects do exist after all, but we see now that they will never be of any use to anyone.' Here is a mind- boggling warning from the New York Graphic: "When the phonograph was invented and the telephone was paraded before the admiring public, promises of magical results were lavishly made. How signally they have failed of perfection everyone now knows." Three years after the telephone had been introduced, the daffy skeptics were busy writing it off as a useless toy! 'It may exist,' they said, 'but it is marginal, don't sell your telegraph stocks yet!" They knew that Bell had been wrapped up in litigation for years, and could not raise capital, and could not get to work, and they knew that he was fighting the biggest, most powerful vested interest in the world: Western Union. They knew that the development was tied up in knots by hostile opposition and severe technical challenges, but they figured three years should be enough to bring it to fruition no matter what the obstacles. It was all over, they said, the telephone was a failure. This is the same nonsense we hear today from Dieter Britz, who expects people to conduct and publish clean, beautiful CF experiments even though he knows that there is not single dollar of money; that most universities strictly ban all work (even when the researchers offer to pay for the equipment); that workers face unending hostility and accusations of fraud; and that no Editor will print even a short letter about CF. It's all over, he says, because the number of articles has declined. Phase II denial always kicks in after a while. The establishment lambasted the Wrights for five years as bluffers, frauds, and liars, and never bothered to send a reporter to Dayton. The Scientific American and the New York Times never acknowledged the photographs and affidavits from the leading citizens of Dayton (just as today they refuse to acknowledge videos, data, and letters from MITI). Occasionally, a positive note would creep into S.A., but it would immediately be countered by another strong denial. (See: "The Wright Brothers" by Fred C. Kelly, the "authorized biography.") The experts made up their minds instantly, the moment they heard the news in 1903, and that was that. Even after the 1908 demonstration flight at Ft. Myres, VA, one of the leading skeptics jumped up and said 'okay, it's real, but they will never be able to carry a passenger.' They already had carried a passenger, and they did it again a week later. History does not record what the skeptic said after that, but I am sure it was something like: 'okay, but it is unreliable, dangerous and expensive; it will never be practical.' So, here we are 115 years after the incandescent light, 90 years after the airplane, and we have just entered "absurd denial phase II" with CF. Here is Dr. David Williams, Professor of Chemistry at University College London, lambasting cold fusion in Physics Today: "Indeed, it is important to say that there do seem to be some good measurements which indicate the possible occurrence of an interesting phenomenon. But what profit is there in such an inefficient, unreliable, dangerous and expensive energy storage method?" - Jed