"
Edison had gathered men around him who were well
qualified chart new ground electrical technology; among
them were Reginald Fessenden and Arthur Kennelly.
Scientists and engineers both sides the Atlantic worked
frantically improve the efficiency the equipment before
the fragile electrical industry went under sea debts.
Electrical equipment the time the pioneer Pearl Street
station was heavy, inefficient, and prone breakdown.1-26
hundred years industrial research, but the end remains the
same— profit. Although many observers
believed the 1880s that the knowledge electrical science
was almost perfect, fact, was state ignorance. This was especially true of
research into electromagnetism. Fessenden and
.
Yet until more was known about electromagnetism and how it
worked generators, there was little room improve the low
output and poor efficiency dynamos.
Some historians have characterized Edison's relationship
with science more "borrowing" from than actually creating
it. Yet when there was nothing borrow from, Edison was
obliged create, carrying out basic research gain deeper
understanding what was going on. The great electrical
engineer Silvanus Thomson noted 1886 that "until know the
true law the electromagnet, there can true complete
26
theory the dynamo. Although not
graduate trained advanced physics, these were college
trained men with vital practical experience
