The Last Days Of Night

Electric Charge

A novel about the fight over the control of electricity sounds dreary, but Graham Moore’s The Last Days Of Night is historical fiction that reads like a thriller.

The book set in 1988, when two great inventors, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, were fighting to control electricity and waiting to reap the monetary wealth and immense power that would accrue to the man who would win the patent battle the electric bukb.

At the centre of this legal battle is a young lawyer, Paul Cravath, who is hired by Westinghouse to represent him against Edison, mainly because a man so young, raw and eager to make his reputation would not have been corrupted by Edison’s power and popularity. The man – and the electricity generating company that won, would change America, and eventually the world forever.

The legal case, involved the light bulb patented by Edison; Westinghouse invented and manufactured what he claimed was a better bulb. The US patent office had decided that Westinghouse’s bulb violated Edison’s patent, and the latter was was demanding $1 billion in damages. Cravath had to prove that Edison’s suit had no merit, because his bulb was different.

Cravath makes up in persistence what he lacks in experience, and brings into the complicated scenario an eccentric Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla.  Edison was offering direct current (DC), which could be transmitted only over short distances; Tesla  worked out the higher-voltage alternating current (AC), which would revolutionize the use of electricity. When he crossed swords with Edison and was persuaded by Cravath to work for Westinghouse, his laboratory mysteriously caught fire.

Edison was not just America’s greatest inventor, he was also ruthless, according to Moore’s very readable book. With a section of the media and politicians in his pocket, he tried to emotionally manipulate the country into rejecting AC current as dangerous enough to kill their children.

The story has other fascinating real-life characters, like the beautiful opera singer Agnes Huntington and her formidable mother.  Paul and Agnes had an unlikely romance and ended up getting married. Names like J.P. Morgan and Alexander Graham Bell make an appearance in the novel. It is rather interesting to read the author’s note at the end, to find out how much is fiction and how much fact.

Running through the book is a thread about the spirit of enterprise that rules America, and the skulduggery that goes into business.  Not even a man of Edison’s eminence was not immune to it.

The Last Days of Night

By Graham Moore

Published by Scribner

Pages: 400