Almost Edison: How William Sawyer and others lost the race to electrification

Previous accounts of the invention of electric light and power conclude it was exclusively the work of Edison and his assistants at Menlo Park. A closer examination of contemporary sources reveals that the history of this technology is a complex interaction between Edison and his contemporaries:; Almost Edison suggests that the actual story of the development of electric light does not conform to the account first laid down by Dyer and Martin in their foundational two-volume study of Edison in 1910 and elaborated subsequently by everyone else.; Edison was one of many New York area electrical researchers in the 1880s---among them William Sawyer, Maxim, Weston, Thomson, Brush and Tesla---whose work led to four viable systems of electric light just in New York.; The most promising electrical inventor of this time was William E. Sawyer. In 1883 the patent office asserted that the electric light filament was patented not by Edison but by Sawyer. The office rejected several appeals by Edison, deciding in 1885 that no further appeals would be allowed.; Sawyer's company licensed his patent to the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, which sold the rights to Westinghouse Electric. Westinghouse used Sawyer lamps and electrical technology developed by Tesla and others at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which convinced the world of the superiority of alternating current, a crucial improvement over Edison's direct current.; Edison companies and Thomson-Houston merged to form General Electric as a last attempt to survive, but then was forced to adapt the Westinghouse alternating current technology. As a response against Westinghouse, Edison adapted alternating current into a means of death by electrocution. An incensed Westinghouse launched a series of suits against GE using the Sawyer patents. These allowed Edison's lawyers to reopen the 1885 Sawyer decision. In 1892, the Supreme Court sided with Edison about the invention of the electric light.; Former Edison employees were hired to construct the hagiography that passes for history. Sawyer's name was so buried that no one in the twentieth century examined the merits of his contributions to electricity. Only Tesla has been elevated into a figure worthy of scholarly interest besides Edison.