Book review: The nature of invention

The Last Days of Night

Graham Moore

This is the story of the patent war between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse told through the eyes of a young patent attorney, Paul Cravath. Cravath—a real person–was hired by Westinghouse to defend him against 312 lawsuits filed by Edison over the invention of the light bulb and whether A/C or D/C will become the standard. Who will win is always in doubt. The stakes were high. The outcome would change the course of American innovation, industrialism, and even the practice of patent law forever.

“If <Edison’s patent> held, no one but Edison could manufacture and sell incandescent bulbs within the United States…. If Paul could not break the patent claim, Thomas Edison would have a monopoly on light itself.”

Paul Cravath believed, “It was not the job of a litigator to determine facts; it was his job to construct a story from those facts by which a clear oral conclusion would be unavoidable.”

Other real characters such as J.P. Morgan, Stanford White, Alexander Graham Bell, and Nikola Tesla populate this well-researched work of historical fiction.

 “Edison loved the audience. For him it was the performance. It was the crowd. …Westinghouse was different. He loved the products themselves. And he made them better than anyone. He is the ultimate craftsman, isn’t he? He didn’t want to sell the most light bulbs. He wanted to make the best light bulbs…Then there’s Tesla. He was the third leg in this tripod. He didn’t care a bit about Edison’s public, or Westinghouse’s products. No, Tesla cared only for the ideas themselves…. Telsa was his own audience, and his ideas were his product, for consumption by himself alone…. Once he knew he’d solved a problem, he moved on.”

A movie of version of this story is in the works with author Graham Moore writing the screenplay. Moore won his first Oscar for writing the screenplay for “The Imitation Game.” Actor Eddie Redmayne is set to star as Paul Cravath.

If you have someone on your gift list who likes history, science, or the law, this might be just the thing. Of course, if those subjects interest you, you might want to read it before you give it away. Just sayin’.