Books – Page 52 – artdiamondblog.com

In Bringing Us Electricity, Westinghouse Rejected the Precautionary Principle

(p. 180) The defensive position that Westinghouse found himself in is illustrated by the way he contradicted himself as he tried to defend overhead wires. The wires that were supposedly safe were also the same wires that he had to admit, yes, posed dangers, yes, but dangers of various kinds had to be accepted throughout the modern city. Westinghouse said, “If all things involving the use of power were to be prohibited because of the danger to life, then the cable cars, which have already killed and maimed a number of people, would have to be abolished.” Say good-bye to trains, too, he added, because of accidents at road crossings.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Psychological Theorizing Based on False Facts

Source of book image:
http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/k/kitty-genovese/9780393239287_custom-113f9b45a7b76ac664f82c62c6604fd07d7ad5f9-s6-c30.jpg

(p. C7) The Kitty Genovese myth has turned out to be as enduring an urban legend as the tale of alligators prowling the New York sewers. In March 1964 the young Queens bar manager was stabbed to death at three in the morning outside her Kew Gardens apartment while 38 neighbors watched from their windows and did nothing to save her–or so the tale has gone for the past half-century.

In fact, hardly anything about the Genovese story is what it first appeared to be, although it has calcified into a metaphor of urban alienation and prompted research into a psychological phenomenon that has come to be known as the “Genovese syndrome.” As Kevin Cook writes in his heavily padded but provocative new book, “Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America,” the tale is as much about the alchemy of journalism as urban pathology.
. . .
. . . , as it turns out, only a few neighbors understood the attack for what it was and failed to respond.
. . .
Journalism is a blunt instrument, and allowances must be made. Even so, it’s plain that the original story was more hype than first draft of history.

For the full review, see:
EDWARD KOSNER. “BOOKS; What the Neighbors Didn’t See; A woman was stabbed and raped steps from her door. Did no one call the police?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 1, 2014): C7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 28, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Kitty Genovese’ by Kevin Cook; A woman was stabbed and raped steps from her door. Did no one call the police?”)

The book under review is:
Cook, Kevin. Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2014.

Entrepreneurial Consumer J.P. Morgan “Handled Setbacks with Equanimity”

Schumpeter wrote that the entrepreneur is the one who overcomes obstacles to get the job done (1950, p. 132). Obstacles come in many forms. One of them is consumer resistance to change. So one key contributor to the technological progress is the “entrepreneurial consumer” who is willing to invest in new, buggy, possibly dangerous technologies at an early stage. (Paul Nodskov, a student in my spring 2014 Economics of Technology seminar suggested using the phrase “entrepreneurial consumer.”)
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that in contrast to Europeans, Americans were “restless in the midst of their prosperity” (2000 [first published 1835], Ch. 13). Perhaps even that early, America had more entrepreneurial consumers?

(p. 131) Morgan prized being ahead of everyone else, and the next year was concerned that his plant was already less than state of the art, a suspicion that was confirmed when he persuaded Edison to send Edward Johnson to the house for an evaluation. Johnson was instructed to upgrade the equipment and also to devise a way to provide an electric light that would sit on Morgan’s desk in his library. At a time when the very concept of an electrical outlet and detachable electrical appliances had yet to appear, this posed a significant challenge. Johnson’s solution was to run wires beneath the floor to metal plates that were installed in different places beneath the rugs. One of the legs of the desk was equipped with sharp metal prongs, designed to make contact with one of the plates when moved about the room.

In conception, it was clever; in implementation, it fell short of ideal. On the first evening when the light was turned on, there was a flash, followed by a fire that quickly engulfed the desk and spread across the rug before being put out. When Johnson was summoned to the house the next morning, he was shown into the library, where charred debris was piled in a heap. He expected that when Morgan appeared, he would angrily announce that the services of Edison Electric were no longer needed.
(p. 132) “Well?” Morgan stood in the doorway, with Mrs. Morgan standing behind him, signaling Johnson with a finger across her lips not to launch into elaborate explanations. Johnson cast a doleful eye at the disaster in the room and remained silent.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Morgan asked. Johnson said the fault was his own and that he would personally reinstall everything, ensuring that it would be done properly.
“All right. See that you do.” Morgan turned and left. The eager purchaser of first-generation technology handled setbacks with equanimity. “I hope that the Edison Company appreciates the value of my house as an experimental station,” he would later say. A new installation with second-generation equipment worked well, and Morgan held a reception for four hundred guests to show off his electric lights. The event led some guests to place their own orders for similar installations. Morgan also donated entire systems to St. George’s Church and to a private school, dispatching Johnson to oversee the installation as a surprise to the headmistress. The family biographer compared Morgan’s gifts of electrical power plants to his sending friends baskets of choice fruit.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Schumpeter’s book is:
Schumpeter, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. 3rd ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1950.

The other book I mention, is:
de Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 [first published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840].

Edison Genuinely Believed that AC Was More Dangerous than DC

(p. 174) In Edison’s view, . . . , Westinghouse did not pose a serious threat in the power-and-light business because he used the relatively more dangerous alternating current, certain to kill one of his own customers within six months.
Edison’s conviction that direct current was less dangerous than alternating current was based on hunch, however, not empirical scientific research. He, like others at the time, focused solely on voltage (the force that pushes electricity through a wire) without paying attention to amperage (the rate of flow of electricity), and thought it would be best to stay at 1,200 volts or less. Even he was not certain that his own system was completely safe–after all, he had elected to place wires in underground conduits, which was more expensive than stringing wires overhead but reduced the likelihood of electrical current touching a passerby. Burying the wires could not give him complete peace of mind, however. Privately, he told Edward Johnson that “we must look out for crosses [i.e., short-circuited wires] for if we ever kill a customer it would be a bad blow to the business.”

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.
(Note: ellipsis added, bracketed words in original.)

G.D.P. Is a Useful, But Biased Downward, Measure of Growth

Source of book image: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) Dr. Coyle concludes that while imperfect, the G.D.P. is good enough as a measure of how fast the economy is growing and better than any alternative. It is closely correlated with things that do contribute to happiness. (Nobody is happy in a recession.)

“We should not be in a rush to ditch G.D.P.,” Dr. Coyle writes. “Yet it is a measure of the economy best suited to an earlier era.”
For one thing, it fails to count the value of the staggering growth in consumer choice. Where once we had three television networks, we now have 1,000 channels; greater choice equals greater freedom, she declares. It does poorly in measuring the Internet economy, in which so many benefits — like Google searches — are offered free. It badly lags behind the headlong pace of innovation and creativity. It struggles with the true value of a host of products or services that didn’t exist before. To the degree that it misses those new benefits to consumers, it understates the pace of economic growth.

For the full review, see:
FRED ANDREWS. “Off the Shelf; An Economic Gauge, Imperfect but Vital.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., APRIL 6, 2014): 6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date APRIL 5, 2014.)

The book under review is:
Coyle, Diane. GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Edison’s Magnetic Low-Grade Iron Ore Processing Inventions Might Have Succeeded

(p. 193) Edison took great pleasure in the novelty of the technical challenges and in the opportunity to redeem his reputation as a savvy businessperson, even though redemption never came. The low-grade iron ore in New Jersey did not have a competitive chance once huge reserves of high-grade ore were discovered in the Mesabi Range of northeastern Minnesota; the Mesabi ore was easily mined near the surface and close to economical shipping on Lake Superior. Well after the first Mesabi mine opened in 1890, Edison remained pitiably hopeful about his Ogden mine, even when objective facts made the future of its business appear bleak to anyone else. In 1897, when failure was inevitable, he refused to acknowledge the facts. Edison wrote a colleague, “My Wall Street friends think I cannot make another success, and that I am a back number, hence I cannot raise even $10,000 from them, but I am going to show them that they are very much mistaken. I am full of vinegar yet.”

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

“The Experts Keep Getting It Wrong and the Oddballs Keep Getting It Right”

“A worker at a hydraulic fracturing and extraction operation in western Colorado on March 29[, 2014].” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. C3) The experts keep getting it wrong. And the oddballs keep getting it right.

Over the past five years of business history, two events have shocked and transformed the nation. In 2007 and 2008, the housing market crumbled and the financial system collapsed, causing trillions of dollars of losses. Around the same time, a few little-known wildcatters began pumping meaningful amounts of oil and gas from U.S. shale formations. A country that once was running out of energy now is on track to become the world’s leading producer.
What’s most surprising about both events is how few experts saw them coming–and that a group of unlikely outsiders somehow did.
. . .
Less well known, but no less dramatic, is the story of America’s energy transformation, which took the industry’s giants almost completely by surprise. In the early 1990s, an ambitious Chevron executive named Ray Galvin started a group to drill compressed, challenging formations of shale in the U.S. His team was mocked and undermined by dubious colleagues. Eventually, Chevron pulled the plug on the effort and shifted its resources abroad.
Exxon Mobil also failed to focus on this rock–even though its corporate headquarters in Irving, Texas, were directly above a huge shale formation that eventually would flow with gas. Later, it would pay $31 billion to buy a smaller shale pioneer.
“I would be less than honest if I were to say to you [that] we saw it all coming, because we did not, quite frankly,” Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s chairman and CEO said last year in an interview at the Council on Foreign Relations.
. . .
The resurgence in U.S. energy came from a group of brash wildcatters who discovered techniques to hydraulically fracture–or frack–and horizontally drill shale and other rock. Many of these men operated on the fringes of the oil industry, some without college degrees or much background in drilling, geology or engineering.

For the full commentary, see:
GREGORY ZUCKERMAN. “ESSAY; The Little Guys Who Saw Our Economic Future; Corporate Caution and Complacency Come at a Cost.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Nov. 2, 2013): C3.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year in caption, added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Nov. 3, 2013, and has the title “ESSAY; The Outsiders Who Saw Our Economic Future; In both America’s energy transformation and the financial crisis, it took a group of amateurs to see what was coming.” )

Zuckerman’s commentary, quoted above, is partly based on his book:
Zuckerman, Gregory. The Frackers: The Outrageous inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.

Koch Industries Was Only Major Ethanol Producer to Oppose Ethanol Tax Credits

(p. A17) I have devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It is those principles–the principles of a free society–that have shaped my life, my family, our company and America itself.
Unfortunately, the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation’s own government. That’s why, if we want to restore a free society and create greater well-being and opportunity for all Americans, we have no choice but to fight for those principles.
. . .
Far from trying to rig the system, I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors, including mandates, subsidies and protective tariffs–even when we benefit from them. I believe that cronyism is nothing more than welfare for the rich and powerful, and should be abolished.
Koch Industries was the only major producer in the ethanol industry to argue for the demise of the ethanol tax credit in 2011. That government handout (which cost taxpayers billions) needlessly drove up food and fuel prices as well as other costs for consumers–many of whom were poor or otherwise disadvantaged. Now the mandate needs to go, so that consumers and the marketplace are the ones who decide the future of ethanol.

For the full commentary, see:
CHARLES G. KOCH. “OPINION; I’m Fighting to Restore a Free Society; Instead of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., April 3, 2014): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated April 2, 2014, and has the title “OPINION; Charles Koch: I’m Fighting to Restore a Free Society; Instead of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination.” )

Koch’s philosophy of the free market is more fully elaborated in:
Koch, Charles G. The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007.

In the End Edison Said “I Am Not Business Man Enough to Spend Time” in the Electricity Business

(p. 186) In early 1892, the deal was done: Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston merged as nominal equals. The organization chart, however, reflected a different understanding among the principals. Thomson-Houston’s chief executive, Charles Coffin, became the new head and other Thomson-Houston executives filled out the other positions. Insull was the only manager from the Edison side invited to stay, which he did only briefly. From the outside, it appeared that Thomas (p. 187) Edison and his coterie had arranged the combination from a position of abject surrender. Edison did not want this to be the impression left in the public mind, however. When the press asked him about the announcement, he said he had been one of the first to urge the merger. This was not close to the truth, and is especially amusing when placed in juxtaposition to Alfred Tate’s account of the moment when Tate, hearing news of the merger first, had been the one to convey the news to Edison.

I always have regretted the abruptness with which I broke the news to Edison but I am not sure that a milder manner and less precipitate delivery would have cushioned the shock. I never before had seen him change color. His complexion naturally was pale, a clear healthy paleness, but following my announcement it turned as white as his collar.

“Send for Insull,” was all he said as he left me standing in his library.

Having collected himself before meeting with the reporters, Edison could say with sincerity that he was too busy to “waste my time” on the electric light. For the past three years, since he first realized that his direct-current system would ultimately be driven to the margins by alternating current, he had been carting his affections elsewhere. The occasion of the merger did shake him into a rare disclosure of personal shortcoming: He allowed that “I am not business man enough to spend time” in the power-and-light business.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Heart Pioneer Bailey Kept Moving from Hospital to Hospital Due to His Failures

Source of book image:
http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/e/extreme-medicine/9781594204708_custom-14713d8588e54f066a6abf7b5a13e4c9de832ea1-s6-c30.jpg

(p. C8) In “Extreme Medicine,” physician Kevin Fong reminds us that virtually everything we take for granted in lifesaving medical intervention was once unthinkable. Over the past century, as technology has allowed man to conquer hostile environments and modernize warfare, medical pioneers have been on a parallel journey, confronting what had once been fatal in man’s boldest pursuits and making it survivable.
. . .
As Dr. Fong notes, many of today’s commonplace treatments were once dangerously experimental. One pioneer in the early postwar years, a Philadelphia surgeon named Charles Bailey, killed several patients while trying to repair problems of the mitral valve, which if damaged can cause blood to flow backward into the hear chamber, decreasing flow to the rest of the body. Bailey moved from hospital to hospital to avoid scrutiny of his successive failures.

For the full review, see:
LAURA LANDRO. “BOOKS; They Died So We Might Live; Hypothermia, which killed explorers like Scott, is now induced in heart patients to allow time for surgery.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Feb. 15, 2014): C8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 14, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Extreme Medicine’ by Kevin Fong; Explorers, astronauts and soldiers all pushed the limits of doctors’ abilities to heal and repair.”)

The book under review is:
Swidey, Neil. Trapped under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness. New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.