Dr. Paul Israel

And then also in the first decade of the 20th century, he develops the first alkaline storage battery for electric automobiles.

There were actually more electric automobiles in the first few years of the 20th century than internal combustion cars.

And they ultimately lose out as Henry Ford develops his mass production system for automobiles that drives the cost of

internal combustion cars down, but also World War I, where electric vehicles are not useful on the battlefield and all the companies shift to production of gas-powered automobiles.

There are still a few things like delivery trucks that use batteries, but electric cars don't really reemerge until the 1960s and 1970s, and we're still on the

the cycle of the development of that industry as it reemerges after more or less disappearing during Edison's time.

So these are the technologies Edison continues to work with.

He builds a huge factory complex in West Orange, New Jersey.

He has another one a few miles away that includes his chemical laboratories.

And so Edison is both an inventor, entrepreneur, and increasingly a captain of industry.

So the question of whether Edison was bitter is one that I think, you know, there's some uncertainty about what his initial reaction to this was.

There are conflicting news reports, some saying Edison favored the merger, others that he opposed it.

But in later comments, right, so the person who was his private secretary at the time, a guy named Alfred Tate, later talked about Edison was very embittered and felt like the company no longer had his name associated with it.

He says something like, you know, apparently I never knew anything about electricity.

And then later on in newspaper reports, you see Edison saying, I'm going to do something even bigger now than the electrical system.

That was his process for mining low-grade iron ore.

He thought that would be his next big project.

And it was, even though it failed.

But Edison essentially left the electrical industry behind.

So I think there was a way in which he was somewhat bitter about what had happened.