Synopsis:
At the end of his life in 1931, Thomas Edison was renowned as the American Wizard. But in this startling new look at Edison, George J. Hill, M.D., suggests that the price of invention included serious industrial pollution. Edison saw himself as a benefactor of humanity, an image he honed carefully over the years, and there is no question that his discoveries in so many fields were contributions of the first rank. But they sometimes came at an environmental cost. A New Jersey judge fined an Edison company for its callous dumping of carbolic acid, and his laboratory at Silver Lake was wrecked in the middle of the night by a neighborhood mob angered by Edison's refusal to do anything about the clouds of formaldehyde and phenol that choked the air and the stream pollution that poisoned their cats and dogs. An Edison employee was the first American to die from X-ray induced cancer as a result of the inventor's experiments. Edison, who shared the health risks of his laboratory work with his muckers, also was sickened by exposure to radiation, but recovered. Meadows and ponds disappeared to make way for Edison's laboratories and factories, and his mining operations changed landscapes. George Hill is the first author to examine Edison's impact on the environment at more than a dozen sites in New Jersey. Hill ranges from Edison's first workshops in Jersey City, Elizabeth and Newark to his famous invention factories in Menlo Park and West Orange, from his lampworks in Harrison and battery factory in Kearny to his little-known iron mining operation on Sparta Mountain and his Warren County cement factory, whose concrete built Yankee Stadium. This is not debunking history. Dr. Hill appreciates the genius of Edison and credits Edison's outspoken advocacy of an electric car, which might have ended America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil if Edison's good friend, Henry Ford, had heeded his advice. But he argues that the environmental effects that resulted from Edison's life and work must be drawn together, so we may view them comprehensively, and draw whatever lessons they may tell us. Judging Edison's environmental record is a complex task, but George Hill's book is equal to the challenge. (The book includes more than 150 historic and current photographs of Edison sites.)
About the Author:
George J. Hill, M.D., D. Litt., served as a professor of surgery at the Washington University School of Medicine, Marshall University School of Medicine and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. A widely published scholar, Dr. Hill is the author of three books on surgery and more than 150 articles and chapters on medical and historical subjects. He and his wife, Helene Zimmermann Hill, Ph.D., live in West Orange, not far from Edison's famous laboratory.
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