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Speaker 1: Pushkin too quick.

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Speaker 2: No, it's perfect push kid stop you got it.

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Speaker 3: Robert Smith. We're starting this one with a little true crime.

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Speaker 1: Oh I love it, Bring me back.

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Speaker 3: It's the fall of eighteen ninety and there's a guy

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Speaker 3: named Louis Le Prince. He's French, and he's about to

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Speaker 3: show the world that he has invented the movies moving pictures.

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Speaker 1: Love it.

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Speaker 3: He's spent about a decade at this point developing a

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Speaker 3: camera slash projector. Almost went broke a couple times, but

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Speaker 3: finally now he has it. He has done it. He's

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Speaker 3: built a camera, he has filmed the first movie ever made,

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Speaker 3: and he's going to go to New York to show

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Speaker 3: the world. He's going to have the premiere of all premiers,

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Speaker 3: the very first of one, Yes, the premier premiere number one.

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Speaker 3: But first he decides he's going to go visit his brother,

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Speaker 3: his brother who lives in as you say, Dijon, this

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Speaker 3: is the frenchest story up here in France. Yes, I

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Speaker 3: think he does have a mustache. Also, from there, he's

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Speaker 3: going to go Jon Paris, Paris, London, London. New York

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Speaker 3: couldn't go direct at that time, and so he goes

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Speaker 3: to visit his brother, spends a few days there, and

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Speaker 3: then on September sixteenth, eighteen ninety Louis la Prince, the

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Speaker 3: man who invented movies, gets on the train from Dijon

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Speaker 3: to Paris. He has never seen again. He disappears. His

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Speaker 3: wife at that time was living in New York, his wife, Lizzie,

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Speaker 3: and you know, she's waiting for him to show up.

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Speaker 3: But at that time people are late. Things happen, but

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Speaker 3: she starts to get nervous, and her nervousness turns into panic.

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Speaker 3: She starts going down to the battery, down to the

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Speaker 3: southern tip of Manhattan every day, watch the ships come in,

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Speaker 3: and you know, see if she can see him come

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Speaker 3: off the ship. Nothing. And so she's contacting her family

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Speaker 3: back in England. She's contacting his brother in France. Nobody

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Speaker 3: knows anything. He's gone. And then on May twenty eighth,

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Speaker 3: eighteen ninety one, this is less than a year after

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Speaker 3: he disappeared, Lizzie sees this headline on the front page

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Speaker 3: of the New York Sun. Why don't you give it

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Speaker 3: to us?

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Speaker 1: I read it to us. The kinetograph Edison's latest and

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Speaker 1: most surprising device, pure motion recorded and reproduced.

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Speaker 3: Lizzie reads this headline and she thinks to herself, I mean,

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Speaker 3: I know what happened. It's obvious what happened. Thomas Edison

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Speaker 3: chilled my husband and stole his idea. Jacques. I'm Jacob Goldstein.

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Speaker 1: And I'm Robert Smith. And this is Business History, a

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Speaker 1: show about the history of business.

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Speaker 3: Well smug, well smug in the Raid Today.

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Speaker 1: I'm proud of the show. This is our third and

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Speaker 1: final episode about Thomas Edison. In the first episode, we

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Speaker 1: talked about how Edison invented this whole new way of

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Speaker 1: inventing things. Second episode, he brings electricity to the world,

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Speaker 1: but also manages to screw it up a little and

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Speaker 1: bet on the wrong horse. And today we talk about

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Speaker 1: Edison's last big success, the movies, the motion pictures.

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Speaker 3: Kind of the key theme that the sort of big

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Speaker 3: idea in the show today is simultaneous invention, you know,

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Speaker 3: the sort of classic invention story. And this was like

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Speaker 3: say true of Edison in the Phonograph. Is one guy

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Speaker 3: or one team just coming up with this idea that

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Speaker 3: nobody saw coming, making this huge breakthrough out on their own.

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Speaker 3: But that's unusual, right A lot of the time, maybe

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Speaker 3: most of the time, big breakthroughs are not like that.

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Speaker 3: There are all these different teams and everybody knows that

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Speaker 3: a breakthrough is coming, and everybody is racing, working on

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Speaker 3: different techniques to get to the same place. And it's

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Speaker 3: really interesting to look at the story and think, well,

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Speaker 3: in that setting, who wins, who loses and why? And

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Speaker 3: in particular, in this case, it's the story of how

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Speaker 3: Edison does not invent the movies but still wins.

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Speaker 1: It's also about a murder.

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Speaker 3: There was a murder in the show today, allegedly. I mean,

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Speaker 3: I definitely died.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. That's true, and he would have by now.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yes, they're all dead. Now, so let's pick

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Speaker 3: up the Edison story. We're going to pick it up

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Speaker 3: in eighteen eighty seven when Edison has just turned forty.

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Speaker 3: He's forty years old, and he moves his lab from

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Speaker 3: Menlo Park to West Orange.

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Speaker 1: The Wizard of West Orange. Actually that sounds pretty good.

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Speaker 3: It's not bad. But he's still the Wizard of Menlo Park,

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Speaker 3: but now he has a much bigger and better lab.

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Speaker 3: You know, you remember from the first episode.

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Speaker 1: He had everything in one place, in one room essentially, yes,

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Speaker 1: and so now he is an international celebrity with backing

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Speaker 1: from the most powerful and rich financiers in the world.

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Speaker 3: And this new lab reflects that actually lab isn't even

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Speaker 3: a big enough for it. It's a compound, right, So

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Speaker 3: he builds like a factory where they're making phonographs, you know,

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Speaker 3: the record players and the records to go on them.

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Speaker 3: And then the lab is this like super lab, multi

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Speaker 3: stories high. There's a machine shop, and then the sort

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Speaker 3: of heart of it is the lab, right, and now

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Speaker 3: Edison can buy everything. He buys every metal in existence, apparently,

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Speaker 3: of course, thousands of dollars of chemicals. And then I

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Speaker 3: found I found this one list that I guess it's

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Speaker 3: just like the plant and animal products they bought, and

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Speaker 3: I love it. We read it, read it.

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Speaker 1: For I picture this wall, and we're reading the things

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Speaker 1: along the wall, right, hog bristles, porcupine quills, tanned walrus hide,

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Speaker 1: because you don't want the raw.

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Speaker 3: Right skins of every known animal, every known animal. It's

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Speaker 3: like Noah's arc.

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Speaker 1: A pound of peacock tails, a dozen bulls hordes just

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Speaker 1: in case eleven is enough a do and walrus tusk's

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Speaker 1: twenty five pounds of marlin the fish.

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Speaker 3: Marlin's for eating, Like I wonder twenty five pounds a

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Speaker 3: mile is after snacking or for inventing.

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Speaker 1: That's the whole thing in Edison's mind. You never knew

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Speaker 1: that there was going to be some solution and some

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Speaker 1: guy's gonna say, Marlin, we got Marlin.

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Speaker 3: I mean, so right, So there's a few ways I'm

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Speaker 3: thinking about this, but like the simple one is he

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Speaker 3: wants to be able to invent everything all the time. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and that's kind of what he's doing at this point.

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Speaker 3: He's got hundreds of workers and he's assigning all different

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Speaker 3: people to all different projects all the time.

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Speaker 1: But still at the age of forty, like it's been

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Speaker 1: a while since Edison has like had a big hit

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Speaker 1: kind of yeah, right, I mean he moved to Menlo

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Speaker 1: Park in the late what eighteen seventies and came out

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Speaker 1: the phonograph right away, right like right away, Everyone's like,

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Speaker 1: this is magic, right, light bulb. Everyone knows about this.

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Speaker 3: Now he's working on lots of different things. He's been

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Speaker 3: He's trying to invent iron mining. That's actually what he's

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Speaker 3: really into at this point. He's bought an iron mine

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Speaker 3: and he's built this four milling plant, and he loves

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Speaker 3: to go out there and get dirty. He's actually working

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Speaker 3: on a little electric car, sort of a proto electric car.

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Speaker 3: And then the key moment really in the movie story

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Speaker 3: happens in eighteen eighty eight when he meets with this

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Speaker 3: guy Edward Mybridge, kind of this minor historical figure you

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Speaker 3: might have heard of. My Bridge was a photographer who

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Speaker 3: got famous. It was actually when he helped settle a

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Speaker 3: bet for Leland Stanford, the guy who pounded the Golden

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Speaker 3: spike in the transcontinentel Railroad. There was this bet, do

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Speaker 3: horses lift all four feet off the ground when they're running?

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Speaker 1: And they're running so fast you can't can't you.

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Speaker 3: Can't tell, you can't see it, right, And Stanford said yes,

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Speaker 3: And so my Bridge had developed this technique where he

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Speaker 3: could take rapid sequential photos of like animals in motions.

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Speaker 3: So he actually goes to Stanford's farm in Paloelto will

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Speaker 3: later be Stanford University and takes these pictures of the

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Speaker 3: horse running and and in fact you can see they

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Speaker 3: do lift up all four feet when they run. And

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Speaker 3: so my Bridge gets famous for these kinds of photos.

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Speaker 3: And he's talking to Edison about it. And you know,

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Speaker 3: if you think about, oh, rapid sequential photos of an

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Speaker 3: animal in motion.

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Speaker 1: If you string them together fast enough, yes, it will

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Speaker 1: be a movie. Yes, it seems obvious.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and it was. It was basically obvious at

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Speaker 3: the time. People in fact had started to make flip books,

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Speaker 3: which is you know this idea. There was this toy

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Speaker 3: called a zoetroph.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen these, yeah, with the little slits in

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Speaker 1: them and you spin it and you can only see

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Speaker 1: one picture at a time. But it's like a guy

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Speaker 1: doing cartwheels or you know, something running. It's like it's.

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Speaker 3: Animation, right, It's this simple little animation. And so this

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Speaker 3: is all in the air. And after his meeting with

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Speaker 3: my Bridge, Edison assigns one of his assistants like, okay,

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Speaker 3: this is this is another project for us among all that,

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Speaker 3: you know, all the other things we're working on. He says,

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Speaker 3: go figure out how to build a you know, a

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Speaker 3: photographic system that can capture motion.

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Speaker 1: And at the time, this is Thomas Edison, the inventor. Right,

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Speaker 1: you have the idea, you delegate, you say, you have

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Speaker 1: a room full of all his animals. Do what you

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Speaker 1: have to do.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And when Edison tells this guy to go

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Speaker 3: off and work on it. He does not know that

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Speaker 3: Louisla Prince, the guy we talked about at the beginning

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Speaker 3: of the story, is way ahead of him.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about Loula Prince.

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Speaker 3: Louis. The Prince was born in eighteen forty one, a

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Speaker 3: few years before Edison, a little older than Edison. And

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Speaker 3: I should say, by the way, the details of his

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Speaker 3: life come from this book called The Man Who Invented

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Speaker 3: Motion Pictures by Paul Fisher. It's a good book. Paul

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Speaker 3: Fisher was generous enough to talk to me, actually, so

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Speaker 3: he was quite helpful in putting together this show. So

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Speaker 3: Louis's father is a French army officer named Louisa Prince.

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Speaker 3: Louis has an older brother named Louisa Prince.

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Speaker 1: It is a perfect name.

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Speaker 3: It's a very good with another one. Oh yeah, I

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Speaker 3: reinvent the whale. His mother is not named Louis. His

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Speaker 3: mother's name is Elizabeth, and he grows up moving around

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Speaker 3: France because his dad's in the army. And you know,

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Speaker 3: this time, the middle of the eighteenth century is technologically incredible, and.

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Speaker 1: We talked about this, right it feels like every day

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Speaker 1: something new is coming, and.

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Speaker 3: So Louis falls in love with both technology and art,

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Speaker 3: and he decides to devote himself to sort of combining

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Speaker 3: technology and art. Right, So he apprentices with a painter,

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Speaker 3: but he also studies optics and chemistry and he winds

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Speaker 3: up as a photographer, which is like the perfect ven

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Speaker 3: diagram overlap right. Photography is just like a few decades

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Speaker 3: old at this point. It is a new technology, and

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Speaker 3: so he's working on photography in France. He falls in

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Speaker 3: love with this young British artist named Lizzie, follows her

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Speaker 3: back to a town called Leeds, which I am informed

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Speaker 3: is in the UK. They start an art school together

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Speaker 3: and La Prince is really into these sort of creative

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Speaker 3: applications of photography. He gets well known for combining photography

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Speaker 3: with pottery. There is this moment in his life that

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Speaker 3: comes in eighteen eighty, so years before Edison starts thinking

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Speaker 3: about motion pictures. La Prince is thirty nine years old.

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Speaker 3: He's married, he has a couple kids. He's kind of restless.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's thirty nine year old man. He wants to

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Speaker 1: like spend time in the garage, tinkering with his tools.

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Speaker 3: Lived the dream right, so yes, And in fact, he

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Speaker 3: does have a little workshop out bind the house, you know,

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Speaker 3: a little photo studio, and one day he's out there

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Speaker 3: working and he has in his hand like a glass

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Speaker 3: plate and a piece of paper that both have the

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Speaker 3: same photograph on them, like a portrait, I think, and

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Speaker 3: for sec he sort of drops them. They start to

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Speaker 3: slip out of his hands and he reaches down to

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Speaker 3: grab them, and as they're like falling through the air,

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Speaker 3: he sees this motion and he thinks, ah.

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Speaker 1: You know, listen, I feel like when people tell these stories,

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Speaker 1: what they're doing actually is trying to capture that feeling

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Speaker 1: of an aha moment.

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Speaker 3: You're saying, it has truthiness.

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Speaker 1: It is truthiness, like it felt him that he had

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Speaker 1: this insight, and indeed he did have an insight. He's like,

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Speaker 1: this is possible. Yes, you're saying, maybe it didn't happen.

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Speaker 1: Louis la Prince from this point.

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Speaker 3: On devotes his life to figuring out motion pictures. He

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Speaker 3: calls this moment the spark and you know, he has

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Speaker 3: this vision and it seems kind of hokey in retrospect,

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Speaker 3: but like admirable in its way that moving pictures are

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Speaker 3: going to like bring the world together. You know, people

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Speaker 3: of different nations will see the way foreigners live and

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Speaker 3: it will make them understand their common humanity or whatever.

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Speaker 3: And so he is in fact going to spend the

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Speaker 3: rest of his life on this. And not long after

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Speaker 3: this moment, he rents a bigger workshop, this one's in town,

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Speaker 3: and he hires a machinist and a woodworker, and he

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Speaker 3: hires his son, a Dolf, to come and work with him.

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Speaker 1: I know that we've spent two episodes talking about Thomas Edison,

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Speaker 1: but I am kind of rooting for the artist at

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Speaker 1: this point, right. I'm always rooting for the artists against

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Speaker 1: the big industrial might. At this point of Thomas Edison,

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Speaker 1: but you have to think about, like how hard this

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Speaker 1: is going to be? Right, film moves at twenty four

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Speaker 1: frames per second, and if you have glass plates, that's

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Speaker 1: what he's working on. He's thinking about.

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Speaker 3: Vist Place, that's what they're using at the time.

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Speaker 1: I mean, twenty four times a second. You're gonna go

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Speaker 1: like it seems impossible.

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Speaker 3: Now, like how you're gonna even have that many glass plates,

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Speaker 3: how they're gonna not break?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 3: And yet and yet this is a moment when somehow

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Speaker 3: the movies feel kind of imminent, right, like everybody is

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Speaker 3: working on this problem.

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Speaker 1: And more than that, everybody's paying attention to everyone else.

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Speaker 1: This is the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize

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Speaker 1: in Economics. Came up with this idea of these ages

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Speaker 1: of innovation were really about communication. It was really about

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Speaker 1: a time when everyone's sending letters to each other, You're

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Speaker 1: reading about each other in the newspapers. Obviously, patents are

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Speaker 1: coming through in the United States, and so there are

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Speaker 1: times when not only are people feeling the spirit of invention,

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Speaker 1: but they're seeing exactly what other people are doing.

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Speaker 3: Joel mok here Joel o'kee won that Nobel. Yeah, and

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Speaker 3: you mentioned patents, which is really interesting, right, because patents

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Speaker 3: are in the US Constitution. Famously, the founders felt that

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Speaker 3: strongly about them, in part because what a patent does

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Speaker 3: is it makes you publish your idea. Right, Patents are public,

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Speaker 3: and that is the point. And like Edison is like

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Speaker 3: reading every patent, or having people who work for him

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Speaker 3: read every patent that comes through.

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Speaker 1: That is core this idea of sharing knowledge. And we

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Speaker 1: see this with the invention of the Internet. We see

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Speaker 1: this with recently about AI. People are innovating, but they're

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Speaker 1: innovating in public and announcing almost immediately we've done this,

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Speaker 1: We've managed to do this and figure this out, and

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Speaker 1: it leads their competitors to say, like, wow, if that's possible,

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Speaker 1: maybe this other thing is possible.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that is this big idea of simultaneous invention. Right.

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Speaker 3: And like the AI example is really interesting because you know,

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Speaker 3: the key breakthrough in AI in like the last decade

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Speaker 3: was just a paper that Google researcher is published.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: They figured out a better way to make AI work

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Speaker 3: on basically on Nvidia chips on GPUs. And they could

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Speaker 3: have kept that as a trade secret, right, Google could

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Speaker 3: have just built its own AI model on people and wow,

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Speaker 3: why is that so good? But they did the opposite.

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Speaker 3: They published it. And so that is what's happening with

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Speaker 3: the movies in the eighteen eighties.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: Everybody is working, they're kind of working in public. People

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Speaker 3: are patenting things when they get patents, and so Le Prince,

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Speaker 3: as you said, he has this problem with the glass plates, right,

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Speaker 3: and so first he builds this sixteen lens camera that

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Speaker 3: is you can see pictures of it. That is amazing

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Speaker 3: to behold. Because his idea is like, what if you

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Speaker 3: could just have one and have like sixteen exposures like

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Speaker 3: the eye of a fly, Like the eye of a fly,

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Speaker 3: it's a fly camera, and then somehow you would you know,

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Speaker 3: playback each one. But like, that doesn't work for an

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Speaker 3: interesting reason, which is because the lenses are like next

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Speaker 3: to each other, each one is from a slightly different

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Speaker 3: point of view, right, and so it has to be

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Speaker 3: the exact same shot for the illusion of motion to.

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Speaker 1: Because it'll it'll be jumpy, feel it'll be jumping, make

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Speaker 1: you sick.

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Speaker 3: So the real breakthrough for La Prince comes from somewhere else.

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Speaker 3: Also classic innovation, kind of adjacency driving innovation. In this

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Speaker 3: case it's George Eastman of Eastman Kodek. Perhaps you've heard

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Speaker 3: of Kodek. I have used to be a great company.

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Speaker 3: George Eastman invents paper film, and you know, George Eastman

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Speaker 3: is not interested in the movies, right. He wants photography

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Speaker 3: to be like a hobby for everybody instead of a

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Speaker 3: thing you need professionals to do. And obviously George Eastman

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Speaker 3: is wildly successful. But Louis la Prince sees this paper

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Speaker 3: film and thinks, aha, I don't have to use glass plates,

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Speaker 3: and in fact, paper film is not ideal for the movies.

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Speaker 3: It's not translucence entirely, but it's a little bit translucent. Also,

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Speaker 3: it tends to catch fire because where you got to

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Speaker 3: put a bright light behind it to.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, movie quickly.

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Speaker 3: That's a problem, but it works. The Prince is able

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Speaker 3: to build a movie camera and it's this beautiful mahogany

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Speaker 3: box with like brass hinges like in Williamsburg. They would

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Speaker 3: go crazy for this camera. He was an artist at

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Speaker 3: his heart, and in October of eighteen eighty eight, Louis

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Speaker 3: La Prince makes the first movies ever made. It's in

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Speaker 3: Leads where he's living. There's actually a few movies he

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Speaker 3: seems to make on this one day. And one of

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Speaker 3: the movies survives and is in fact on YouTube. Oh

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Speaker 3: so I put a link in the note. So here,

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Speaker 3: let's watch the movie. K you want to count us in?

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Speaker 1: Okay, So it's called Roundhay Garden. See it's eighteen eighty eight.

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Speaker 1: The Prince, All right back, get your big bag of popcorn.

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Speaker 1: You know, relax really, you know, put yourself in the

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Speaker 1: mood of watching a movie. Let's hit play in three

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Speaker 1: to one play and it's over. That's it. That's it.

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Speaker 1: It's two seconds long. Two seconds long, the very first movie. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it makes it super hard to like show this at

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Speaker 1: a movie theater. Imagine the movie phone, you know, round

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Speaker 1: hey garden scene shows at two o'clock, two o'clock in

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Speaker 1: ten seconds, two o'clock in twenty seconds.

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Speaker 3: But think of how many tickets you can see.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, you could pack it.

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Speaker 3: So okay, so let's actually talk for a second about

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Speaker 3: what's going on in the movie. Yeah, yea yeah, how

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Speaker 3: many people as four people on the screen.

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Speaker 1: They were awkwardly, I would say, standing there, except it's

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Speaker 1: as if Louis la Prince I, who assume is behind

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Speaker 1: the camera. Yeah, told them I'm about to hit record.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what he would have called it. I'm

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Speaker 1: about to start the machine.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Move around, yeah, yeah, just start start doing something. So

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Speaker 1: there's a main guy who's sort of walking directly the

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Speaker 1: camera and then starts circling around.

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Speaker 3: That's Adulf. That's Louis Son okay.

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Speaker 1: And there's in the back an old guy with a

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Speaker 1: top hat who is dancing. I guess he's doing a

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Speaker 1: little jig.

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Speaker 3: Yes, so that is Adulf's grandfather. Luisla Prince's father in law.

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Speaker 1: And then there's a couple other people who are just like,

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Speaker 1: there's a woman and they're just sort.

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Speaker 3: Of like, yeah, it's a jiggling a bit, a family

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Speaker 3: friend and Louise's mother in law. But here's the thing,

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Speaker 3: you're mocking it.

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Speaker 1: We're watching the Invention of movies and the first time

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Speaker 1: it's like that first photograph record that Mary had a

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Speaker 1: little lamb. The moment you see two seconds of this

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Speaker 1: and I assume it was longer this ise.

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Speaker 3: I think it was originally longer.

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Speaker 1: This is like what lasted, But even at two seconds,

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Speaker 1: you can see exactly what it's going to be. You're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I can have a whole scene here, and I can

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Speaker 1: see people's faces, and I can see movement, and I

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Speaker 1: can see cities I've never seen before. Like the dream

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Speaker 1: that he had of bringing people together is obvious as

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Speaker 1: we make fun of people from a undred and fifty

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Speaker 1: years ago on YouTube.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, this is just a guy in

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Speaker 3: a little workshop in Leeds with a few people, like

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Speaker 3: you know, you talked about rooting for the loan inventor.

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Speaker 3: This is, at least at this moment, the victory of

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Speaker 3: the loan inventor.

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Speaker 1: For a moment. Savor it because there is someone else

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Speaker 1: who's going to come back into the story, Thomas Alva Edison,

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Speaker 1: And we'll have his part of the story after the

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Speaker 1: break and we're back. We watched the round Hay Garden

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Speaker 1: scene four hundred more times.

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Speaker 3: Let's get back to Edison now. Okay, when we left Edison,

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Speaker 3: it was early eighteen eighty eight and he had just

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Speaker 3: told on one of his boys, one of his muckers,

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Speaker 3: to go off and invent moving pictures. The guy he

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Speaker 3: told to invent moving pictures was named William Kennedy Laurie Dixon.

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Speaker 3: Four names, four names, and he liked all four. Yes,

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Speaker 3: he would sign things w k l D. So a

401
00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:37,440
Speaker 3: little full of himself, but like also a hustler and

402
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Speaker 3: an important player in the movie story as we'll see.

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Speaker 1: So.

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Speaker 3: WKLD grew up in England and when he was like

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Speaker 3: eighteen or nineteen, he actually wrote to Edison to ask

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Speaker 3: for a job, as I'm sure thousands of young hustlers did.

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Speaker 3: Edison says no, But WKLD comes to the US anyway

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Speaker 3: and eventually does get a job working for Edison shows Moxie, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: he's got Moxie and he is an engineer, but he

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Speaker 3: also is Edison's personal photographer.

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Speaker 1: Of course Edison has a personal photographer, which you know

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Speaker 1: at this point in Edison's life, like he realizes that

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Speaker 1: he is a brand.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and maybe the most famous person in America, Like

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Speaker 3: it's it's we got to make it clear, like he's

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Speaker 3: not just like nerds love him, like everybody knows who

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Speaker 3: he is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but I say the word brand because he uses

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Speaker 1: that to get what he wants, to make progress, to

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Speaker 1: get money, to get investment, to get his inventions out there,

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Speaker 1: and to win. Like he knows that it's good for

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Speaker 1: business that whenever something's invented in the middle of the night,

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Speaker 1: he can step in at the last minute and have

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Speaker 1: his personal photographer take a photo of him next to it,

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Speaker 1: right by William Kennedy Laurie Dixon. And you know, this

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Speaker 1: is part of the reason Edison assigns him moving pictures.

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Speaker 3: Right. The kid knows how to use a camera. So

428
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Speaker 3: remember this is eighteen eighty eight. By this point, le

429
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Speaker 3: Prince has been working for like eight years on the camera.

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Speaker 3: Just a few months after Edison assigns WKLD to work

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Speaker 3: on moving pictures, Edison writes a letter to his patent.

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Speaker 1: Lawyers which I'm contractually obligated to read everything that you.

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Speaker 3: Tell me to read, so please read it.

434
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:19,639
Speaker 1: Okay. I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for

435
00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:23,000
Speaker 1: the eye what the photograph does for the ear, which

436
00:23:23,040 --> 00:23:26,199
Speaker 1: is the recording and reproduction of things in motion and

437
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: in such form as to be both cheap, practical, and convenient.

438
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:33,879
Speaker 1: And there's like a little drawing of a machine in

439
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:34,280
Speaker 1: the letter.

440
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 3: Yes, although that machine is not going to work at all.

441
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:39,680
Speaker 3: It's in fact, when the movie camera is invented, it's

442
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:40,400
Speaker 3: not going to be that.

443
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:44,159
Speaker 1: It was the poetry of this that was going to

444
00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:46,800
Speaker 1: get Thomas Edison ahead. So he has not invented the movies,

445
00:23:47,119 --> 00:23:49,719
Speaker 1: but he's written a thing that kind of sounds like

446
00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:52,480
Speaker 1: maybe he did. And when he does, he can say.

447
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:56,000
Speaker 3: Well, I wrote this beautiful paragraph right, Yes, yes it is.

448
00:23:56,040 --> 00:23:59,159
Speaker 3: It is a legal gambit, and I just want to

449
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:00,600
Speaker 3: note part of the reason I want to talk about

450
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 3: this letter is it's October eighth, eighteen eighty eight. The

451
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:09,680
Speaker 3: day that Roundey Garden scene that first movie was filmed

452
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 3: is October oreenth, eighteen eighty eighth, same week, so it's

453
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:18,199
Speaker 3: not not legal precedence. La Prince already has the patent,

454
00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:22,640
Speaker 3: but just the vibe of simultaneity is what I want

455
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 3: to capture here, right, Like, it is extraordinary how much

456
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 3: everybody is working on.

457
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:30,959
Speaker 1: This, and Edison's first instinct is to get his lawyers

458
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:34,119
Speaker 1: to lock it down, put it on paper, file it.

459
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 3: Yes, And what Edison is applying for isn't even a patent.

460
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 3: It's this thing called a caveat that is just like, well,

461
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 3: I'm not ready for a patent yet, but I got

462
00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:44,920
Speaker 3: the idea, and so if anybody else tries to get

463
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 3: in on it, you got to come check with me.

464
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 3: And you know, you were talking a minute ago about

465
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 3: Edison being aware of his own brand and that's serving him,

466
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 3: and it certainly did for sales and for raising capital,

467
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:59,400
Speaker 3: but it also served him in intellectual property. Like there's

468
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 3: a pretty compelling argument that like, in the same way

469
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:07,160
Speaker 3: that you know, Lebron James can get away with committing

470
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 3: fouls and not getting called the way ordinary players would

471
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:12,919
Speaker 3: because he's famous. And it's like, oh, surely Lebron James

472
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 3: wouldn't commit that foul, Like Edison could do that with patents.

473
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:19,120
Speaker 3: Right if a bunch of people have competing claims, which

474
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 3: is often the case because simultaneous invention. Edison will get

475
00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 3: the benefit of the doubt. Because he's Edison, He's the

476
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 3: most famous inventor in the world. Of course, he must

477
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:29,360
Speaker 3: have really invented this thing.

478
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and La Prince back in his backyard shed has

479
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:36,280
Speaker 1: to know this, that he is not the most famous

480
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:40,239
Speaker 1: guy in this race. And so his motivation is I

481
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:42,440
Speaker 1: need to make it work, and I need to show

482
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: it to people that it actually works, not just written

483
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper like Thomas Edison did.

484
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, like everything gets litigated, right. Everything is a race,

485
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:54,120
Speaker 3: and so the way you win is not just in

486
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:58,000
Speaker 3: court with patents. It's being first to market, being first

487
00:25:58,080 --> 00:25:59,879
Speaker 3: to show the thing, being first to go in a

488
00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 3: room and say, hey, look, I built this movie camera.

489
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 3: Here is a movie. No one has ever made a

490
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 3: movie before. And so La Prince, Yes, he has built

491
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 3: his camera and made his movie and has his petance.

492
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:12,440
Speaker 3: Now he needs to show it to the world.

493
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 1: Okay, the battle is set. The lone inventor versus the

494
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 1: most famous man in America, the little guy versus the

495
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: industrial invention machine. Oh, this would make a great movie.

496
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, if they existed yet, go on, Loui's going to

497
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:29,919
Speaker 3: go to New York, right, He's going to have his

498
00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 3: premiere in Edison's backyard, basically. But first, as you may

499
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:38,399
Speaker 3: recall from the beginning of today's show, he's going to

500
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 3: go visit his brother in Dijon in France. And it's

501
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 3: not exactly clear why, you know, maybe he just wanted

502
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:46,879
Speaker 3: to see him, but it is the case that Louis

503
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:50,359
Speaker 3: had some money problems. There was an inheritance, like a house.

504
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:52,920
Speaker 3: I think that they'd inherited from their mother, and so

505
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 3: maybe there's some money situation.

506
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:58,159
Speaker 1: Classic going to argue with the fantastic Classic. So he

507
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: goes to see his brother in.

508
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 3: Dijon, gets on a train to Paris, disappears, is never

509
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 3: seen again. And let's just do that New York's on

510
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:08,240
Speaker 3: headline one more time.

511
00:27:08,359 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 1: You know, I could do it forever. The kinetograph Edison's

512
00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:15,440
Speaker 1: latest and most prizing device, pure motion, recorded and reproduced.

513
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 3: And then Lizzie sees that headline and thinks, Thomas Edison

514
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 3: stole my idea and killed my husband.

515
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: With five pounds of peacock feathers.

516
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 3: That's what the twenty five pounds of Marlon.

517
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: Was Lizzy at the time because this has taken over

518
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: her husband's life and now he's missing, and sees this

519
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: like she has got to be so full of rage.

520
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 1: They do have the film though.

521
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 3: Yes they have the film, They have the camera, it's

522
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 3: there in leads, and he has a patent right. So

523
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 3: it seems like a robust legal case. It's obviously not

524
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 3: going to bring her husband back, but at least you know,

525
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,360
Speaker 3: you could whatever, have his Yeah, have his name, makes

526
00:27:55,359 --> 00:28:01,679
Speaker 3: your move. But but there is this element of intellectual

527
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:05,440
Speaker 3: property law at the time that is devastating for Lizzie

528
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 3: making this case, and that is this, if someone is missing,

529
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:14,440
Speaker 3: there is eight years of waiting period before they can

530
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 3: be declared dead. And while they're missing, their property, including

531
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 3: their intellectual property, is in this kind of limbo right,

532
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 3: So Louis la Prince owns this intellectual property and maybe

533
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 3: he's still alive as far as the law is concerned.

534
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 3: So in this key moment in the development of movies,

535
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 3: Lizzy can't do anything. She can't bring a case because

536
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 3: it's not her intellectual property to sue with.

537
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 1: Do we think at this point that Edison has seen

538
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 1: the film? I mean he has his fingers and everything.

539
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he would have probably seen the patent, right,

540
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 3: somebody who worked for him would very likely have seen

541
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 3: the patent, But as far as I know, not the film.

542
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 3: The film is there in the UK. The big moment

543
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 3: was going to be the New York premiere. And remember

544
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:55,800
Speaker 3: this is just like less than a year before that

545
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 3: he has disappeared. So Edison has probably not seen the

546
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 3: film or the movie camera, and so Lizzie can't do

547
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 3: much during this waiting period.

548
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 1: Tell you who can do something? Thomas Edison's invention factory

549
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 1: never sleeps. They've already started to work on and they

550
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: are going to.

551
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 3: Be really yes, yes, And so you'll remember William Kennedy,

552
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 3: Lourie Dixon, our man fra Guess on the job and

553
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 3: you know WKLD. He's keeping up with all this stuff

554
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 3: that people are doing, with all the patents, and in

555
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 3: fact tries to do like a movie projector style movie

556
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 3: at some point, but can't get that to work. The

557
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 3: film just isn't whatever good enough or clear enough, and

558
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 3: so it comes up with this other model instead, which

559
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 3: is instead of projecting the movie onto a screen onto

560
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 3: the wall, they build a little box with a little

561
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 3: hole in the top, and you look down into the

562
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:46,720
Speaker 3: box like one person, and you see a little short

563
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 3: movie of like, you know, a strong man lifting weights

564
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 3: or whatever.

565
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 1: And actually, you know this fits with Thomas Edison and

566
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 1: his strength as a businessman. Right. He wasn't looking at

567
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: the movies as some sort of artistic form that was

568
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: going to bring the world together. Kumbai yah. He was like, well,

569
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: how do I put something in a box? Get someone

570
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 1: to put a nickel inside, We'll put my face on it.

571
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 1: We'll put it in Coney Island, and eventually, like, I

572
00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 1: will have so many nickels. I have a big room

573
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: filled with them in West Orange.

574
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 3: To dive into them like a not very rich scrooge

575
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 3: Nick Duck.

576
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: So many nickels, right, And Edison does, in fact do this.

577
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 3: He builds his little money machine and people line up

578
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 3: because it is this miraculous thing, moving pictures, and now

579
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 3: he actually needs movies to show. It's like, oh no,

580
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 3: we got the box. People are lighting up. We got

581
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 3: to show up new movies so they'll give us more nickels.

582
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 3: And in fact, Dixon oversees construction of this movie studio.

583
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 3: I think the world's first movie studio, although other people

584
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 3: are working on things, and it's this it's this weird

585
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 3: building and it's there in West Orange, right by the lab,

586
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:51,280
Speaker 3: and it's optimized to get sunlight, right, because early cameras

587
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 3: aren't very good. Early lighting is still not that good.

588
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 3: They need a lot of light. So they do two

589
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 3: things with this building that are just delightful. One they

590
00:30:58,160 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 3: have like a hinged roof so they can open it

591
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 3: up and let the sunshine in. And two it's on

592
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 3: a big like turntable so they can turn it so

593
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:07,720
Speaker 3: that the sunlight can come in.

594
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 1: It's like a retractable roof stadium.

595
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, crossed with like one of those restaurants at the

596
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 3: top of a tall building that spins around. Have you

597
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 3: ever been to one of those? I've never been to it.

598
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:17,239
Speaker 1: I have been to them. They moved very slowly. They

599
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: moved very slowly. You know. I would pay a nickel

600
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 1: just to like be in the studio and have it

601
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: rotate with the sun.

602
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 3: Oh for sure. Yeah, yeah, now you've invented the studio tour.

603
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 3: Early films include Blacksmith Scene, Oh It's a good one,

604
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 3: Washing the Baby, who Oscar Nominee, and The Boxing Cats.

605
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:39,440
Speaker 1: No Way, What are the first movies. Ever is a

606
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: cat video.

607
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like this has a very kind of whatever

608
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 3: I don't know Instagram TikTok vibe, Like Washing the Baby

609
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 3: is tradwise Blacksmith. I feel like there must be Blacksmith influencers.

610
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:53,160
Speaker 3: So so Edison's in the movie business, but he doesn't

611
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 3: have it to himself for long, right, This is the

612
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:57,719
Speaker 3: simultaneous invention thing again. Right, Over the next few years,

613
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,360
Speaker 3: more and more people are developing their own movie cameras,

614
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 3: making their own movies. But of course Edison is Edison

615
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 3: has you know, as many lawyers as he wants at

616
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 3: his disposal, and so he's what is I guess the

617
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:17,520
Speaker 3: obvious thing, decides to basically sue everybody else out of existence. Sure,

618
00:32:17,560 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 3: so sure, clear the field. And so, you know, the

619
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 3: first few companies he goes and Susie like, oh it's Edison, Okay, bye, whatever,

620
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 3: We're done. But then he gets this one company that

621
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 3: is doing pretty well. It's called the Mutoscope Company. And

622
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 3: by this point that company, which is Edison's main rival,

623
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 3: is run by one William Kennedy Lori Dixon.

624
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:44,719
Speaker 1: Wuk l D who left Edison I assue left, who

625
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 1: left to go to go to a competitor. Y Ah,

626
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 1: and like this is classic. This is a classic moment

627
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 1: in the age of innovation. Right, It's not just ideas,

628
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: it's this process knowledge of people who know how to

629
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 1: do something and immediately are valuable and can go and

630
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: start their own businesses or get hired by someone else.

631
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: I mean we saw this at the dawn of Silicon Valley, rightly. Yes,

632
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 1: it's not as you know, the guy who led the

633
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: invention of the transistor, Williams shot it's not even starting

634
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: his big company, right, Shockley Semiconductor. It's his employees, the traders.

635
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 3: And traders eight work.

636
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, they leave, they start their own company and then

637
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: they go start Intel. Like this is how it works.

638
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:31,280
Speaker 1: This is simultaneous invention and taking those ideas and really

639
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 1: seeding them to a bunch of different companies and competitors. Yes.

640
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 3: Yes, And and in fact, the mutoscope machines, the machines

641
00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 3: that A. Dixon's company is making, are quite like Edison's machines, right,

642
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 3: They're they're not projecting on a screen, there're still you

643
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:49,600
Speaker 3: look into a little box. And in the UK, the

644
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 3: mutoscope machines were known as the what the Butler Saw machines,

645
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 3: because their most famous movie was you look into this thing,

646
00:33:58,400 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 3: and you have the point of view like you're looking

647
00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 3: through an old school people like a little key lock,

648
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:05,480
Speaker 3: you know, and what you see as a woman taking

649
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 3: off some of her clothes, some of her clothes, some

650
00:34:08,279 --> 00:34:10,319
Speaker 3: of her clothes. And this was a smash hit. And

651
00:34:10,359 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 3: so yeah, of course of core porn, yes, which, by

652
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:16,240
Speaker 3: the way, so now we're like whatever, a few years

653
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:18,200
Speaker 3: into the history of movies, not a decade into the

654
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 3: history of movies, and you have like cat videos and

655
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:24,640
Speaker 3: softcore porn. So you can basically shut it down now,

656
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 3: no more innovation. That's it.

657
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 1: That's the thing that drives innovation, frankly right.

658
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:31,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, classic classic story of video, right, the porn industry

659
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,319
Speaker 3: and like video, the internet, also the Mutoscope. It turns

660
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:42,399
Speaker 3: out so okay, Edison sues Mutoscope. Mutoscope does not roll over.

661
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 3: They hire their own lawyers, and their lawyer's legal strategy

662
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 3: is to prove that Edison was not the first person

663
00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 3: to invent moving.

664
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: Pictures, because they know who was, louis La Prince. Yes,

665
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 1: louis La Prince did it. Patent is right there, you know,

666
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 1: for everybody to see. And so he's not there, but

667
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: his patent is, his patent is, and.

668
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 3: The Mutoscope lawyers get in touch with Lizzie, you know,

669
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 3: Louise's wife, and Adulph his son, and you know, so

670
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:16,160
Speaker 3: like this to them feels like their moment, right, Like

671
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:18,360
Speaker 3: there are just two people. There's no way they're going

672
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 3: to be able to go up against Edison. But Mutoscope

673
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:25,320
Speaker 3: is a real company with revenues, and so Adolf gets

674
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:27,760
Speaker 3: ready to testify. He goes back to England. He gets

675
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 3: the camera, the machine, he takes the round hey garden

676
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,600
Speaker 3: scene and like pace the images onto like you know, board,

677
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 3: so they can have it in court. He gets like

678
00:35:37,160 --> 00:35:39,760
Speaker 3: sworn statements from people who were working with him.

679
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 1: And the family of lou the Prince could finally get

680
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: this confrontation in a court room with I assume reporters

681
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 1: there the trial of the century, like it's the.

682
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:49,239
Speaker 3: Edison right, you know it's going to be in the

683
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 3: papers because Edison is involved, right, So the trial happens.

684
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 3: Adolph in fact gets called to testify and the Mutoscope

685
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,920
Speaker 3: lawyer asks him, do you have any films from this

686
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:04,720
Speaker 3: camera that your father invented? And Adolph you know, shows

687
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 3: the pictures of the round he garden scene, which you

688
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 3: remember he was in it and his grandparents were in it.

689
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:13,760
Speaker 3: And then the lawyer says, when were these photographs taken?

690
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 3: And Adolph says October eighteen eighty eight, which again is

691
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:23,319
Speaker 3: you know, well before Edison had his claim. And then

692
00:36:23,360 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 3: the lawyer for Edison, like I guess in cross examination,

693
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:29,840
Speaker 3: says to Adolf, well, there's no way you can prove

694
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:32,959
Speaker 3: that October eighteen eighty eight is when the movie was filmed.

695
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:36,760
Speaker 3: These are just pictures. And Adolf says, I can fix

696
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 3: the date exactly by the fact that my grandmother, who

697
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:42,560
Speaker 3: remembers in the movie, by the fact that my grandmother

698
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,359
Speaker 3: died on the twenty fourth of October eighteen eighty eight.

699
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:48,839
Speaker 1: Courtroom gasps.

700
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 3: And yet, and yet it doesn't really worked out for

701
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 3: Adulf and Lizzie. This is the high point for them.

702
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:00,719
Speaker 3: But you know, it becomes clear that, you know, the

703
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 3: Mutoscope lawyers are not there to validate the claim of

704
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:08,319
Speaker 3: Louis le Prince. In fact, at some level, they don't

705
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:11,839
Speaker 3: want like, you know, La Prince's ears. They don't want

706
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 3: a dolphin Lizzy to be able to like take away

707
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 3: the movies from them, So they want to like do

708
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 3: enough to undermine Edison, sure, but not so much that

709
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 3: they undermine themselves, Like they don't even want to see

710
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 3: the camera. And then there are these details where like

711
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:27,839
Speaker 3: louis Us patent was for the sixteen lens camera and

712
00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:29,799
Speaker 3: not the one lens camera, and they don't want to

713
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:34,840
Speaker 3: know about that, and so ultimately, ultimately a dolphin Lizzie

714
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 3: don't get the victory they want.

715
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: And afterwards people aren't putting up statues to Louis La

716
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: Prince and putting them in the textbooks as like this

717
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 1: huge inventor, I mean, he kind of gets lost to time.

718
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 3: He gets totally lost. And the court case, as intellectual

719
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 3: property cases tend to do, goes on forever, right, goes

720
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 3: on for years and years, back and forth. The end

721
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 3: of this Edison versus Mutoscope case is this very strange

722
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:04,160
Speaker 3: to me outcome, and that's this. The two companies get

723
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:07,879
Speaker 3: to keep their intellectual property and everybody else gets sort

724
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 3: of wiped away. It's like, okay, you two whatever, We're

725
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 3: not going to sort it out between YouTube, but you

726
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:13,439
Speaker 3: two are good. You guys can keep making movies. And

727
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 3: so what Edison and Mutoscope decide to do since there's

728
00:38:18,719 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 3: only two. What do you do if it's whatever nineteen

729
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 3: hundred ish, You form a trust. You're like, you know what,

730
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,319
Speaker 3: we could just compete each other down to bits, or

731
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 3: we could just tim up and not have to compete

732
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 3: and share all those nickels.

733
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: Edison's got like a playbook. Either invent it first, or

734
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:37,440
Speaker 1: you patent it first, or you get the caveat, or

735
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:39,800
Speaker 1: you sue everybody. And you know, if it looks like

736
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 1: you're not gonna win, you just say, let's get together, like,

737
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: let's dominate this industry. And in this particular case, they

738
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: dominated the technology they were making the movies. They had

739
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: this like vertical corporation.

740
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 3: They were invented, yes, and you know they really lock

741
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 3: down not just the cameras and the projectors, but the

742
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 3: whole industry. They actually bring in to their trust. It's

743
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:05,359
Speaker 3: called the Motion Picture Patents Company is the official name.

744
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 3: They bring into their trust. Kodak, because Kodak is making

745
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 3: the film right, and they already have their studio, so

746
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:16,359
Speaker 3: the actors are working for them. And this Edison Trust dominates,

747
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:22,879
Speaker 3: just dominates the early movie business. And delightful twist, this

748
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:29,120
Speaker 3: dominance helps to create Hollywood. So Hollywood the place I mean, yes,

749
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 3: but also like Hollywood, the idea, the movie industry as

750
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:34,040
Speaker 3: we know it. Okay, so here's what happens.

751
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:35,920
Speaker 1: So the people who.

752
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:40,399
Speaker 3: Are buying from the Edison Trust are theater owners, right,

753
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 3: They are not in the cartel. They are the ones

754
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:43,480
Speaker 3: paying the cartel.

755
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:43,759
Speaker 1: Yes.

756
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:47,279
Speaker 3: And they are not like big highly capitalized ventures, right.

757
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:50,120
Speaker 3: These are like basically immigrant hustlers, guys who are like

758
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 3: in the fur business a year ago.

759
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're real estate guys. Right. They own a.

760
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:57,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe maybe maybe they have like a vaudeville theater, right,

761
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:00,280
Speaker 3: and they realize, like, oh sad having to pay the actors.

762
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 3: We could just put a movie up there and people

763
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 3: will still pay, right, And so they really come to

764
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 3: resent this Edison Trust.

765
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: Well, of course, because like, buying from a cartel is terrible.

766
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:12,520
Speaker 1: You have no negotiation feed. They can lock you out

767
00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: of the business. They can put you out of business

768
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: if you don't buy what they're asking for.

769
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:18,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great to be a cartel. It's terrible to

770
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:21,400
Speaker 3: be the customer of a cartel, exactly right, Not only

771
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,200
Speaker 3: because they can jack up prices, right, but also because

772
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 3: they can sell you a crap product. You know, like

773
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 3: what you're not gonna buy from anybody else. They don't

774
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 3: have any incentive to make a better movie. Yeah, And

775
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 3: that's an unappreciated danger of a monopoly, right, is that

776
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 3: we always talk about the money. Oh, I'm gonna have

777
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 3: to pay more for this monopoly, But it's really that

778
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 3: there's no reason for the monopoly to innovate, Like why

779
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 3: would the movies have to be better, longer, or nicely lit,

780
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 3: you know, or something beyond what the butler saw. You

781
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:53,719
Speaker 3: don't have to innovate at all. Yeah, And I mean conversely,

782
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:56,279
Speaker 3: like the other side of the same coin is like

783
00:40:56,440 --> 00:41:01,319
Speaker 3: competition is core to why a market economy is great, Yes, right,

784
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 3: Like you want many people firms competing to make something better.

785
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,799
Speaker 3: You want five different companies, twenty different companies trying to

786
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 3: make a better movie to sell it to the movie theaters.

787
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 3: And when there's a cartel, you don't have that. So

788
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:17,800
Speaker 3: how do they get to Hollywood?

789
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: Right? So just distance from the New York cartoon.

790
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:21,879
Speaker 3: Well, so it's part of it. Right. So, So here's

791
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 3: what happens. The theater owners who are the ones getting

792
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:29,840
Speaker 3: jammed by the cartel, They start making their own movies.

793
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:32,520
Speaker 3: But doing it on the slide. There are these stories

794
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 3: where like they'll like have an Edison camera there, but

795
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,360
Speaker 3: then have secretly like one of the band cameras or

796
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 3: a camera from Europe or something on the side. And

797
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,640
Speaker 3: you know, part of trying to avoid the Edison Trust,

798
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 3: which is headquartered in you know, New Jersey, New York,

799
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,879
Speaker 3: is let's go far away, Like how far away can

800
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 3: you get? And the answer in the United States. Just

801
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 3: look at a map continental the United States, southern California

802
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,200
Speaker 3: and plenty of that sun they need. Yeah, so right,

803
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 3: so it's not just Edison. We should be clear, Like

804
00:42:02,719 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 3: there were a few other things. There was plenty of sun.

805
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:07,839
Speaker 3: Land was cheap, so you could, you know, buy your

806
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:11,399
Speaker 3: studio lot for cheap. There were lots of different landscapes

807
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 3: so you could fit like your western out of the desert.

808
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 3: You could go to the mountains, you could go to

809
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 3: the beach. And they weren't just hiding right like they

810
00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:21,440
Speaker 3: were suing. There were anti trust laws and you know,

811
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:23,680
Speaker 3: we're into the kind of nineteen hundreds and nineteen ten's

812
00:42:23,680 --> 00:42:26,560
Speaker 3: at this point, and this is a moment when finally

813
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:28,320
Speaker 3: the anti trust laws that have been on the books

814
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 3: for decades are finally starting to be enforced in a

815
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 3: meaningful way. And there are these Supreme Court decisions in

816
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 3: nineteen seventeen and nineteen eighteen that say, oh yeah, it's

817
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:42,839
Speaker 3: the Edison Trust is a trust, and we have these

818
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 3: anti trust laws. You can't have a cartel. It's right

819
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 3: there in the name, it's right there in the day.

820
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,879
Speaker 3: And they break up the trust. And that's basically the

821
00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 3: end of Edison in the movie business and the beginning

822
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 3: of Hollywood.

823
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 1: We still have one threat to pick up what happened

824
00:42:57,560 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 1: to Luis le Prince.

825
00:42:58,719 --> 00:43:00,920
Speaker 3: Yes, and we're gonna tell the rest of the Edison

826
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 3: story in just a minute. That's the end of the ads. Robert,

827
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 3: give us an outline for the rest of the show.

828
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,279
Speaker 1: Okay, three things we have left to do today. One,

829
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 1: figure out what to make of Loui la Prince and

830
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 1: Edison in the movies, like what's our lesson here? Number Two,

831
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: we're going to do the true crime thing. We're going

832
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: to figure out who killed Louis la Prince. It's good, good.

833
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:44,920
Speaker 1: And three we're going to end our Edison series and

834
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:47,720
Speaker 1: talk about the end of Edison's life.

835
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 3: Okay, So first on that list is what to make

836
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 3: of Edison and the Prince in the movies, like, what

837
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 3: is this story really about? And on this one, I

838
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,400
Speaker 3: want to go do Schumpeter. I thought it was Shumpeter,

839
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:00,760
Speaker 3: but I looked it up. It's Schumpeter.

840
00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:04,719
Speaker 1: Joseph Schumpeter. Wow, I've never said it like that. Yeah,

841
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 1: Joseph Schumpeter also known as Schumpeter in Silicon Valley where

842
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: they love this guy creative destruction if you've heard that.

843
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: That's what he came up with and is still cited

844
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: to this day. The idea that in order for progress

845
00:44:19,120 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 1: to be made, big companies often fail and young, scrappy

846
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: companies come up to take their place.

847
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:29,319
Speaker 3: And so for Schumbacher, the sort of key hero was

848
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 3: the entrepreneur. And there is this thing he wrote in

849
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 3: nineteen eleven that distinguished the inventor from the entrepreneur, talked

850
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 3: about how they're different. And I think that distinction is

851
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 3: the key for me and understanding this story and understanding

852
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 3: Louis La Prince definitely the inventor, and Edison, who is

853
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:54,399
Speaker 3: clearly an inventor but is also an entrepreneur. So read

854
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:56,879
Speaker 3: Robert read if you would, this little thing that I pulled.

855
00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:00,360
Speaker 1: It's quote in time. As long as they are not

856
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 1: carried into practice, inventions are economically irrelevant, and to carry

857
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 1: an improvement into effect is a task entirely different from

858
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 1: the inventing of it, and a task moreover require ring

859
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:15,879
Speaker 1: entirely different kinds of aptitudes. It is therefore not advisable,

860
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:18,760
Speaker 1: and it might be downright misleading to stress the element

861
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:22,319
Speaker 1: of invention as much as many writers do. It's not

862
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: about the invention, and it's interesting like that last part

863
00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 1: as much as many writers do. Right, So he's sort

864
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:34,280
Speaker 1: of distinguishing here between what's happening with technology, with the economy,

865
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: and how do we tell the story right, And he's

866
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:39,400
Speaker 1: saying the story, the writing of it is like the invention,

867
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: of course, the person discovering the thing, but he's also

868
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:47,640
Speaker 1: saying like, that's only one piece of it, and making

869
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 1: the invention a thing in the world, a thing in

870
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 1: the world that people will pay for, is hugely important

871
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:54,759
Speaker 1: and super underrated.

872
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:59,240
Speaker 3: And you know, if you map that idea to this story,

873
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:02,399
Speaker 3: you can say, well, so what that Luis La Prince

874
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,800
Speaker 3: came up with the movie camera first, right, everybody was

875
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 3: working on it.

876
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 1: Someone was going to do it in the next year

877
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:08,239
Speaker 1: or yeah, somebody was going to do it.

878
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:12,919
Speaker 3: What's important is, in Schiumbader's words, carrying it in to practice,

879
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:15,839
Speaker 3: making it a thing in the world. You know, would

880
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:18,760
Speaker 3: the Prince have done that if he had survived? Maybe,

881
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 3: but maybe not. Right, Like that part is hard. He

882
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:24,920
Speaker 3: didn't have any money. We do know that Edison was

883
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:26,800
Speaker 3: really good at.

884
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 1: Making things real branding, the manufacturing, the money part, the lawyers,

885
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:34,400
Speaker 1: the patents, the building of the studio that could rotate

886
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 1: feels like the kind of practical, like we need to

887
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:39,000
Speaker 1: solve a problem and we need to film in New Jersey,

888
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 1: and this is what we've come up with.

889
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:42,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, go back to that letter that you

890
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 3: read that he wrote in October of eighteen eighty eight

891
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 3: when he just started working on this. You know, in

892
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 3: the very first sentence he says, yeah, we want to

893
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:51,759
Speaker 3: invent whatever a camera. But then he says in that

894
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 3: for sentence, a camera in such a form as to

895
00:46:55,320 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 3: be both cheap, practical and convenient. Right, Like first sentence,

896
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:02,800
Speaker 3: He's not like, oh, movies going to change the world.

897
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 3: He's like, I want to make a thing that is cheap,

898
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 3: practical and convenient. That is the entrepreneur.

899
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 1: This actually reminds me of the discussion we're having today

900
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: about China, because right, there's a whole thing about well China,

901
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:18,919
Speaker 1: like do they really invent anything. We're in the United

902
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,560
Speaker 1: States of America. We are the inventors. But what they

903
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 1: have is process knowledge. They have what Schumpeter's talking about,

904
00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: focusing on cheap, practical, and convenient applications of technology, and

905
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: through that constant iteration can often come out ahead without

906
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 1: the aha, lone inventor moment.

907
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, fast follower? Is that fast follower? Is that what

908
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:40,040
Speaker 3: they call that?

909
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:40,799
Speaker 1: Yeah?

910
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 3: So think about Edison in this context, right, Like, he

911
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 3: didn't just want to invent the light bulb. He wanted

912
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:51,640
Speaker 3: to deliver electric power to millions of people cheaply, you know,

913
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,760
Speaker 3: at scale, and he did so. He was definitely an entrepreneur.

914
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 3: I mean, also he was a flawed entrepreneur, right, Like

915
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:00,880
Speaker 3: he invented the phonograph. Unlike with this like phonograph, he

916
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 3: was way out in front and like was not the

917
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:05,440
Speaker 3: first one to bring it to market because he got distracted.

918
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:07,720
Speaker 3: He was the first one to build a big electric grid,

919
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 3: but bet on the wrong kind of current, right as

920
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 3: we talk about. But fundamentally he was an entrepreneur, and

921
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 3: I would argue that that's why he is so famous

922
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:23,880
Speaker 3: as an inventor, right, because we love stories of inventors,

923
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 3: but we want stories of inventors who things get out

924
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 3: into the world. And so by being such a good entrepreneur,

925
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:34,440
Speaker 3: Edison became the most famous inventor in history.

926
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 1: This is where we will leave Edison for a moment,

927
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:40,359
Speaker 1: and let's move to number two. Louis la Prince. Who

928
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 1: killed him? It was probably not Thomas Alva Edison.

929
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:45,839
Speaker 3: It was probably not Thomas Alva Edison. So for this one,

930
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:48,200
Speaker 3: I go back to Paul Fisher, the guy who wrote

931
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 3: this relatively recent book about Louisla Prince. And when I

932
00:48:51,160 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 3: talked to Paul Fisher, we actually got into who killed

933
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:56,399
Speaker 3: Louis le Prince in some detail. He has a pretty

934
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:59,279
Speaker 3: compelling theory and it goes like this. The last thing

935
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:01,239
Speaker 3: we know Louili Prince did was he went to visit

936
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:02,080
Speaker 3: his brother.

937
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:04,800
Speaker 1: In Djon, in Dijon famous for their mustard.

938
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 3: Yes, I guess.

939
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:06,879
Speaker 1: So.

940
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 3: You know there was this inheritance, right, that was something

941
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 3: of an issue between them. The brother is the last

942
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 3: one ever to see him alive. And then after he disappears.

943
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 3: He's like, what should we do? Should we take out

944
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:21,320
Speaker 3: ads in the papers? And you know, see if anybody's

945
00:49:21,360 --> 00:49:23,919
Speaker 3: seen him? And the brother says, no, no, I'm taking

946
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:27,160
Speaker 3: out ads in the papers. Don't worry. But when Paul Fisher,

947
00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:31,680
Speaker 3: this author went back to look in the papers, no

948
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 3: ads and so like that one seems pretty compelling to me.

949
00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 3: It was the brother was the brother probably because of money,

950
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:44,160
Speaker 3: like boring, but boring is what you want, right, It's

951
00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:45,400
Speaker 3: like the Okham's rasor answer.

952
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: And I guess if Thomas Edison were listening to this show,

953
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:50,280
Speaker 1: he'd be like, yeah, of course, like I have lawyers,

954
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:51,919
Speaker 1: I don't need to kill people.

955
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:54,160
Speaker 3: That's right. That's why you get rich, that's why you

956
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:56,400
Speaker 3: become Thomas Edison, so you could take their ideas without

957
00:49:56,480 --> 00:49:56,960
Speaker 3: killing them.

958
00:49:57,120 --> 00:49:59,920
Speaker 1: So that's the end of the movie story. And it

959
00:49:59,960 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: seems like maybe this is the end of the series, right,

960
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: so let's just do the rest of his life, Like

961
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: what is left for Thomas Edison to do at this point?

962
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 3: I mean it's interesting, right because he's in his forties

963
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:14,799
Speaker 3: when he gets into the movie business, like prime of

964
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:19,080
Speaker 3: his life, and he certainly doesn't feel like he's done

965
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 3: he's not done. He for decades after this, keeps working.

966
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:26,200
Speaker 3: I mean, he's super famous, and he works on lots

967
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 3: of different things. He works on a new kind of battery,

968
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:31,959
Speaker 3: still working on an electric car. He gets into the

969
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:36,240
Speaker 3: cement business, the Edison Cement Works or something, and actually

970
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 3: pours these concrete houses in New Jersey as this dream

971
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 3: for the concrete house. I think you can still see

972
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 3: some of these houses. He tries like seventeen thousand different

973
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:47,839
Speaker 3: plants looking for a domestic source of.

974
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:49,720
Speaker 1: Rubber, rubber so you don't have to go to the Amazon.

975
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 3: Yeah. Right, And this was like a national security concern

976
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:53,800
Speaker 3: at the time, like I don't know, like rare earths

977
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 3: today or something, but bigger. But none of these I

978
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 3: mean like he makes some technical progress on them, but

979
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 3: none of them are like big breakthroughs. He says, famous, right,

980
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:06,120
Speaker 3: famous enough that remember like when he dies in nineteen

981
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 3: thirty one, the President of the United States declares this

982
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:12,880
Speaker 3: national moment of mourning. But if we take by his

983
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 3: own measure, you know, his own measure was not incremental progress,

984
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:23,399
Speaker 3: not the ideas for ideas themselves. It was things people

985
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:26,359
Speaker 3: will pay for. It was things that become a big

986
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:28,760
Speaker 3: thing in the world. In the second half of his life,

987
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 3: he doesn't have any big hits. But still you really

988
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:34,480
Speaker 3: just have to step back and say, not only did

989
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:37,840
Speaker 3: he invent all these things, he created at least three

990
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 3: industries entire transformative industries. Photograph in the recording industry.

991
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:51,360
Speaker 1: The movie business, the electric business, which is in everything.

992
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:56,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, like electricity was like the fundamental transformative technology of

993
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 3: the twentieth century. We can say Thomas Edison had a

994
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,320
Speaker 3: very good run. I mean, without Thomas Edison you couldn't

995
00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 3: have like two guys talking into microphones and calling it

996
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:06,600
Speaker 3: a job.

997
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:11,720
Speaker 1: Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang, our engineer is Sarah Bruguier,

998
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:15,279
Speaker 1: and our showrunner is Ryan Dilly. I'm Jacob Goldstein and

999
00:52:15,280 --> 00:52:17,360
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Smith. We'll be back next week with another

1000
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: episode of.

1001
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 3: Business History, a show about the history wait for it,

1002
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 3: of business Robert Smith. As you know, there is nowhere

1003
00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:31,600
Speaker 3: in Pushkin's office to make a video to make a

1004
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:33,160
Speaker 3: video podcast, which is unfortunate.

1005
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: We tried, and it was described as two gray men

1006
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: in a gray.

1007
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:39,879
Speaker 3: Box and reasonably so fortunately for us.

1008
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 1: In an amazing.

1009
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:44,319
Speaker 3: Coincidence, literally down the hall from Pushkin's office, there is

1010
00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 3: the showroom of a company called Buzzy Space. This is

1011
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 3: a company is where we're sitting right now. And what

1012
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:53,839
Speaker 3: they do is they design furniture and acoustic solutions that

1013
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:57,680
Speaker 3: make I'm reading here workplace is more comfortable, more creative,

1014
00:52:57,760 --> 00:52:58,440
Speaker 3: and more fun.

1015
00:52:59,239 --> 00:53:03,360
Speaker 1: I would even say cozy. Their furniture is like sort

1016
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 1: of curved and interesting colors and I guess keeps things quiet.

1017
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:11,840
Speaker 3: Yes, honestly, I wish our office was this showroom. You

1018
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 3: can find more at buzzy dot space. That's b u

1019
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:17,920
Speaker 3: z z I dot space.