Edison as I know him, by Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther.

EDISON As I KNOW HIM
systems. In our digging around his laboratories
for Edison relics we have found old street lamps
forty-five years old.
He had not at hand any of the proper materials
or supplies to carry out his designs. That, as I
have mentioned, is one of the great difficulties
of the pioneer in any art. For his first installation
on a large scale he planned a bigger dynamo than
had ever been built and planned to connect it directly with a steam engine. Up to that time he
and all other dynamo makers had used belts with
a number of small units. And he had an enormous
amount of trouble finding anyone to design and
build a steam engine to make the speed he needed.
Today dynamos are always directly connected
with a steam engine or a turbine, but Edison was
so far ahead of his time that the designers of
steam engines could not provide for his needs.
They in turn did not have the steels for either
the boilers or the engines.
The Pearl Street plant in New York City,
which was the first commercial installation-the
original plant at Menlo Park was only experimental-was one of the greatest of all engineer47