"...All that lies beyond the
|Blotter number 213; image number: LAR_B213.
Text on blotter reads:
Electric lighting involves more than just a light bulb.
Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and their contemporaries sold systems,
not just lamps, and these systems were not necessarily compatible. Edison
developed a direct current (DC) system that operated at 120 volts. Westinghouse
pushed an alternating current (AC) system. Thomson-Houston Company sold
both AC and DC, but their incandescent lamps operated at 52 volts. Each
of these systems' lamps had different bases and would not physically fit
into the others' sockets. Though all were quick to design adapters.
"Edison Mazda The lamp that makes the
Most of All that lies beyond the Socket."
More importantly, considerable research went
into the generation and transmission technologies that supported
each system. Companies like General Electric and Westinghouse that
offered a complete line of electrical products could call attention
to that work in their lamp advertising. This blotter for Edison
Mazda lamps shows, among other things, a hydroelectric plant,
transmission lines, an electric locomotive and a laboratory researcher.
The sales-pitch implies that this lamp benefits in quality due to
the many resources available to GE, resources that smaller competitors
with limited product lines lacked.
Notice that the Sun's
Rival logo has shrunk and moved behind the lamp, while the GE
script logo appears over the horizon in the manner of the Sun in
the older ads. Edison's
name still appears (three times) but his face is nowhere to be seen.
For additional information about early
electrical equipment and electrification see:
Harold C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers,
1875-1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1953)
Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1983).