Inventor Nikola Tesla turned to an old trick to sell the brilliant concept of alternating current, which would enable the electrical power grid and the modern machines that run off it
How a debt-ridden banana republic became the greatest economic engine the world has ever known
Wildlife, Shells, and Thomas Edison’s Laboratory
THOMAS EDISON’S GIFT TO THE SEASON
It changed the course of capital punishment in America
The great democratic art form got off to a very rocky start. People simply didn’t want to crowd into a dark room to look at a flickering light, and it took nearly twenty years for Americans and motion pictures to embrace each other.
For two hundred years the United States patent system has defined what is an invention and protected, enriched, and befuddled inventors. As a tool of corporate growth in a global economy, it is now more important than ever.
The men and women who labored in the ghostly light of the great screen to make the music that accompanied silent movies were as much a part of the show as Lillian Gish or Douglas Fairbanks
What happened when the richest man in America decided to collect one of everything
Lighting Up America
Fifty European nations came to America on her hundredth birthday—and, for the first time, took her seriously
Three Americans created the art of the motion picture, and made it the universal language of the twentieth century