Feeling Innovation Through Humanity’s Dance with Electricity

Zhang Dakai’s popular science book The Journey of Electricity: Exploring the Historical Process of Harnessing Electrons is a rewarding read.

Everything in this world evolves step by step. More than two centuries passed between Volta’s invention of the battery and Atanasoff’s proposal of the binary computer. Along the way we see flashes of genius as well as business lessons.

Know yourself. William Shockley was a brilliant transistor theorist but a poor manager. Even after recruiting the legendary “Traitorous Eight,” his stubbornness and arrogance drove the company into the ground. The New York investors behind Fairchild Semiconductor fared no better; unfamiliar with the technology, they micromanaged it to death.

Don’t cling to a single conviction. Thomas Edison’s obsession with direct current allowed Tesla and Westinghouse to surpass him, and J. P. Morgan later pushed Edison out of General Electric, the company he founded.

Seek win–win cooperation. In 1940 Winston Churchill generously shared magnetron technology with the United States, dramatically accelerating airborne radar and cementing the Anglo-American alliance.

Protect intellectual property. Elisha Gray’s telephone ideas were stolen under the orders of Gardiner Hubbard at Bell, who then used patent litigation to stall Western Union.

Good products still need good marketing. The first telegram, the first phone call, the first public lighting, and the first TV broadcast were all carefully staged spectacles.

Arrogance makes companies miss their moment. When Bell Labs opened its transistor know-how to outsiders in 1952, it enabled Texas Instruments, Motorola, and TKK—while Bell itself withered.

Talent comes first. Research thrives on people. Bell Labs amassed world-class scientists and dominated semiconductors for decades. The U.S. Department of Defense mobilized scientists for focused breakthroughs, giving the nation wartime and postwar advantages.

Theory versus practice? Order doesn’t matter. When Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, he didn’t yet know what they were, but doctors quickly adopted them. Shockley conceived the transistor in 1939, yet Bell Labs didn’t build one until 1948.

Serendipity has power. Western Union funded Edison to improve telephone audio by developing a microphone; Edison used the opportunity to invent the phonograph and earned his first fortune.

Sweat the details. In 1820 Hans Christian Ørsted noticed in a lecture that current deflected a compass needle, linking electricity and magnetism. In 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen, experimenting with cathode rays, observed a mysterious energy leak and stumbled upon X-rays.

First buckets of gold matter. Fairchild Semiconductor’s first major order—US$500,000 from IBM—kept it alive.

Companies rarely die from lack of technology; they die from not understanding customers. Edison actually invented the phonograph a decade before Berliner but lost because he insisted on selling only music he liked—and he had terrible taste. RCA’s David Sarnoff, promoting the radio, realized the hardware was secondary; compelling broadcast content was what listeners cared about. His company became so dominant the government eventually split it in two.

Published at: Jul 31, 2019 · Modified at: Nov 21, 2025