Edison and Bell

On Saturday, October 18, at 1 p.m., physicist Gidon Eshel will report what he discovered about the need for the proposed transmission upgrades that threaten Columbia and Dutchess counties. Related to the question of need is this comparison made by Sharon Kotler of No Monster Power Lines and Clinton Concerned Citizens. Gossips explores that comparison with her permission.

Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, two brilliant men whose inventions forever altered people's lives, were both born in 1847, less than a month apart. Edison was born on February 11; Bell was born on March 3.

Bell died in 1922, the same year that the world's very first mobile phone was created and tested. Click here to watch some amazing vintage footage of that first mobile phone and marvel, as Bell would undoubtedly marvel if he were to come back today, at the progress that has been achieved in the technology of telecommunications. 

Edison died in 1931, at about the same time as the power lines that cut through Columbia and Dutchess counties were originally erected. If Edison were to come back today, he wouldn't be surprised at all. In the eighty-three years since his death, there has been no substantive change in the way electrical power is transmitted.

The comparison of Edison and Bell is compelling because it suggests that the transmission of electricity as we know it is on the brink of a long overdue paradigm shift. The upgrades proposed, at the behest of Governor Andrew Cuomo, may be the last gasp of business as usual for this industry. What sense does it make to jeopardize the Hudson Valley, whose economy is based on its beauty and its agriculture, with more power lines or power lines on taller and more unsightly towers, when the immediate need is questionable and the long-term need may be redundant?

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