Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors

by David Lindsay

Book Overview

"A fascinating history of the unexpected intersection of science, technology and show business." --John Steele Gordon, author of Hamilton's Blessing "Once upon a time, American know-how flourished... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156836203X
• ISBN13: 9781568362038
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Kodansha
• Length: 404 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Inventions Seldom Sell Themselves

Scan the newspapers of America, view endless TV programs listen alertly to your favorite radio stations and sum up how much space or time is devoted to inventors or inventing. The odds are great you will seldom encounter an inspiring story that will fire up your or your children's creative boilers. Indeed, if inventors or successful entrepreneurs are mentioned at all, the odds are also great they are portrayed as diabolical geniuses out to do the world no good. Yet, as this author observes, from the earliest days of our Republic to relatively recently, we have soared to greatness among nations on the wings of inventors and entrepreneurs who were also geniuses at showmanship, or in today's vernacular, masters of PR. He documents his case by detailed examinations of some of the best known names in invention from the start of the United States up to the television era. Surprisingly, the earliest creators faced the greatest resistance by the public to showmanship. Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia public was dominated by Quakers who frowned on public displays such as plays, games and magic shows. Franklin had developed a fascination over the newly discovered uses for electricity, but he had to bring the public's notice to the use of lightning rods by sponsoring a colleague who put on shows. Europe, at that time, was intrigued by Franklin's experiments. His fame there later gave him legitimacy in America. Also, it is surprising to learn that the first patent office head, Thomas Jefferson, although an ingenious inventor himself, frowned on commercialism. The industrialization of England had generated some economic ills and this was a factor in forming his attitude. Robert Fulton is remembered for his steamboat because he demonstrated it in a masterful by-invitation-only manner. John Fitch had actually shown his steamboat twenty years earlier. Inventor showmanship in America had begun. Samuel Morse used his telegraph to deliver a live report of a vote at the Democratic National Convention. This was the world's first live coverage. Even though the telegraph was already in use in England for signaling locomotive movements, Morse's live report stirred up the public so much they lined up to visit his telegraph office! Cyrus McCormick did not, as commonly believed, invent the reaper, but he did become a master at publicity and merchandising. He staged contests (which involved the audience), offered money-back guarantees, and gathered testimonials. He hired what today would be called advance men to arrange local publicity and contests. They became, in fact, distributors in their allotted territories. All of these became standard American business practices. Elias Otis had gotten nowhere until Barnum asked him to demonstrate his safety elevator. Up until then, elevators were not considered safe for human use. When Otis, in top hat and tails, ordered his assistant to cut the hoisting rope and he and his elevator quickly came to a safe stop, the public

A new perspective on 19th century culture

Lectures were a way for the larger 19th century public to gain access to knowledge. David Lindsay is a journalist who wrote on the history of invention in the United States. Even though his work is less scholarly than that of many professional academics, Lindsay is very successful at presenting the relationship between technology and entertainment in the 19th century as one with nebulous and permeable boarders. It is perhaps Linday's lack of academic disciplinary bias that encourages him to connect events which historians of technology and entertainment proper have not viewed as causally related. Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors is a fantastic example of what fruits interdisciplinary work can bear. He is not afraid to examine resources which until recently have often overlooked by many historians, such as art, waxworks, and technology exhibitions and fairs. His history of what he terms "show-inventers" during the 19th century is the only resource of its kind, in that Lindsay combines aspects of entertainment, popular culture, economics, and technology to portray a neglected aspect of American culture. Lindsay identifies a 19th century trend which he calls the "technological spectacle." These spectacles presented a new device or object in a way that fits it into a network of preexisting concepts. Lindsay traces the lineage of these 19th century performers to the mountebanks ("bench mounters") emerging out of the iterant entertainment tradition. Lindsay's book may be flawed in its lack of intellectual rigor, but researchers should look to it as an impetus for their own research into peripheral areas perhaps only obliquely related to their scholarly subjects.

Interesting thesis - Great Writing

The subtitle of this book, "The Triumphant Rise & Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors" tells it all. This is the story of the rise of modern American capitalism with all of the accompanying charactersistcs we - and the rest of the world - normally associate with it. There is the showmanship, the grand challenges and dares, the incredible ingenuity, the curious and hardworking genius and the freely accepted wild competition that has made this nation the economic powerhouse of all time. As Daniel Boorstin said, the salient feature of Western capitalism is the ability to create unneeded wants. After all, when you get down to it, the "things" in our lives only serve to better it from a previous state when those things were not available. But this is the whole point (if I may digress). We have things like air conditioners, refrigerators, heating pads and remote controls to add quality to our lives. The book starts at the beginning of the nation and the decision by the government to actively promote and protect inventors. This decision had enormous consequences. For if the inventor was free to work and reap the rewards of his effort this only increased the tidal wave of innovation that swept the country. Museums, expositions, trade, the huckster, the precursers to the much-maligned marketing folks - all of these were essential elements of the system. Why did it matter that a new time-saving device existed if no one knew about it? Much detail was given to the invention of electric lights and how the rivalries between two men with similar claims would play out in the future, indeed set the tone for the future. For who can imagine GM without Ford, or Coca Cola without Pepsi, or Schick without Gillette? Spreading the new product Gospel by sideshow evolved into the commercial system that exists today - the supermarket, the chain, E-bay, advertising, and the line of new products that continue to dazzle the world.The book has some illustrations and the writing is informative as well as witty in parts. Lindsay writes with a wry wit and seems to place a high value on irony. Excellent book - get it now.