The Second Hundred Lorson Energy Years

We said at the very first of these energetic blogs that the Lorson entry into the energy field as a business started in October of 1908. The original company (parent to a number of offspring) is still in business – Submetering electricity in New York City.

In the second month of our second century we thought it might be interesting – and illuminating – (no pun)- to hear again the speech given by Thomas Edison on October 3, 1908 at the opening of the New York Electrical Show. Perhaps it is no accident that the start of the Lorson Energy Enterprises started in that same month and same year.

Edison’s words:

“Ladies and Gentlemen:
“Those of us who began our life labors at the operative speed fifty years ago have been permitted to see and assist in the whole modern industrial development of electricity. Since the remarkable experiments of Morse in 1844 and the unsuccessful efforts of Fields in 1858, there have come with incredible rapidity one electrical art after another so that in practically every respect civilization has been revolutionized.

“It is still too early to stand outside these events and pronounce final judgment on their lasting value. But, we may surely entertain the belief that the last half of the nineteenth century was as distinct in its electrical inventions and the results as the first half was in relation to speed.

“When I look around at the resources of the electrical field today, I feel that I would be glad to begin again my work as an electrician and inventor. And we bumpkins can only urge upon successors, the younger followers of Franklin and Calvin, to realize the measure of their opportunities and to rise to the height of their responsibilities in this day of electricity.”
As with so many of this inventions and discoveries, these words are as applicable today as they were when our corporate founder first heard them.

Oh, we said “hear again.” Well, as further testament to the genius of Edison, we can still hear him deliver this speech because he recorded it on an Edison Gold Moulded cylinder for use at the time and for posterity.

And so we go forward with the lessons of the past burned clearly in our collective memory and see with the help of Edison’s visions the essential truths that must be explained and delivered to a people only partly informed about the need for truly clean energy and its careful use for the protection of humanity.