The Electrification of America: The System Builders

Isaiah Berlin in Hedgehog and the Fox quoted the Greek poet Archilochus, wrote, The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. This essay on the Electrification of America is about hedgehogs. Sir Isaiah describes them as those who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate. Foxes, in contrast, pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory. Berlin categorizes Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust among the hedgehogs.1 I want to add Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull, and S. Z. Mitchell.