Electric Nation – Michael B

This film taught me about Samuel Insull, before the film I had never heard that name.  This film discusses the people who brought electricity to everyone.  It discusses the system that Edison designed to make electricity and the light bulb useful to all.  It discussed Insull’s dream to mass produced electricity for the masses, and how that dream brought him to ruins as the stock market crashed.  FInally it covered FDR and the TVA and how they completed Insull’s dream.

Electric Nation – Eric Burns

Election Nation was a very informative documentary about the developement and spread of electricity across the US. It showed how electricty was first distributed everywhere in a dangerous power line network until Edison came up withh the idea over putting them underground. Then there was the issue of how they could make electricity cheap eneough to spread it to middle class also instead of just the very wealthy. One of Edison’s workers named Samuel Insull believed getting people involved in the stock market would help electricity become more affordable for them. He believed so strongly about this that he even put up alot of his own money for them. But, when the stock market crashed in 1929, all of the stocks own by those people became virtually worthless and they were all now broke. Luckily, FDR was about to become the next president and had a plethora of ways to end the Great Depression. One of them was called the Tennessee Valley Authority which was designed to modernize most of the south eastern United States. The TVA generated electrity there using dams and turbines, they also provided people with lights and appliances.

Electric Nation – Chris Cook

Overall I found it to be a very enjoyable film.  It did a nice job of conveying historical information without putting me to sleep.  The film handles explaining how American went from having a simple light bulb to having an entire electrical network that could handle all appliances across the nation.  The system was important, because without it the light bulb Edison was inventing could never be implemented in homes as a practical light source.  Insull wanted to reduce the costs of providing and receiving electricity across the nation so that everyone could take part in the way of the future.  This backfire when he recommended that his customers purchase his stock only to have the entire market crash.  He then sunk everything he had into electric stock and lost all of his fortune, appearing nothing but a criminal to the public.  Roosevelt used the idea of expanding affordable electricity as a method of providing jobs to people and keeping America in a state of progression.  Wilkie disagreed with this, because the TVA and government supplied electricity interfered with the productivity of private enterprise.  In the end the TVA won anyway.

Electric Nation – Jonathan A

I found this to be a very interesting movie. I enjoy Edison and find it interesting so even though most of the information was a little repititive, I did not mind. One part of this movie that was different was how it showed Samuel Insull and how he wanted to help “electrify” as much of the world as possible. It was very interesting how they brought electricity to the farms and how crowded cities were from wires. I enjoyed the way they actually showed pictures of the cities and how tangled the wires were, because before that I could only imagine and wondered how it looked. All in all, it was a great informitive movie.

Electric Nation~Desire’ B

The movie was alright, it wasn’t all that great to me, probably because it was just another documentary, and not an actual fictional movie. But I did learn some things from it nevertheless. I learned that Insull was the one that actually tried to make the dream of middle class people being able to afford electricity a reality. He built a bigger dynamo and then massed produced it across America. He believed so much into this dream that he put all of his time and money into it. He gave middle class people shares in the stock. This started out a good thing but then as, everyone else has already said the Great Depression hit and their stocks were worthless. They accused him of being a crook I guess. I still haven’t understood why they accused him of anything, he was only trying to help out the non wealthy people, and that was how they repaid him. So he left and went from place to place. Then he came back went on trial, and was found not guilty. Then later President Roosevelt wanted to give the government ownership of electricity and Wilki was strongly against Roosevelt and the TVA’s idea. I think the movie brought up the question as to who really should have ownership over electricity and who should not.

Electric Nation – Andrew G.

The film, Electric Nation, was a very interesting and informative documentary.  It told a lot of information about how the United States got it’s electrical power system.  In the movie it does a good job of showing how much of an impact electricity had on Americans and still does today .  Towards the end of the movie when Edison dies there is an idea that they should turn off all the electricity for a minute to honor Edison. By this point in time Americans were so dependent on electricity that this request was not able to be met.  One of the biggest parts in Edison’s career was when he took on the job of lighting up the area around Pearl Street.  This was his chance to prove himself and his system to the world.  Edison did succeed and his business became very profitable.  One of the people who rose to the top of the his company was Samuel Insull.  He originally was Edisons personal secretary that later became a man that tried to bring cheap electricity to everyone.  He was able to start doing this by creating a new generator that could create energy in a more efficient way. Insull also had the idea of linking different places together to form a grid, this would also allow some of the smaller farmlands to get electricity.  Everything was going great until the stock market crash.  Insull also sold some stock in his company to his customers so they were not happy when all thier money disappeared.  Roosevelt took a separate approach to getting electricity to everyone, he had the government do it.  The TVA (Tennessee Vally Authority) was created in order to get cheap reliable energy to everyone in the Tennessee Valley.  Some people such as Robert Wilkie were against this because their own electric company’s supplied some of those areas and could not compete with the government.  It was later settled by the government buying up all the properties that Wilkie owned.  Having the government run the electricity worked out in a good way because it was then cheap electricity for everyone.

Electric Nation – Alexander Skinner

I thought that the documentary, Electric Nation, sent a strong message that I learned from a lot.  The film showed what life was like directly after Edison’s great work, and how America took electricity and applied it to its cities.  The thing that Edison knew about the light bulb and electricity in general that no one else had been thinking of was the generator.  Without the generator the electricity could not been run.  So naturally as the cities such as New York City were wired they had a generator about every mile.  After a while they learned that the generator they were using worked at the small to medium size they had made it, but it could not be built into the very large size that they were looking to build.  This is when they Samuel Insull had General Electric build him a very large turbine, that ended up working.  Because of this innovation, the price of electricity was significantly lowered and able to be sold to everyday families.  Insull also did another thing, he sold shares of stock out to ordinary people thinking that not only would it benefit the company but also it would benefit the average day man.  At the time, only the richest people and business men owned stock.  The american people loved the idea of holding stock, and many people bought it. Well unfornately for the american people and Samuel Insull, the stock market crashed soon after and the great depression hit us.  The stock that the people invested into became nothing but worthless paper.  Insull was accussed of being a criminal at his old age, and he fled the country to various locations.  Eventually Insull came back and faced charges in the court of law.  Insull was found innocent of his charges and walked away a free man that could live safely in his country again.  Near the end of the film we see President Roosevelt pushing for privately owned electricty in America.  Luckily, Wilkie was a strong pusher for public owned electricity and he won that battle.

Heera J – Electric Nation

The documentary, Electric Nation, was as good as the other ones. Maybe its because its pretty much a repetition of what we learned from the other documentaries. But it was interesting to find the ground works they had to do in New York to get the electricity working. It was like New York was his guinea pig. First the the city next the world. I learned a little bit more in detail about the incandescent bulb. But the main goal was to bring the price down so that even the middle class would have access to it. Samuel Insull wanted to get electricity available to middle class. In order for this to happen Insull invested his own money in stocks and everything to make his dream possible. But sadly the great depression had hit by this time. With his pride and dreams lost, Insull went into isolation. When Roosevelt came into presidency he had other plans for electricity. Insull was put under trail and came out not guilty. But Roosevelt thought that it would be best if the federal government took control of electricity. Wilkie was against Roosevelt because he thought that electricity should be privately owned

Electric Nation: Matthew Harrison

This film did a good job of explaining the electrification of the United States and Samuel Insul goal of expanding electricity through out the united states. This film also did a good job of addressing the struggles that Thomas Edison had when he first invented the D.C. generator. He was given the opportunity which he took, but took a long time to perfect. Although Edisons idea was new and something different that the city of New York had to deal with Edison would soon be out done by Tesla. Tesla was able to create a better energy source for America that was more practical and the people where sold. Although Tesla finally did get the upper hand in creating a better source of electricity ( Alternative Current), Edison did get help from people like Samuel Insul to mass produce the generator. Samuel wanted a generator basically all over America so that energy would come at a cheap price. He looked at this like Henry Ford looked at selling cars, sell to the mass of the population not the rich. All of these great inventor and entrepreneurs gave the electrification of America the base format for the cheap energy that we know today. It is a proven fact that our energy cost is sufficiently lower due to that fact that our electrification is some what better and more plentiful than other countries. With-out the help of Edison, Tesla and Samuel Insul the electric nation would have to deal with high electric cost. This film gave a good description of the race to electrify America at an early age and what the competitors had to do to win that race.

Electric Nation – David G

This was not my favorite movie that I have watched so far. I think it is second to the black and white, fictional movie we watched about Edison. This movie taught me a lot though. It did not just talk about Edison and his struggle to introduce the lightbulb. Although he had a really hard time getting the city of New York to accept his idea. His secretary had a much harder time later in life. As he took over the company, he sold stocks to the public, because he thought that it would be a win-win situation for everybody. When the stock market crashed in 1929, he was blamed for a large part of it even though he was doing everything in his power to stop it. He poured tons of his own money into the project, because he was trying to save the public.  The government of the United States tried to charge Samuel Insoll with a scandal against the american people. He was not convicted, but he was still poor from trying to save the economy.

The other main thing that I learned from this movie is the part of TVA that helped to create the electric lines that powered farms and houses in rural areas. The private sector did not give these people electricity, because it was not worth running the lines, to get them electricity. When the TVA stepped in it had the governments budget behind it, and that allowed the association to get power to these farm lands.