The Current War (2017)

Benedict Cumberbatch: Thomas Alva Edison

Photos 

Quotes 

• Thomas Edison : The world will never be the same. I'm working on something now, something so new that people will forget I was ever associated with electricity.

  George Westinghouse : I wonder if you know what it is yet. You know, I think the solution is to divide the cost of the fence. Or you could not build a fence at all. Your garden would be twice as big. Wouldn't it, Tom?

• [first lines] 

  Thomas Edison : To all whom it may concern, be it known that I, Thomas Alva Edison, submits on this, the 27th day of January, 1880, the application of this abstract to the Patent Office of the United States of America. The unique design of my invention is that of a glass vacuum tube which houses inside a thin cotton thread filament, the two lower ends of which secure respective posts, forming an arch shape. Details and schematic drawings follow exhibiting all aspects of the invention. But its purpose is simple, to give light.

• Samuel Insull : You said that you'd never make a machine that would kill people.

  Thomas Edison : I make something impossible. They rip it away from me, so I do it again and they do it again. And again and again. This isn't like everything else. This IS everything else. Our future isn't going to be paved with bricks but with copper. Automation, transportation, communication. And the man that controls that current, controls that future.

  Samuel Insull : You know Westinghouse is right. You don't actually believe that a few accidents will rule out the liability of his current. You just don't want to lose.

  Thomas Edison : I have merely amplified what no one else was willing to take seriously.

  Samuel Insull : No, what you did was run him over with a twelve-ton train!

  Thomas Edison : Well he's the only one who is supposed to make the breaks, so who's to blame here?

  Samuel Insull : Switch to night and you win.

  Thomas Edison : His current kills people!

  Samuel Insull : Only because YOU said it would!

  Thomas Edison : Listen, either I stop complaining about the scavengers in my garden or build a wall so damn high, no one will ever dare to scale it.

  Samuel Insull : You are the smartest man I know. Beyond building miracles out of thin air, I was most impressed by your principles! You didn't invent the incandescents. People just think you did.

  Thomas Edison : Let me welcome you to the reality of how things come into existence. We all contribute. That's what invention is. The salt, the grain, the heat, the heart. Only one man makes the bread rise. That's the one that puts it all together. Makes it taste so damn good the people will go out there, and hand over their hard-won dollars to buy it.

  Samuel Insull : Mr Edison, I want you to succeed. I do. But you have to switch to night. Or you'll die as P.T Barnum rather than sir Isaac Newton.

• Thomas Edison : To kill a human being under the guise of justice is... is cockeyed.