美国印象：爱迪生（2015）

and she almost immediately found out what it was like
和一个经常不在的人结婚的情形
to be married to somebody who wasn't there.
他产生好想法的时机
His idea of a good time
总是在实验室在晚上
was always a night in the laboratory.
然后名气来了
Then the fame came,
对她可能很不容易
and that could not have been easy for her.
她只是没有足够的背景
She just didn't have the background.
访问门洛帕克的人注意到爱迪生夫人
Visitors to Menlo Park noted that Mrs.Edison
很明显地缺席
was conspicuous mainly in her absence.
通常是生病
Often,she was ill,
受神秘头痛 惊恐症和疲乏折磨
plagued by mysterious headaches,panic attacks,fatigue.
爱迪生不在的时候
During the time that Edison was away,
玛丽的紧张严重到需要医生照顾
Mary's nervousness grew so acute as to require the care of a doctor.
虽然秘书告诉爱迪生赶紧回去
And though Edison was advised by his secretary to hurry back,
他还是过了三个多星期才回家
he nevertheless took more than three weeks to get home.
像往常一样他直奔实验室
Then,as usual,he headed straight for the lab.
工作和展望是他的一切
He is all about his work,his vision.
这让他活着
It's what made him tick.
有种梦想
You know,there's the dream,
早晨起来思考它
and you get up in the morning thinking about it,
整个白天对它痴迷
and you go through the day obsessing about it.
有人帮助你
And you have people that support you in that,
但这些人不在梦想的同一♥平♥面上
but those people,they don't exist on the same plane as the dream.
回到工作台 爱迪生认为留声机...
Back at his workbench,Edison considered the phonograph...
喂 喂!
Hello,hello,hello!
...引起投资者的兴趣
...which had drawn the interest of investors
他们希望推广这种机器用于商业用途
who hoped to market the machine for business use.
为此爱迪生不得不寻找
For that,Edison would have to devise
比锡箔更耐用的记录介质
a more durable recording surface than tin foil,
现在他对这种前景没有太大兴趣
and just now,the prospect did not much interest him.
1878年夏末主宰他想法的
What dominated his thoughts in that late summer of 1878
是已经想过一段时间的东西
was something that had been knocking around in his mind for a while:
笔记本上三个草图
an invention suggested by three quick sketches
描述的发明 他称为“电灯”
he'd made in his notebook and labeled "Electric Light."
3000年前
You can go back 3,000 years
就有人工照明设备
and you have artificial lighting devices.
但那告诉你什么?
So what does that tell you?
相当长的时间人们希望夜色里有种照明方式
For a very long time,people wanted to have a way to see in the very dim light of night.
家用煤气灯已出现了一段时间
Gaslights had been in homes for some time.
它们有一定弊端
They had certain drawbacks.
很明显的是明火
The obvious one is it's an open flame.
不那么明显的是肮脏
The not-so-obvious one is that they're filthy.
煤气似乎很先进
Gas seemed the cutting edge,
但它是个很糟的技术
but it was a terrible technology.
它从空气中吸取氧气
It sucked the oxygen out of the air,
让房♥间过热 并释放一种酸性蒸汽
overheated rooms,spewed a sort of acidic vapor.
种种意外泄漏造成窒息
All sorts of accidental leaks caused asphyxiation.
这问题很糟糕
It was a terrible problem.
用它照明人们不得不忍♥受大量不便
So people put up with an enormous amount of inconvenience to have this light.
但爱迪生和其他人认识到
But Edison and others recognized
如果发明一种更安全更清洁的照明
that if they could create a light that was safer,that was cleaner,
他们可以打开一个巨大市场
that they could tap into an enormous market.
1878年9月14日
On September 14,1878,
与一个经常流连在门洛帕克的记者谈话中
while talking with one of the reporters who now regularly hung around Menlo Park,
爱迪生对他下一件大事揭开谜底
Edison lifted the curtain on his next big thing.
几天内
In a matter of a few days,
他告诉'纽约太阳报'惊讶的记者
he told the astonished scribe from the New York Sun,
他要做别人从未做到的:
he would do what no one had ever been able to do:
找到室内使用电力照明的方法
devise a way to bring electric light indoors.
了解电能产生光已经整整70年
For fully 70 years,it had been understood that light could be produced by electricity.
但至此唯一开♥发♥出来的商业技术是电弧照明
But the only commercial technology that so far had been developed was arc lighting--
迫使电流在两个碳杆间跳转而产生光亮的方法
a method that forced a current to jump between two carbon rods
可能会致盲而只能在室外
and produced a light so blinding it could only be used outdoors,
或超大公共场所使用
or else in very large public spaces.
弧光灯的问题是如此明亮
The problem with arc light was that it was so bright
人们无法靠近
that people could not bear to be around it.
即使安装在城市公园
Even if they set it up in city parks,
人们有时还会用雨伞
people would sometimes use umbrellas
挡住强光而保护自己
to shield themselves from the intensity of the light.
另一个是白炽​​灯泡
The alternative was the incandescent bulb,
1841年首先获得专利的一种技术
a technology that first had been patented in 1841,
这是爱迪生出生前六年
six years before Edison was born,
近四十年后仍未找到可行方法
and still,nearly four decades later,had yet to be made viable.
发明一种只持续15秒的灯泡不难
It's not hard to invent a light bulb that lasts for just 15 seconds.
问题是要它持续更长很长的时间
The problem is to get it to last for many,many hours.
诀窍是要找到白炽而不燃烧的东西
The trick was to find something that would incandesce and not burn up.
这是个热门挑战
This was a hot challenge.
大西洋两岸各种各样的人想研究
All kinds of people wanted in.Both sides of the Atlantic,
很多人在努力
there were a lot of people working on this.
我觉得爱迪生看了其他人做的
I think as Edison began to look at what people had done,
他意识到 “你知道吗?
he realized,"You know what,
我可以琢磨出如何做到“
I can figure out how to do this."
虽然只做了不多的初步实验
Although he'd done no more than a couple days' worth of preliminary experiments,
爱迪生确信他能解决这个问题
Edison was sure he'd cracked the problem.
“我现在有了!” 他向太阳报记者夸口
"I have it now!" he crowed to the Sun reporter.
“科学家全部在同一套路里努力
"Scientists have all been working in the same groove,
“当知道我如何完成目标时
"and when it is known how I have accomplished my object,
“每人都会诧异他们为何从未想到
"everyone will wonder why they never thought of it,
它是如此简单“
it is so simple."
世界各地相当多的人
Lots and lots of people around the world
正为电力照明努力
were working on electric light.
人们向媒体宣布 “尤里卡 我有了!”
People announcing to the press,"Eureka,I have it!"
但媒体像是专注于爱迪生
But you know,the press was kind of focused on Edison.
下面一个月爱迪生继续成为热门
Edison kept on grabbing headlines over the next month,
自称不仅有持久的白炽灯泡
claiming to have conceived of not merely a long-lasting incandescent bulb,
而且还有整个电力系统的构想
but also an entire electrical power system,
这将比煤气更便宜和更安全
which would be both cheaper and safer than gas.
短期内煤气类股票暴跌
In short order,gas stocks plunged
金融家在巫师门口开始排队
and financiers began lining up at the Wizard's door,
都因为一个刚萌芽的想法
all because of a germ of an idea.
他动用他世界范围的声誉
So he sort of mobilized his worldwide fame
为一个不知道结果 半成熟的概念
to find financial backers for half-baked notions
寻找金融支持者
that he didn't know were going to work out at all.
当他在报刊上开始谈论它时
When he began to talk about it in the press,
有人说 “我要参与”
people say,"I want in on this,"
他们来对爱迪生说
and they come to Edison and say,
“我们给你资金解决这个问题”
"We want to give you a bunch of money to solve this problem."
直到申请专利前
Until patents were filed,
爱迪生拒绝透露他计划的太多细节
Edison declined to provide much detail about his plans.
但做了个大胆承诺: 几个星期内
But he made a bold promise: in a matter of weeks,
他会让曼哈顿下城使用白炽灯照明
he would set Lower Manhattan aglow with incandescent light.
从没声明是如此瞩目地草率
No pronouncement had ever been more spectacularly premature.
在门洛帕克 星期很快变成月份
At Menlo Park,weeks turned all too quickly to months.
弗朗西斯厄普顿 实验室的一个新员工
As Francis Upton,a new hire in the laboratory,
在给父亲的信里写道:
put it in a letter to his father:
“电灯亮得很慢”
"The electric light goes on very slowly."
这是1879年夏末
It was then the late summer of 1879,
爱迪生宣布打算点亮纽约近一年后
almost a year after Edison had announced his intention to light New York.
许多报纸报道
Many newspapers reported that
他们在尝试根本做不到的事情
they were trying to do something that really could not be done.
他们看着爱迪生说
They looked at Edison and said that
他真的不了解发明白炽灯的潜在基本挑战
he really doesn't understand the basic underlying challenges of creating an incandescent light,
这是科学上的不可能
that it is scientifically impossible,
世界显然开始声讨爱迪生
and the world was clearly starting to denounce Edison
操纵股票和欺诈
as a stock manipulator and a fraud
发明留声机靠的是运气
and somebody who got lucky with the phonograph,
而不是靠他的水平
but was out of his depth at this point.
他交不出电力照明
He wasn't going to be able to deliver on the electric light.
批评激怒了爱迪生
The criticism irked Edison,
不仅因为他和团队在门洛帕克
not least because he and his team at Menlo Park
一直日以继夜地在努力