The Age of Edison: How the Electric Light Created Modern America

Join us as award-winning author Dr. Ernest Freeberg presents an illustrated talk exploring how electric light shaped the modern world, tracing the evolution of the light bulb from Edison's laboratory into the streets and homes of Americans across the continent. Freeberg shows that this new world of electric light actually had many inventors - men and women who adapted the light to change the way we work, shop, sleep and play. In this way, he suggests, the new technology helped to "invent modern America." This lecture will be drawn from his book, The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America, published by Penguin and recognized by the American Library Association as an Outstanding Academic Title in 2014. Books will be available for purchase.

Dr. Freeberg is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of Tennessee and the author of three award-winning books on American History. A former reporter for Maine Public Radio, he spends his summers in Georgetown, Maine.

The talk will take place at the Museum inside the 1847 Boothbay Town Hall.