Barnes constructed a 30-room inn he named Casa Ybel, which lured wealthy Americans such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford down the coast for great fishing, eternally sunny weather and shell collecting.

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It was also blessedly far from the reach of east-coast patent holders such as Thomas Edison, who would defend his camera technology with legal challenges and, if the mood took him, with hired goons wielding baseball bats.

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Big mistake No. 1: Under the 1996 deregulation measure, investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric were required to sell most of their power generating plants to other private companies, and to become buyers of wholesale electric power.

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Federal officials have made a priority of trying to restore power to the millions of people still in the dark, by promising to fully reimburse all costs of power restoration and coordinating with private energy companies such as New York's Consolidated Edison Inc.

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Nonetheless investors in utilities that still use coal such as American Electric Power (AEP), Edison International (EIX), and Southern Company (SO) were encouraged.

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The list also features a number of such rarely heard recordings as the sound of a talking doll captured by Thomas Edison in 1888 - the earliest known commercial sound recording.

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"The federal government could step in after the fact and disrupt activity with the states, even with the best of intentions, " says Dan Riedinger, spokesman for industry group Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities such as Constellation Energy Group and DTE Energy.

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The Edison Electric Institute and some of its coal-based utility members such as American Electric Power, FirstEnergy Corp. and Southern Company have said that they will fall in line but that they will need more time.

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