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Yes, Edison who also invented the lightbulb, phonograph, motion pictures, carbon microphone, fuel cell, stock ticker, and alkaline battery.
by Aloha 11y ago
Yes, Edison who also invented the lightbulb, phonograph, motion pictures, carbon microphone, fuel cell, stock ticker, and alkaline battery.
- wavefunction 11y agoWell, or scientists working for his firm.
- Aloha 11y agoI've read a fair bit about Edison, often Edison came up with the initial idea, and the scientists working for him made his ideas something that could leave the laboratory. But, the ones that I attributed, at least half of them, I know to have had extensive work by Edison himself.
- bdcravens 11y agoSteve Jobs is listed on 323 patents.
- GCA10 11y agoTook credit for inventing
- sjm-lbm 11y agoI'm far from an expert on all of the details, but I find it amusing how similar Edison was to Steve Jobs: both non-engineers that seemed to have enough technical intuition to facilitate an amazing amount of development within their organizations, all while taking (perhaps) more credit than they deserved and running their businesses in occasionally ruthless ways. Yet, somehow it's popular to want to emulate Steve Jobs and rant about how mean Edison was to Tesla.
- sanderjd 11y agoAnecdotally, it seems pretty consistent to me – people who scoff at Edison also scoff at Jobs, and people who want to emulate Jobs aren't those who scoff at Edison. But you certainly see both sides here.
- joombaga 11y agoPerhaps this is because there is no (obvious/singular) Tesla to Jobs' Edison.
- Aloha 11y agoWozniak.
- Aloha 11y agoI'd actually say that Edison was an engineer, I'd also say that Jobs was a kind of engineer (more like a project engineer). Out of the two, Edison was closer to the traditional type however.
- karmacondon 11y agoI don't want to derail this thread due to a passing mention of Edison's name, but. Edison's major inventions represented a difference in kind, not in degree, that drastically changed things for humanity. Think of how different life is as the result of recorded sound, the concept of an electric company or light bulbs for home use. Job's products were often well designed incremental changes. Apple made computers consumer friendly, but they didn't invent the technology. They didn't invent the global telecommunications network that makes the iPhone useful either. Edison was an Inventor with a capital I. Jobs was a truly great corporate executive.
- sjm-lbm 11y agoFor what it's worth, I completely agree with you. My comment wasn't really meant to directly compare the two's accomplishments or contributions, just to point out that a lot of the popular criticism of Edison is somewhat unfair and could be equally applied to figures that (at least in popular history) have been borderline deified.
- Aloha 11y agoyou hooked in to exactly why I pointed out edisons accomplishments.
- hyperliner 11y agoEdison invented the lightbulb? I thought it was Humphrey Davy or maybe Warren de la Rue.
- logfromblammo 11y agoAlso, Joseph Swan and Charles Stearn were the first to bring a practical commercial application to the market. Edison, if I recall correctly, invented the screw-in electrical connector, the permanently sealed bulb, and a certain type of carbon filament. That's why when Edison refused to license his patents to Westinghouse for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, the lights were stoppered instead of permanently sealed, with dual bayonet bases. They burnt out constantly, and that resulted in the contract being underbid, but the power to the fair was Westinghouse alternating current rather than Edison direct current, so it was a minor victory in the current war. No, Edison did not invent the light bulb. But of all the people who contributed innovations to it, he was probably the best at manipulating public perceptions.
- Aloha 11y agoI'd actually argue that Edison made the first /practical electric light bulb for use in a lighting system/ Swans lamp was a low resistance lamp, meaning higher current demand and a need for larger copper supply lines to supply the lamp.