5 ms·

Edison’s greatest invention was a way of thinking about technology

55 points by seapunk 7y ago

Dumblydorr 7y ago
To claim Edison's best invention is a cross-disciplinary invention collaborative and that we need more of that today...what would the author think of maker spaces, of the numerous interdisciplinary departments and majors out there? Hackathons too? They're all the same spirit, though admittedly they look a lot more like a tech giant than Edison's quaint campus. To my mind, Edison picked many low hanging, simple fruits, and the inventions that remain to us in the 21st century are simply far too complicated to churn out by the 1000 patents. Could anyone today have 1000 patents to their name, nevermind a dozen legitimately world changing ones?
- Zenst 7y ago
  Seems Edison's patent record was broken in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors Alas no metric to measure the quality of these patents. Though I'd say that how much a patent made would be probably the best metric upon that. Though a list of patents and profitability of said patents by inventor is going to be much digging and research to collect all that data. I would say though that some of the most profitable patents have been for drugs and would not be supprised that the top 5 drug patents would of made more money than all of Edison's patents, but that's just a gut feeling and may be wrong.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    The fact that there's no widely used metric to assess patent quality doesn't mean that no such metric is possible. Covered devices, total licensing revenue, enabled market sector, energy throughput (after Leslie White's societal metric), would be possibilities. Assessing those could still pose challenges. Though the attempt might reveal that patents aren't actually all that useful.
    - Zenst 7y ago
      Eddison, in his lifetime made around $12m from his patents and he died around 1931. So scaling that amount (so would be around $1Bn), does appear to fall short upon many drug patents. For example - the drug Lipitor's patent made over $100Bn. But things are never just about money as a comparison metric, just that when you can reduce things to that metric, hard not to compare.
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        It's not how much money the patent inventor makes, but how much is creditable, in total, to the invention. Figuring out how to allocate that amongst contributing inventions is ... an "interesting" problem. As examples, take what Vaclav Smil notes as the inventions powering the world: Otto cycle, Diesel, and Turbine engines. Of the three inventors, Diesel died a suicide and near if not bankrupt (or at least insolvent), Parsons (turbine) did well, Otto AFAIU made workman's or salaryman's wages, but nothing terribly impressive. The typewriter (you're likely using something inspired at least in part by it), Turing machine, Unix, and synthetic insulin are all inventions which have returned vastly more in net social benefit than their inventors ever saw, for various reasons. The elevator made possible an entire class of structures. Safety brakes on railroad carriages likewise, as did Bessemer and subsequent steel (wrought-iron rail was used previously, but would split easily). The net social return of modern medicine is, by many accounts, singularly unimpressive. Pharmceuticals in particular may return large revenues and profits, but deliver little by way of additional lifespan, reduced mortality, or more complex measures such as QALYs (quality-adjusted life-years). See Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which discusses this at length, or the work of Victor Fuchs, health economist. Some devices (or substances, availed via processes) are absolutely essential to various modern activities. Others could be fairly readily substituted at relatively low additional cost. The models for accounting for this appear ... poor at best.
        Zenst 7y ago
        Exactly - it is hard to quantify how beneficial to humanity that a patent/invention/discovery is. No clear metric beyond fiscal alas. May well find that some of the best inventions are the ones we take for granted and in their time - made nothing. Tinned food, being one of the greatest ever as a way to preserve food (Nicolas Appert). Then their is the tin opener. I suppose one way to quantify it would be sit down to work out what inventions you used in a week and with that, not all inventions are used by everybody, but some common ones we take for granted are, and in a way that we glibly just dismiss or overlook them.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    apparently Edison took credit for all his employees' invrntions
    - Zenst 7y ago
      As did/do many companies with their employees still today. Edison was no different in that as he was the Employer. Yes it sucks, sucks less today, but still can and does happen.
      - greggman2 7y ago
        which companies are these? most patents seem to have the name of the inventor on them. Edison didn't put the inventor's name. He put his own. So his actual number of inventions is much lower than claimed.
mrfusion 7y ago
Can anyone share the trick without making me read his life history?
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  Collaborate. Hire people to help you, don't try to be a lone genius.
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    Or even a lone patent acquirer in Edison's case.
- richk449 7y ago
  Don’t look for shortcuts?
- petra 7y ago
  Since invention is 1% idea and 99% hard work, just hire enough people to do the hard work. If they're smart and they also come with good ideas ? that's even better. You saved yourself some work.
- yummypaint 7y ago
  In my mind his big innovation was agressively commercializing research. Basic research remains the almost sole domain of academia and government grants, but he proved that it was possible to spin up a positive feedback loop by focusing on attainable tech over a short timeframe. Part of what made him so prolific was that he was first to market with the concept and was able to attract top talent for cheap wages relative to the money his employees made for him. Of course he was also an incredible asshole etc
  - davidjnelson 7y ago
    > Part of what made him so prolific was that he was first to market with the concept and was able to attract top talent for cheap wages Isn’t this basically the definition of American corporate entrepreneurship?
hanniabu 7y ago
I thought his greatest invention was buying/shifting the market with money.
craftinator 7y ago
Pretty sure he was just an asshole who lied, cheated, and stole his way into success; a true American hero!
davidjnelson 7y ago
This article is quite fascinating. See some parallels to Elon Musk’s story. Intense curiosity of youth, building a business early, any business, and using that money to finance future businesses. Also, I see evidence in Edison of first principle thinking. Funny Edison’s rivals last name was Tesla ;-) Also amusing that he had a lab in Menlo Park, but the New Jersey one ;-) It became Bell Labs, which paved the way of research labs as an idea, leading to Xerox Parc, then the PC and Arpanet. Wow! Thought experiment, what would a modern, open source “cross-disciplinary invention factory” look like? Is this what GitHub is perhaps? I think so, after watching a recent GitHub Satellite talk that had some of the scientists who developed the first picture of a black hole present. They said their team was ~200 people, but the contributor count of all the open source project transitive dependencies they used was on the order of 20,000+ people[1]. How will that idea evolve and how can we all participate in that evolution? 1. https://youtu.be/E5GDI__r_Is https://youtu.be/E5GDI__r_Is
- petra 7y ago
  GitHub and open-source are Amazing, for sure. But if you're looking at something close to inventions(and not "just" useful product features) from open source, I would look for open-source projects that are publically funded , maybe with some criteria to filter important projects from the noise.
  - davidjnelson 7y ago
    Interesting point, thank you. This is why I shared the video last night of how we are starting to open source research created by our tax dollars, but _not_ the software [1]. Do you have any ideas on what a modern “cross-disciplinary invention factory” would look like? 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297448
    - petra 7y ago
      I agree, sharing code is better for the research community. But once you share everything, you sort-of lost your edge. And since we live in a very competitive society, that's a big problem. Not just for academia, btw. As for ideas: I think AI and code offer us new ways of capturing expertise(search engines already do so to some extent) - and that may mean everybody could build a cross-disciplinary team "on the cheap". But even with that, inventing important things still feels like it would require a lot of work and experimentation and tools - so it would be an expensive business.
coretx 7y ago
Overhyped "all american" lawyer-backed patent hero who championed at claiming the credits for other peoples work and did not refrain from Goebels style marketing by means of electrocuting elephants in order to shed false light at the competition at the expense of society at large. People like Edison should be expurgated from platforms like HN.
bjornsing 7y ago
This ”innovation is a team sport” thing seems hugely important to a lot of people. Why is that? Most of the innovation I find really inspiring and valuable is more of the “lone genius” kind. I also really like the “give credit where credit is due” creed of open source and scientific research, and to me that sort of requires that you can trace innovation back to individuals.

55 points by seapunk 7y ago

To claim Edison's best invention is a cross-disciplinary invention collaborative and that we need more of that today...what would the author think of maker spaces, of the numerous interdisciplinary departments and majors out there? Hackathons too? They're all the same spirit, though admittedly they look a lot more like a tech giant than Edison's quaint campus. To my mind, Edison picked many low hanging, simple fruits, and the inventions that remain to us in the 21st century are simply far too complicated to churn out by the 1000 patents. Could anyone today have 1000 patents to their name, nevermind a dozen legitimately world changing ones?

Zenst 7y ago
Seems Edison's patent record was broken in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors Alas no metric to measure the quality of these patents. Though I'd say that how much a patent made would be probably the best metric upon that. Though a list of patents and profitability of said patents by inventor is going to be much digging and research to collect all that data. I would say though that some of the most profitable patents have been for drugs and would not be supprised that the top 5 drug patents would of made more money than all of Edison's patents, but that's just a gut feeling and may be wrong.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The fact that there's no widely used metric to assess patent quality doesn't mean that no such metric is possible. Covered devices, total licensing revenue, enabled market sector, energy throughput (after Leslie White's societal metric), would be possibilities. Assessing those could still pose challenges. Though the attempt might reveal that patents aren't actually all that useful.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Eddison, in his lifetime made around $12m from his patents and he died around 1931. So scaling that amount (so would be around $1Bn), does appear to fall short upon many drug patents. For example - the drug Lipitor's patent made over $100Bn. But things are never just about money as a comparison metric, just that when you can reduce things to that metric, hard not to compare.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      It's not how much money the patent inventor makes, but how much is creditable, in total, to the invention. Figuring out how to allocate that amongst contributing inventions is ... an "interesting" problem. As examples, take what Vaclav Smil notes as the inventions powering the world: Otto cycle, Diesel, and Turbine engines. Of the three inventors, Diesel died a suicide and near if not bankrupt (or at least insolvent), Parsons (turbine) did well, Otto AFAIU made workman's or salaryman's wages, but nothing terribly impressive. The typewriter (you're likely using something inspired at least in part by it), Turing machine, Unix, and synthetic insulin are all inventions which have returned vastly more in net social benefit than their inventors ever saw, for various reasons. The elevator made possible an entire class of structures. Safety brakes on railroad carriages likewise, as did Bessemer and subsequent steel (wrought-iron rail was used previously, but would split easily). The net social return of modern medicine is, by many accounts, singularly unimpressive. Pharmceuticals in particular may return large revenues and profits, but deliver little by way of additional lifespan, reduced mortality, or more complex measures such as QALYs (quality-adjusted life-years). See Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which discusses this at length, or the work of Victor Fuchs, health economist. Some devices (or substances, availed via processes) are absolutely essential to various modern activities. Others could be fairly readily substituted at relatively low additional cost. The models for accounting for this appear ... poor at best.
      - Zenst 7y ago
        Exactly - it is hard to quantify how beneficial to humanity that a patent/invention/discovery is. No clear metric beyond fiscal alas. May well find that some of the best inventions are the ones we take for granted and in their time - made nothing. Tinned food, being one of the greatest ever as a way to preserve food (Nicolas Appert). Then their is the tin opener. I suppose one way to quantify it would be sit down to work out what inventions you used in a week and with that, not all inventions are used by everybody, but some common ones we take for granted are, and in a way that we glibly just dismiss or overlook them.
- greggman2 7y ago
  apparently Edison took credit for all his employees' invrntions
  - Zenst 7y ago
    As did/do many companies with their employees still today. Edison was no different in that as he was the Employer. Yes it sucks, sucks less today, but still can and does happen.
    - greggman2 7y ago
      which companies are these? most patents seem to have the name of the inventor on them. Edison didn't put the inventor's name. He put his own. So his actual number of inventions is much lower than claimed.

mrfusion 7y ago

Can anyone share the trick without making me read his life history?

WillPostForFood 7y ago
Collaborate. Hire people to help you, don't try to be a lone genius.
- wavefunction 7y ago
  Or even a lone patent acquirer in Edison's case.
richk449 7y ago
Don’t look for shortcuts?
petra 7y ago
Since invention is 1% idea and 99% hard work, just hire enough people to do the hard work. If they're smart and they also come with good ideas ? that's even better. You saved yourself some work.
yummypaint 7y ago
In my mind his big innovation was agressively commercializing research. Basic research remains the almost sole domain of academia and government grants, but he proved that it was possible to spin up a positive feedback loop by focusing on attainable tech over a short timeframe. Part of what made him so prolific was that he was first to market with the concept and was able to attract top talent for cheap wages relative to the money his employees made for him. Of course he was also an incredible asshole etc
- davidjnelson 7y ago
  > Part of what made him so prolific was that he was first to market with the concept and was able to attract top talent for cheap wages Isn’t this basically the definition of American corporate entrepreneurship?

hanniabu 7y ago

I thought his greatest invention was buying/shifting the market with money.

craftinator 7y ago

Pretty sure he was just an asshole who lied, cheated, and stole his way into success; a true American hero!

davidjnelson 7y ago

This article is quite fascinating. See some parallels to Elon Musk’s story. Intense curiosity of youth, building a business early, any business, and using that money to finance future businesses. Also, I see evidence in Edison of first principle thinking. Funny Edison’s rivals last name was Tesla ;-) Also amusing that he had a lab in Menlo Park, but the New Jersey one ;-) It became Bell Labs, which paved the way of research labs as an idea, leading to Xerox Parc, then the PC and Arpanet. Wow! Thought experiment, what would a modern, open source “cross-disciplinary invention factory” look like? Is this what GitHub is perhaps? I think so, after watching a recent GitHub Satellite talk that had some of the scientists who developed the first picture of a black hole present. They said their team was ~200 people, but the contributor count of all the open source project transitive dependencies they used was on the order of 20,000+ people[1]. How will that idea evolve and how can we all participate in that evolution? 1. https://youtu.be/E5GDI__r_Is https://youtu.be/E5GDI__r_Is

petra 7y ago
GitHub and open-source are Amazing, for sure. But if you're looking at something close to inventions(and not "just" useful product features) from open source, I would look for open-source projects that are publically funded , maybe with some criteria to filter important projects from the noise.
- davidjnelson 7y ago
  Interesting point, thank you. This is why I shared the video last night of how we are starting to open source research created by our tax dollars, but _not_ the software [1]. Do you have any ideas on what a modern “cross-disciplinary invention factory” would look like? 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297448
  - petra 7y ago
    I agree, sharing code is better for the research community. But once you share everything, you sort-of lost your edge. And since we live in a very competitive society, that's a big problem. Not just for academia, btw. As for ideas: I think AI and code offer us new ways of capturing expertise(search engines already do so to some extent) - and that may mean everybody could build a cross-disciplinary team "on the cheap". But even with that, inventing important things still feels like it would require a lot of work and experimentation and tools - so it would be an expensive business.

coretx 7y ago

Overhyped "all american" lawyer-backed patent hero who championed at claiming the credits for other peoples work and did not refrain from Goebels style marketing by means of electrocuting elephants in order to shed false light at the competition at the expense of society at large. People like Edison should be expurgated from platforms like HN.

bjornsing 7y ago

This ”innovation is a team sport” thing seems hugely important to a lot of people. Why is that? Most of the innovation I find really inspiring and valuable is more of the “lone genius” kind. I also really like the “give credit where credit is due” creed of open source and scientific research, and to me that sort of requires that you can trace innovation back to individuals.