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I confess I too was once a diehard Tesla fanboy. It was only after reading T.P. Hughes “The Electrification of America: The System Builders“[1] that I came to a

I confess I too was once a diehard Tesla fanboy. It was only after reading T.P. Hughes “The Electrification of America: The System Builders“[1] that I came to appreciate the accomplishments of Edison and the unfairness of the pervasive one-sided boosterism for team Tesla. Both men were genius. It’s my own opinion that there is more to learn from the life of Edison and the work of Tesla than the other way round. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3103115 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3103115

rjzzleep 7y ago
I'm a bit puzzled why people don't mention the obvious. I'm not a Tesla fanboy nor do I like Edison, but this shouldn't really be about whether Edison did or did not invent the lightbulb. There were so many people involved in the invention and multiple steps of bulbs. But in this particular case Edison was a patent troll. He took someone elses invention that had been built in that form and patented it to prevent others from using it.
- paulgerhardt 7y ago
  Yes, that is the common narrative. What the Hughes article makes crystal clear is that Edison didn’t iterate on 3000 different versions of the lightbulb because he was bored. He did so because most configurations were low voltage, high current - this required thicker copper which was the limiting cost to electrification - by finding a viable configuration that was high voltage, low current (and patenting that configuration) he could mass produce light bulbs and the necessary grid behind them at a cost lower than natural gas. An analogy is perhaps Elon Musk didn’t invent the electric car, but he released it in a form (along with a supercharger network) that made mass adoption viable over the competing gasoline based network. Following a period of over-infatuation with Musk, it may be likely that 140 years from now we condemn him as not really inventing the electric car, saying his patents over battery production technology were trollish, and hail Mark Eberhard as the true unsung genius. For obvious reasons that interpretation is problematic and kind of misses the point of what these people actually did.
  - rjzzleep 7y ago
    Actually he didn't even find that configuration. He just patented it so that others couldn't use it. That's the point. I really don't get the Elon Musk hero narrative. It's actually the very reason that throws him off track, since any kind of valid criticism gets lost in noise. Tesla depends on a whole bunch of high precision components of older manufacturing companies that Tesla acquired. The reason why Tesla does so well is a mixture of good consumer oriented product development and the collective ignorance of the old farts in the car industry who are all buddy buddy with their government subsidies to keep their old factories afloat. It's very hard to compare that with the Edison case.
0x8BADF00D 7y ago
What is there to appreciate? You cannot call yourself a trailblazer if you follow someone else's trail. Edison just reproduced other people's work, that doesn't make him exceptional at anything.
- jjtheblunt 7y ago
  Maybe the narrative would feel more accurate if it emphasized him as a business guy funding invention?

rjzzleep 7y ago

I'm a bit puzzled why people don't mention the obvious. I'm not a Tesla fanboy nor do I like Edison, but this shouldn't really be about whether Edison did or did not invent the lightbulb. There were so many people involved in the invention and multiple steps of bulbs. But in this particular case Edison was a patent troll. He took someone elses invention that had been built in that form and patented it to prevent others from using it.

paulgerhardt 7y ago
Yes, that is the common narrative. What the Hughes article makes crystal clear is that Edison didn’t iterate on 3000 different versions of the lightbulb because he was bored. He did so because most configurations were low voltage, high current - this required thicker copper which was the limiting cost to electrification - by finding a viable configuration that was high voltage, low current (and patenting that configuration) he could mass produce light bulbs and the necessary grid behind them at a cost lower than natural gas. An analogy is perhaps Elon Musk didn’t invent the electric car, but he released it in a form (along with a supercharger network) that made mass adoption viable over the competing gasoline based network. Following a period of over-infatuation with Musk, it may be likely that 140 years from now we condemn him as not really inventing the electric car, saying his patents over battery production technology were trollish, and hail Mark Eberhard as the true unsung genius. For obvious reasons that interpretation is problematic and kind of misses the point of what these people actually did.
- rjzzleep 7y ago
  Actually he didn't even find that configuration. He just patented it so that others couldn't use it. That's the point. I really don't get the Elon Musk hero narrative. It's actually the very reason that throws him off track, since any kind of valid criticism gets lost in noise. Tesla depends on a whole bunch of high precision components of older manufacturing companies that Tesla acquired. The reason why Tesla does so well is a mixture of good consumer oriented product development and the collective ignorance of the old farts in the car industry who are all buddy buddy with their government subsidies to keep their old factories afloat. It's very hard to compare that with the Edison case.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago

What is there to appreciate? You cannot call yourself a trailblazer if you follow someone else's trail. Edison just reproduced other people's work, that doesn't make him exceptional at anything.

jjtheblunt 7y ago
Maybe the narrative would feel more accurate if it emphasized him as a business guy funding invention?