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This must be one of the most obscure busted-myths of Americana that I've ever known. Edison has been a folk hero of science since my birth. His name was synonym

This must be one of the most obscure busted-myths of Americana that I've ever known. Edison has been a folk hero of science since my birth. His name was synonymous with "genius" like St. Mother Teresa's name was synonymous with "charity". Nobody questioned Edison or his legacy. It's not surprising that Edison was a mixture of genius plus 20th-century hype machine mastery, and I suppose that most inventor-scientists have strong, eccentric personalities. I think Edison also had a bit of Warhol going on, in that he could command a cadre of workers to do his bidding and git 'er done. I was going to cite his quote about inspiration and perspiration, but that belongs to Kate Sanborn! Another Edison myth, busted!

twayt 3y ago
I find your statement about the Edison quote disingenuous. I did some reading about the origin of the quote and it isn’t as cut and dry as you seem to claim. Also, the quote is meaningful because Edison said it, not because the quote has merit in and of itself. It’s inspiring because someone of Edison’s acclaim attributed his success to hard work. Anyone else could have said it and it wouldn’t have been a meaningful quote because they weren’t as successful as him. Note that my statement doesn’t presuppose that he was successful solely due to his own efforts or that he isn’t a fraud etc. But rather that the significance of the quote relies on his perception as being successful in the public eye.
- motbus3 3y ago
  Edison and his company are a complex topic. Many have pointed in the past that they have been discredited for the participation and Thomas name appeared are sole inventor. Although they were employees of his company, and the patent would belong to Edison he (seemingly) made sure to disappear with any registries of their participation. Of course, this could be words of the envious, but it is notable that more recent events such the system that led the creation of IBM Watson had their creator/inventor kicked out of IBM and his name erased from company registries. They only admitted their participation many years afterwards. Edison sabotaged Tela's efforts by doing public safety demonstration, only to steal his ideas later down the line. It is hard for me to trust a man who burnt an elephant
  - twayt 3y ago
    Did you just completely ignore the basis of my comment and instead specifically respond to what I explicitly explained was not the point I was making?
  - sparky_z 3y ago
    You may be relieved to know that Edison never killed an elephant. The elephant's owners killed it and held a barbaric public event. Employees of the Edison Film Company filmed the event, as a sort of early newsreel (one among many around that time), which is how Edison's name got associated with it. But Edison himself was completely uninvolved, and his company did nothing to bring the event about. The notion that this was some sort of public demonstration against DC current is a complete myth. For one thing, it took place a decade after the war of the currents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant?wpro...
    - joemazerino 3y ago
      Damn, that is morbid.
    - derbOac 3y ago
      Not to undermine your clarifying the truth, it's worth pointing out some of the confusion about that episode probably stems from some of what transpired during the war of the currents. The reason people falsely remembered it as a demonstration against AC is probably in part because it resembled things done in demonstration against AC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_P._Brown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_P._Brown In other words, not elephants, but other animals.
throw4847285 3y ago
The current Edison mythbusting is actually very similar to the Mother Teresa mythbusting, in that it's a vast overcorrection to the veneration, and relies on a lot of myths itself. Like you said, somebody can be a brilliant inventor and a shameless self-promoter. Edison was both engineer and executive. The Warhol comparison is pretty great.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  What did Christopher Hitchens get wrong about Mother Teresa? Sounds like her veneration was a vast overcorrection of a terribly harsh reality, that people who are faith and fairytale based instead of fact and evidence based simply refuse to accept. Not even the highly but undeservedly venerated Elon Musk is known to have been involved in wrongly defending child sexual abusers, like Mother Teresa absolutely did (although he's certainly well know for accusing innocent people of being child molesters). And if you're actually against abortion, then it's pretty idiotic and counterproductive to also be against contraception and empowering women, don't you think? That just causes even more abortions and poverty and suffering, which is the height of hypocrisy. Unless causing poverty and suffering is actually your goal, which is exactly Hitchens' spot-on criticism of Mother Teresa. Hell's Angel (Mother Teresa) - Christopher Hitchens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG-lgmPvYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG-lgmPvYA >Christopher Hitchens investigates whether Mother Teresa of Calcutta deserves her saintly image. He probes her campaigns against contraception and abortion and her questionable relationships with right-wing political leaders. Is there anything factually incorrect or "vastly overcorrected" in the wikipedia article about her? If you have better facts with supporting evidence, then you should edit the wikipedia pages so they're correct, instead of just posting about it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism >Criticism >Main article: Criticism of Mother Teresa >According to a paper by Canadian academics Serge Larivée, Geneviève Chénard and Carole Sénéchal, Mother Teresa's clinics received millions of dollars in donations but lacked medical care, systematic diagnosis, necessary nutrition and sufficient analgesics for those in pain;[120] in the opinion of the three academics, "Mother Teresa believed the sick must suffer like Christ on the cross".[121] It was said that the additional money might have transformed the health of the city's poor by creating advanced palliative care facilities.[122][123] >One of Mother Teresa's most outspoken critics was English journalist and antitheist Christopher Hitchens, host of the documentary Hell's Angel (1994) and author of the essay The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995) who wrote in a 2003 article: "This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."[124] He accused her of hypocrisy for choosing advanced treatment for her heart condition.[125][126] Hitchens said that "her intention was not to help people", and that she lied to donors about how their contributions were used. "It was by talking to her that I discovered, and she assured me, that she wasn't working to alleviate poverty", he said, "She was working to expand the number of Catholics. She said, 'I'm not a social worker. I don't do it for this reason. I do it for Christ. I do it for the church'".[127] Although Hitchens thought he was the only witness called by the Holy See, Aroup Chatterjee (author of Mother Teresa: The Untold Story) was also called to present evidence opposing Mother Teresa's beatification and canonisation.[128] >In 1994, Mother Teresa argued that the sexual abuse allegations against Jesuit priest Donald McGuire were untrue. When he was convicted of sexually molesting multiple children in 2006, Mother Teresa's defense of him was criticised.[129][130] >Abortion-rights groups have also criticised Mother Teresa's stance against abortion and contraception.[131][132][133] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa
xhkkffbf 3y ago
On the 100th anniversary of the first flight, the NYT published a great article explaining how narrow the success of the Wright brothers happened to be. There were others who flew first in so many slightly less amazing ways. It's worth reading because it's another good example of how history has elided so many other contributions. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/opinion/high-over-kitty-hawk-looking-for-a-profit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/opinion/high-over-kitty-h...?
- mtgentry 3y ago
  Firstly, this is an opinion piece not an article. Secondly, I've never encountered such an inadequate summation of such a notable accomplishment. If the author holds such admiration for earlier forms of flight, I'd be interested to know how many times he's traveled in a hot air balloon relative to airplane flights.
- somat 3y ago
  Not as narrow as many want to believe. The Wright brothers were the only ones doing actual engineering on the subject. They were 5 years ahead of everybody else and remember that being second is much much easier than being first, for one somebody else is the one making all the mistakes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q
olliej 3y ago
It isn’t new or obscure though. The details of his false claims of lone inventorship were common enough to be in my primary school in the late 80s/early 90s. Similarly knowledge that he routinely stole the work of others and presented it as his own is not new.

twayt 3y ago

I find your statement about the Edison quote disingenuous. I did some reading about the origin of the quote and it isn’t as cut and dry as you seem to claim. Also, the quote is meaningful because Edison said it, not because the quote has merit in and of itself. It’s inspiring because someone of Edison’s acclaim attributed his success to hard work. Anyone else could have said it and it wouldn’t have been a meaningful quote because they weren’t as successful as him. Note that my statement doesn’t presuppose that he was successful solely due to his own efforts or that he isn’t a fraud etc. But rather that the significance of the quote relies on his perception as being successful in the public eye.

motbus3 3y ago
Edison and his company are a complex topic. Many have pointed in the past that they have been discredited for the participation and Thomas name appeared are sole inventor. Although they were employees of his company, and the patent would belong to Edison he (seemingly) made sure to disappear with any registries of their participation. Of course, this could be words of the envious, but it is notable that more recent events such the system that led the creation of IBM Watson had their creator/inventor kicked out of IBM and his name erased from company registries. They only admitted their participation many years afterwards. Edison sabotaged Tela's efforts by doing public safety demonstration, only to steal his ideas later down the line. It is hard for me to trust a man who burnt an elephant
- twayt 3y ago
  Did you just completely ignore the basis of my comment and instead specifically respond to what I explicitly explained was not the point I was making?
- sparky_z 3y ago
  You may be relieved to know that Edison never killed an elephant. The elephant's owners killed it and held a barbaric public event. Employees of the Edison Film Company filmed the event, as a sort of early newsreel (one among many around that time), which is how Edison's name got associated with it. But Edison himself was completely uninvolved, and his company did nothing to bring the event about. The notion that this was some sort of public demonstration against DC current is a complete myth. For one thing, it took place a decade after the war of the currents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant?wpro...
  - joemazerino 3y ago
    Damn, that is morbid.
  - derbOac 3y ago
    Not to undermine your clarifying the truth, it's worth pointing out some of the confusion about that episode probably stems from some of what transpired during the war of the currents. The reason people falsely remembered it as a demonstration against AC is probably in part because it resembled things done in demonstration against AC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_P._Brown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_P._Brown In other words, not elephants, but other animals.

throw4847285 3y ago

The current Edison mythbusting is actually very similar to the Mother Teresa mythbusting, in that it's a vast overcorrection to the veneration, and relies on a lot of myths itself. Like you said, somebody can be a brilliant inventor and a shameless self-promoter. Edison was both engineer and executive. The Warhol comparison is pretty great.

DonHopkins 3y ago
What did Christopher Hitchens get wrong about Mother Teresa? Sounds like her veneration was a vast overcorrection of a terribly harsh reality, that people who are faith and fairytale based instead of fact and evidence based simply refuse to accept. Not even the highly but undeservedly venerated Elon Musk is known to have been involved in wrongly defending child sexual abusers, like Mother Teresa absolutely did (although he's certainly well know for accusing innocent people of being child molesters). And if you're actually against abortion, then it's pretty idiotic and counterproductive to also be against contraception and empowering women, don't you think? That just causes even more abortions and poverty and suffering, which is the height of hypocrisy. Unless causing poverty and suffering is actually your goal, which is exactly Hitchens' spot-on criticism of Mother Teresa. Hell's Angel (Mother Teresa) - Christopher Hitchens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG-lgmPvYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG-lgmPvYA >Christopher Hitchens investigates whether Mother Teresa of Calcutta deserves her saintly image. He probes her campaigns against contraception and abortion and her questionable relationships with right-wing political leaders. Is there anything factually incorrect or "vastly overcorrected" in the wikipedia article about her? If you have better facts with supporting evidence, then you should edit the wikipedia pages so they're correct, instead of just posting about it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism >Criticism >Main article: Criticism of Mother Teresa >According to a paper by Canadian academics Serge Larivée, Geneviève Chénard and Carole Sénéchal, Mother Teresa's clinics received millions of dollars in donations but lacked medical care, systematic diagnosis, necessary nutrition and sufficient analgesics for those in pain;[120] in the opinion of the three academics, "Mother Teresa believed the sick must suffer like Christ on the cross".[121] It was said that the additional money might have transformed the health of the city's poor by creating advanced palliative care facilities.[122][123] >One of Mother Teresa's most outspoken critics was English journalist and antitheist Christopher Hitchens, host of the documentary Hell's Angel (1994) and author of the essay The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995) who wrote in a 2003 article: "This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."[124] He accused her of hypocrisy for choosing advanced treatment for her heart condition.[125][126] Hitchens said that "her intention was not to help people", and that she lied to donors about how their contributions were used. "It was by talking to her that I discovered, and she assured me, that she wasn't working to alleviate poverty", he said, "She was working to expand the number of Catholics. She said, 'I'm not a social worker. I don't do it for this reason. I do it for Christ. I do it for the church'".[127] Although Hitchens thought he was the only witness called by the Holy See, Aroup Chatterjee (author of Mother Teresa: The Untold Story) was also called to present evidence opposing Mother Teresa's beatification and canonisation.[128] >In 1994, Mother Teresa argued that the sexual abuse allegations against Jesuit priest Donald McGuire were untrue. When he was convicted of sexually molesting multiple children in 2006, Mother Teresa's defense of him was criticised.[129][130] >Abortion-rights groups have also criticised Mother Teresa's stance against abortion and contraception.[131][132][133] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa

xhkkffbf 3y ago

On the 100th anniversary of the first flight, the NYT published a great article explaining how narrow the success of the Wright brothers happened to be. There were others who flew first in so many slightly less amazing ways. It's worth reading because it's another good example of how history has elided so many other contributions. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/opinion/high-over-kitty-hawk-looking-for-a-profit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/opinion/high-over-kitty-h...?

mtgentry 3y ago
Firstly, this is an opinion piece not an article. Secondly, I've never encountered such an inadequate summation of such a notable accomplishment. If the author holds such admiration for earlier forms of flight, I'd be interested to know how many times he's traveled in a hot air balloon relative to airplane flights.
somat 3y ago
Not as narrow as many want to believe. The Wright brothers were the only ones doing actual engineering on the subject. They were 5 years ahead of everybody else and remember that being second is much much easier than being first, for one somebody else is the one making all the mistakes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q

olliej 3y ago

It isn’t new or obscure though. The details of his false claims of lone inventorship were common enough to be in my primary school in the late 80s/early 90s. Similarly knowledge that he routinely stole the work of others and presented it as his own is not new.