Eric's depiction of Edison and his rapid experimentation sounds very similar to the descriptions of one of Edison's contemporaries, Luther Burbank, as told in T

Eric's depiction of Edison and his rapid experimentation sounds very similar to the descriptions of one of Edison's contemporaries, Luther Burbank, as told in The Garden of Invention by Jane S. Smith. I recommend this book to the author (if he hasn't already read it himself) as I do to anybody else who enjoyed his essay. There's a lot to be said for just exploring the combinatorial space of possibility in even a naive or brute force manner.