Thomas Edison’s brilliant life, told in reverse

Post by jjtheblunt » Sun, Dec 08, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #18

paulgerhardt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] h…

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.

Post by rjzzleep » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 3:55 AM UTC

paulgerhardt wrote: post #20

rjzzleep wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 othe…

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 configu…