Who invented the lightbulb?
theness.com
Who invented the lightbulb?
1–10 of 57 posts
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#2Politicians before: "Vote for me, we will do xyz, create a great future and change history!"
Politicians today: "Vote for me, we will do xyz and change history ...books"
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#3Credit where credit is due. The great West Indian fast bowler Michael Holding correctly gave Latimer the credit for the carbon filament. Politicians on the other hand, distort the message.
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#4Relevant: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg-histor...
> Wineburg, one of the world's top researchers in the field of history education, raises larger issues about how history should be taught. He says that Zinn's desire to cast a light on what he saw as historic injustice was a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between evidence and conclusions.
> Over time, however, a problem emerged as Zinn's book became the single authoritative source of history for so many Americans, Wineburg said. In substituting one buttoned-up interpretation of the past for another, Wineburg finds, A People's History and traditional textbooks are mirror images that relegate students to similar roles as absorbers – not analysts – of information. Wineburg writes that a heavily filtered and weighted interpretation becomes dangerous when "we are talking about how we educate the young, those who do not yet get the interpretive game."
Also, Biden falsely claiming Latimer invented the lightbulb detracts from what is a fascinating story in its own right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Howard_Latimer.
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#5Politicians before: "Vote for me, we will do xyz, create a great future and change history!" Politicians today: "Vote for me, we will do xyz and change history ...books"
The heroes of yore were the ones who wrote history. I'm just an editor.
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#6Relevant: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg-histor... > Wineburg, one of the world's top researchers in the field of history education, raises larger issues about how history should be taught. He says that Zinn's desire to cast a light on what he saw as historic injustice was a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of exculpatory evidence, leading questions and sh…
According to the Wikipedia link, Latimer (together with a J. Nichols) got another patent related to lightbulbs a year before the one that's described in the article:
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#7I really recommend "How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley to better understand the history of different inventions and innovations. It also dispels the myth of the singular event of invention by a single person. Rather innovation is a process of compilation.
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#8Politicians before: "Vote for me, we will do xyz, create a great future and change history!" Politicians today: "Vote for me, we will do xyz and change history ...books"
The heroes of yore were the ones who wrote history. I'm just an editor.
No one 'writes' history, that's why you need historians, they are the ones that can bring a matter into the right context and research why something was 'written' like it is, like it was a battle of 10000 Horsemen when in fact historians know that a that time in hole Europe maximal 3000 Battle-horses existed.
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#9If questions like this become political within a US-specific persepctive, they can have an element of nationalism when considered with a more global perspective.
Many people in the UK know the story of UK-based Joseph Swan developing his own bulb, patenting it, setting up a company and selling it, supplying homes and businesses such as The Savoy, and then a US marketer called Edison later coming along and taking credit for all of these achievements. There are similar stories too, e.g. UK based inventor (James Dewar) inventing the vacuum flask, a foreign company (Thermos) later claiming it as their own. And beyond the UK, most French people will say the Lumière brothers invented cinema, but UK people will point to the Roundhay Garden Scene shown in Leeds several years earler, and of course if you're from the US you'll probably think that was Edison too.
Not trying to take any particular sides, just trying to make a point that your country of origin can have an impact on what you learn (and perhaps also that this article is a little US-focussed).
Re: Who invented the lightbulb?
#10Related: the Pleasanton fire department has the oldest still functioning lightbulb. Apparently it was manufactured in the late 1890's, and has been in service with the fire department since 1901.