Book Blurbs » Edison by Matthew Josephson

Edison: Large, Corporate Laboratories Not Amenable to Great Inventions

admin — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:54:56 +0000

“Some time after his visit to the General Electric Laboratory, Edison, old free lance that he was, shook his head and declared that the ‘corporation laboratory’ would not do. The inventor was now a ‘hired person’ for the corporation, assigning to it all his patents; such men now worked in large groups and held many conferences. The ‘weight of organization’ was too great, Edison observed shrewdly; and the results, he predicted would not be as rich as in the case of individual inventors working in small organizations. In truth, inventive and development work at the great corporate laboratories of the United States between 1900 and 1940 has been judged unremarkable by scientists themselves. However, the richest results seem to have been reached where some leading personality, both inspired and tenacious, directed a small group toward the objective.” (p. 467)

Failure to Find Solutions Is Result of Lack of Persistence, Not God’s Fault

admin — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:48:03 +0000

“When an associate came to him one day and in forthright language declared that a long series of tests had proved negative and that whole venture was a waste of labor and money, Edison rounded on him and cried angrily, ‘Is that all you have to say for yourself?’ and then walked out of the room. To another who also assured him that a certain series of experiments gave progressively worse results, and that they simply posed ‘a problem without a solution,’ he replied with spirit, ‘I’ve been in the inventor business for thirty-three years, and my experience is that for every problem the Lord has made He has also made a solution. If you and I can’t find a solution, then let’s honestly admit that you and I are damn fools, but why blame it on the Lord and say He created something ‘impossible.”” (p. 418)

Edison Was Successful By “Never” Giving Up

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:40:45 +0000

“After they had suffered some heartbreaking failures and felt downcast, Edison would raise their spirits by starting the next morning on a new round of similar trials with the undimmed hope and joy of a guileless child. His irrepressible enthusiasm was infectious. At such moments he would say proudly, ‘The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want.”

Edison Shows Practical Solution to Difficult Math Problem

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:35:30 +0000

Edison “brought out a pear-shaped glass bulb intended for lamp experiment…and gave it to Upton [a highly trained mathematician], asking him to calculate its cubic contents in centimeters. Upton drew the shape of the bulb exactly on paper, and got the equation of its lines, with which he was going to calculate its contents, when Edison again appeared and impatiently asked him for the results. The mathematician, after having worked for an hour or so, said he was about halfway through and would need more time. ‘Why,’ said Edison, ‘I would simply take that bulb, fill it with liquid, and measure its volume directly.’ That is he would pour the liquid contents of his bulb into a graduated cylinder for measuring volumes, and would get it in five minutes. Apparently Upton had not thought of that one, but only of obtaining the most precise measurements. He was taken aback. The story, which has been repeated in many different ways, is supposed to illustrate contrast between the practical, ‘Edisonian’ rule-of-thumb method and the mathematical scientists’ different mode of attack on the same problem.” (p. 193)

Edison: Inventions Do Not Arise Out of Genius

admin — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:28:18 +0000

“The traditional view of invention assumed that it was something like an act of God, a ‘divine accident’; like ‘the poet in a fine frenzy rolling,’ the inventor and the scientist were supposed to discover things by a stroke of genius…Edison was a genius who held that there was no such thing as genius. With his bustling organization at Menlo Park he worked to dispel all the old myths about the accomplishments of inventors. Like a good Darwinian, he believed that inventions arose out of man’s developing culture, his environment, his social and industrial relations. His busy workshop was turned by him into something far removed from those elegant laboratories of the earlier epoch, often placed in a pavilion in some formal French garden, where aristocratic amateurs of science demonstrated their superior intellectual capacities or their ’superhuman cleverness,’ without regard to the needs of industry or human welfare.

“Edison’s decision not to undertake inventions unless there was a definite market demand for them was of great historical importance, as a modern commantator, James G. Crowther, has written in a very discerning paper: ‘He was the first great scientific inventor who clearly conceived of invention as subordinate to commerce.’” (pp. 137-138)