
Edison’s greatest invention was a way of thinking about technology - seapunk
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/edmund-morris-edison/598357/
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Dumblydorr
To claim Edison's best invention is a cross-disciplinary invention
collaborative and that we need more of that today...what would the author
think of maker spaces, of the numerous interdisciplinary departments and
majors out there? Hackathons too? They're all the same spirit, though
admittedly they look a lot more like a tech giant than Edison's quaint campus.

To my mind, Edison picked many low hanging, simple fruits, and the inventions
that remain to us in the 21st century are simply far too complicated to churn
out by the 1000 patents. Could anyone today have 1000 patents to their name,
nevermind a dozen legitimately world changing ones?

~~~
Zenst
Seems Edison's patent record was broken in 2008.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors)

Alas no metric to measure the quality of these patents. Though I'd say that
how much a patent made would be probably the best metric upon that. Though a
list of patents and profitability of said patents by inventor is going to be
much digging and research to collect all that data.

I would say though that some of the most profitable patents have been for
drugs and would not be supprised that the top 5 drug patents would of made
more money than all of Edison's patents, but that's just a gut feeling and may
be wrong.

~~~
dredmorbius
The fact that there's no _widely used_ metric to assess patent quality doesn't
mean that no such metric is _possible_.

Covered devices, total licensing revenue, enabled market sector, energy
throughput (after Leslie White's societal metric), would be possibilities.
Assessing those could still pose challenges.

Though the attempt might reveal that patents aren't actually all that useful.

~~~
Zenst
Eddison, in his lifetime made around $12m from his patents and he died around
1931. So scaling that amount (so would be around $1Bn), does appear to fall
short upon many drug patents. For example - the drug Lipitor's patent made
over $100Bn.

But things are never just about money as a comparison metric, just that when
you can reduce things to that metric, hard not to compare.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's not how much money the patent inventor makes, but how much is creditable,
in total, to the invention.

Figuring out how to allocate that amongst contributing inventions is ... an
"interesting" problem.

As examples, take what Vaclav Smil notes as the inventions powering the world:
Otto cycle, Diesel, and Turbine engines. Of the three inventors, Diesel died a
suicide and near if not bankrupt (or at least insolvent), Parsons (turbine)
did well, Otto AFAIU made workman's or salaryman's wages, but nothing terribly
impressive.

The typewriter (you're likely using something inspired at least in part by
it), Turing machine, Unix, and synthetic insulin are all inventions which have
returned vastly more in net social benefit than their inventors ever saw, for
various reasons.

The elevator made possible an entire class of structures. Safety brakes on
railroad carriages likewise, as did Bessemer and subsequent steel (wrought-
iron rail was used previously, but would split easily).

The net _social_ return of modern medicine is, by many accounts, singularly
_unimpressive_. Pharmceuticals in particular may return large revenues and
profits, but deliver little by way of additional lifespan, reduced mortality,
or more complex measures such as QALYs (quality-adjusted life-years). See
Robert J. Gordon's _The Rise and Fall of American Growth_ , which discusses
this at length, or the work of Victor Fuchs, health economist.

Some devices (or substances, availed via processes) are absolutely essential
to various modern activities. Others could be fairly readily substituted at
relatively low additional cost. The models for accounting for this appear ...
poor at best.

~~~
Zenst
Exactly - it is hard to quantify how beneficial to humanity that a
patent/invention/discovery is. No clear metric beyond fiscal alas.

May well find that some of the best inventions are the ones we take for
granted and in their time - made nothing. Tinned food, being one of the
greatest ever as a way to preserve food (Nicolas Appert). Then their is the
tin opener.

I suppose one way to quantify it would be sit down to work out what inventions
you used in a week and with that, not all inventions are used by everybody,
but some common ones we take for granted are, and in a way that we glibly just
dismiss or overlook them.

~~~
dredmorbius
I agree it's challenging, but I don't think it's _impossible_ , at least in
aggregate and as a first-order estimate. Or that fiscal is all we're left
with.

The case of inventions long going unsung is a whole 'nother aspect. Or of
inventions that came around at one point in time but really didn't hit their
prime until far later.

Example: The drilling rigs which were used during the early part of the
petroleum era -- 1859 - 1900 or so, were based on a 1,300 year old Chinese
method for salt brine drilling. The main change since has been the
introduction of rotary cutter heads (in the early 20th century, possibly late
19th), rather than a fixed bit at the drillhead itself. And yes, there've been
incidental improvements in metalurgy, diamond-coated cutters, carbide steel,
drilling muds, and more recently, hydrofracking (itself dating to the 1950s).

For measures of impact, I'd look to the work, again, of Vaclav Smil, who's
quantified a bunch of this stuff and has some good thoughts on how to go about
that.

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davidjnelson
This article is quite fascinating. See some parallels to Elon Musk’s story.
Intense curiosity of youth, building a business early, any business, and using
that money to finance future businesses. Also, I see evidence in Edison of
first principle thinking.

Funny Edison’s rivals last name was Tesla ;-)

Also amusing that he had a lab in Menlo Park, but the New Jersey one ;-) It
became Bell Labs, which paved the way of research labs as an idea, leading to
Xerox Parc, then the PC and Arpanet. Wow!

Thought experiment, what would a modern, open source “cross-disciplinary
invention factory” look like? Is this what GitHub is perhaps?

I think so, after watching a recent GitHub Satellite talk that had some of the
scientists who developed the first picture of a black hole present. They said
their team was ~200 people, but the contributor count of all the open source
project transitive dependencies they used was on the order of 20,000+
people[1].

How will that idea evolve and how can we all participate in that evolution?

1\. [https://youtu.be/E5GDI__r_Is](https://youtu.be/E5GDI__r_Is)

~~~
petra
GitHub and open-source are Amazing, for sure.

But if you're looking at something close to inventions(and not "just" useful
product features) from open source, I would look for open-source projects that
are publically funded , maybe with some criteria to filter important projects
from the noise.

~~~
davidjnelson
Interesting point, thank you. This is why I shared the video last night of how
we are starting to open source research created by our tax dollars, but _not_
the software [1].

Do you have any ideas on what a modern “cross-disciplinary invention factory”
would look like?

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297448)

~~~
petra
I agree, sharing code is better for the research community. But once you share
everything, you sort-of lost your edge.

And since we live in a very competitive society, that's a big problem. Not
just for academia, btw.

As for ideas: I think AI and code offer us new ways of capturing
expertise(search engines already do so to some extent) - and that may mean
everybody could build a cross-disciplinary team "on the cheap".

But even with that, inventing important things still feels like it would
require a lot of work and experimentation and tools - so it would be an
expensive business.

~~~
davidjnelson
> I agree, sharing code is better for the research community. But once you
> share everything, you sort-of lost your edge. And since we live in a very
> competitive society, that's a big problem. Not just for academia, btw.

Interesting. As a taxpayer, I’d like to see legislation passed to mandate open
sourcing code I’ve paid for. I have compassion for researchers careers though,
but am not well versed anywhere near enough in the machinations of that to
suggest a solution.

> But even with that, inventing important things still feels like it would
> require a lot of work and experimentation and tools - so it would be an
> expensive business.

This feels a bit like capitalism as practiced today. Not judging it. Just
curious if there are new approaches to be discovered and applied here.

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coretx
Overhyped "all american" lawyer-backed patent hero who championed at claiming
the credits for other peoples work and did not refrain from Goebels style
marketing by means of electrocuting elephants in order to shed false light at
the competition at the expense of society at large. People like Edison should
be expurgated from platforms like HN.

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hanniabu
I thought his greatest invention was buying/shifting the market with money.

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bjornsing
This ”innovation is a team sport” thing seems hugely important to a lot of
people. Why is that?

Most of the innovation I find really inspiring and valuable is more of the
“lone genius” kind. I also really like the “give credit where credit is due”
creed of open source and scientific research, and to me that sort of requires
that you can trace innovation back to individuals.

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mrfusion
Can anyone share the trick without making me read his life history?

~~~
WillPostForFood
Collaborate. Hire people to help you, don't try to be a lone genius.

~~~
wavefunction
Or even a lone patent acquirer in Edison's case.

