
The Nature of Thomas Edison’s Genius - tintinnabula
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/the-real-nature-of-thomas-edisons-genius
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gregmac
I happened to just finish watching the HBO Miniseries _From The Earth To the
Moon_ [1] last night. The last episode features a side-plot about the french
film _Le Voyage dans la Lune_ by Georges Méliès, which had an interesting tie
to Edison I had never heard of before.

Méliès had intended on US distribution for the film, but before he could make
that happen, someone working for Edison bribed a theater owner in London for a
copy of the film they had, and Edison then made copies which he redistributed
in the US. Méliès didn't see a penny of this, and went broke within the next
few years.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_(mi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_\(miniseries\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon)

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pmoriarty
_" Godlike genius.. Godlike nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! I've failed
my way to success."_

Thomas Edison

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WalterBright
> Edison did not actually invent the light bulb, of course.

Of courser he did. He had the concept of a high voltage being applied across a
high resistance filament, which turned out to be the key insight to making a
lightbulb useful. Other experimenters were stuck on using low resistance, high
current filaments, which just couldn't be made into a useful bulb.

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thewhitetulip
I read that he has researchers working for him who worked on the bulb. Then
there was the DC motor fix which Tesla is said to have done but Edison didn't
pay him as promised

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WalterBright
Many people challenged Edison's lightbulb patent in court, and lost.

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NeedMoreTea
In a period when the US did not allow non-nationals to take out a US patent.
Rather weights the game.

Fred Mullens patented the lightbulb 20 years before Edison, and Joseph Swan a
UK patent for essentially the same design Edison got a few months or years
before Edison. He was already lighting a theatre with his lamps when Edison
got his famous patent IIRC. There are probably a dozen other people from other
countries who achieved and patented something before Edison.

Edit: Note, Swan successfully sued Edison in the UK. After which Edison's
continued presence in the UK was via a joint venture with Swan.

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

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VvR-Ox
As always: Victor dictates history.

Who discovered America?

"Columbus of course!" \- No, wrong! It was some Asian Indians and some vikings
who did it hundreds of years before him.

Nevertheless "columbus" ist still the response many people would answer that
question with because in the view of the western part of the world the
colonization columbus started was the most important event.

You can go on with the invention of the paper press (most will say
"Gutenberg") which also happened hundreds of years earlier in China.

I think it's really strange to emphasize this kind of "knowledge" so much in
our schools as it just frames the thoughts of people so they think better
about their "very important" ancestors. Actually this kind of "knowledge"
doesn't get you anywhere besides bragging to be very educated to get some more
attention.

And then of course it helps to identify who is "better". Did men invent more
than women? Did white people invent more than colored people?

This is irrelevant and I think we should care less about why our ancestors
were supposed to be geniuses and take more effort into fixing our education to
be a more enlightened civilization that probably can exist without so many
wars and destruction.

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thewhitetulip
I'll chip in.

Who is the monster of world war 2? We say Hitler, just Hitler. We ignore the
killings don't by Stalin and the fact that concentration camps were
Churchill's idea in Boar war in Africa and that ethnic superiority was first
claimed by American scientists in some European conference, Hitler just
implemented what they said and then those scientists denounced Hitler as if
they never said anything about ethnic superiority/cleansing.

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NeedMoreTea
Well actually... They were innovated by the Spanish in the Ten Years War
before Churchill was even born. Nor do we or did we ignore Stalin - he was, at
best, thought to be a necessary anti Nazi evil.

p.s. Churchill was a war correspondent during the Boer War. No one in the
military would have listened even if he had thought them up at that time.

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thewhitetulip
Fair enough. I seem to be misinformed.

We also don't talk about how Churchill killed millions of Indians in Bengal
famines. It is well documented. He diverted everything to the war and when
asked about starving Indians, he reportedly asked, "Why hasn't Gandhi died
yet?"

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NeedMoreTea
It is "well documented" in memes and sources with an axe to grind - well,
mainly one well known revisionist source. Read even just the Wikipedia page
and he was _clearly_ not solely and singularly responsible. Even the parts he
contributed were probably near unavoidable. Purely from memory:

\+ There had been a _series_ of natural disasters coming one after another - a
major hurricane, a flood, a major crop disease that was spreading through the
region.

\+ The biggest single cause of famine was the _Indian_ princes of other Indian
states closing down trade to Bengal thanks to the fall of Burma. This resulted
in _Indian_ merchants profiteering and the price of rice and grain sky
rocketing. Due to the vassal nature of the Raj, these were still independent
choices. Could they have been persuaded or compelled to change? Merchants
profiteering maybe, the Princely states probably not.

\+ Burma had just fallen. Bengal had imported much of their rice from Burma.
This was the second major cause. That trade was no longer there, and it was
thought likely Bengal might fall. Countless troops and Burmese refugees were
flooding into the region - most of whom were ill from the trek through Burmese
jungle or injured. Which would have triggered a crisis without any of the
rest. Control of the sea and sky in the Bay of Bengal had been lost, and it
was expected that the region might fall any moment - it was the new front
line. The actions of Japan against any civilians or troops in regions they
captured are well known. Had Bengal fallen the famine would have been a
trivial side issue as 10x or 100x more would have died, been enslaved or
raped. Compare mortality and conditions in Burma and Nanjing under Japan with
Bengal.

\+ Mounbatten did request aid, but at that time the UK was barely receiving
adequate food and war materiel to continue the war, let alone send food aid
half way around the world. The cross-party war cabinet voted not to. Had they
done so the losses would probably have been colossal. Could he have turned
that decision? Who knows.

\+ Losing Bengal, then likely India would probably have lost the war.

All of the above should be on Wikipedia. So is Gandhi's racism and ongoing
feud with Ambdekhar (writer of India's constitution, leader of the Dalits, and
probably the most remarkable and influential Indian ever).

Now then. The governor of Bengal certainly made some questionable decisions,
one _very_ suspect decision and the little aid that was provided was
inadequate - yet they prioritised ensuring Bengal did not fall. No one makes
memes of that guy or claims his role is "well documented". Just about no one
at all knows who the governor even was. Under Japan it would have been a
hundred times worse. There would be memes complaining of Churchill's stupidity
sending aid instead of preventing the fall of Bengal that result in hundreds
of millions of deaths at the hand of Japan.

There could have been far more local action from the neighbouring Indian
states. Perhaps more could have been done to _require_ those vassal states to
send aid to Bengal, but I'm not sure that could have been achieved. Perhaps
Australia or NZ could have done more, yet as dominions they were voting their
own choices...

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mxcrossb
I couldn’t quite understand the part about Edison printing newspapers on the
train. Was he copying newspapers to sell them cheap?

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analog31
It's conceivable that they printed papers on the train to save time. In a
similar vein, a relative of mine worked for a company that made a product by
pouring the ingredients into a tank truck with a built-in mixer, and letting
it mix on the way to the customer's location. It was some kind of simple stuff
that really was just a mixture of a few things.

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philliphaydon
Concrete trucks are mixed on route aren’t they?

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analog31
Yup. And it leads to an interesting issue. The angular momentum of the
rotating barrel causes weird handling issues for the truck driver. If they try
to take a turn too quickly, the truck will tip over due to the gyroscope
effect.

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philliphaydon
Cool. I didn’t know that!

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cgrealy
Obligatory Oatmeal reference to Tesla being better than Edison.
[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla)

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kgarten
Don’t understand the downvote. for a hacker it seems Tesla is a much more
interesting and sympathetic figure than Edison. Also I don’t like putting
emphasis on individual people ... the genius of Edison is also related to the
genius of other people surrounding him and living during the same time. What
would Einstein have been without Goedel etc.? We don’t know .... we don’t
understand the influences.

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vtomole
> What would Einstein have been without Goedel?

Gödel was a child when the theory of relativity was formalized.

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interfixus
> _Gödel was a child when the theory of relativity was formalized_

Relativity does away with the concept of simultaneity. Your statement may be
true but unprovable :)

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DavidSJ
Einstein developing general relativity exists in both the past and future
light cone of Gödel being a child.

Happy? :)

