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| Authored by: Tkilgore on Monday, September 03 2012 @ 02:42 PM EDT |
Hi Wol,
That was part of my point a few levels up. Lots of people don't know that Edison
did not invent the light bulb. However, this general ignorance is due to the
many oversimplified narratives which got published, and to the fact that even
the little which was mentioned in some of those popularized accounts about
previous efforts to develop a light bulb got ignored and skimmed over by
successive generations of readers.
Edison was a complicated personality, very clever in some respects, very limited
in others, and not exactly always a saint. But let us give him credit when he
was honest. His patent application did not assert that he was the original
inventor of the light bulb. Much more modest than what is imagined in the
popular mind, the claim was for improvement of existing methods and materials.
Essentially, what Edison was claiming was that he had produced a light bulb
which was cheap enough and good enough for mass production and for selling on
the open market. Subsequent history does seem to indicate that his light bulb
was commercially feasible. It helped too, of course, that he was a good
businessman. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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