Living on Internet Time... Like Thomas Edison Did

securitas writes: "If you think that dotcommers are the first people to live on Internet time, then take a trip to the 19th century (NYT Story, here's a Yahoo link). Thomas Edison had 10,000 researchers and scientists working at his Menlo Park labs, who slept on their desks, and had the same problems pleasing the investment community as today's tech companies. The result? Over 1000 patents and many inventions that we take for granted today."

Comments

list of patents

[flynt]

Here is the complete list of inventions and patents of thomas a. edison. truly a remarkable man.

Edison = Microsoft of his time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a task for you to try:
Go check your encyclopedia to find the answers to the following questions: (answers are given in parentheses)

1) Who invented the radio? (Marconi)

2) Who discovered X-rays? (Roentgen)

3) Who invented the vacuum tube amplifier? (de Forest)

In fact, while you're at it, check to see who discovered the fluorescent bulb, neon lights, speedometer, the automobile ignition system, and the basics behind radar, electron microscope, and the microwave oven.

Chances are that you will see little mention of a guy named Nikola Tesla, the most famous scientist in the world at the turn of the century.

In fact, few people today have ever heard of the guy. Good old Tommy Edison made sure of that.

(copied from a website)..
So why is Edison so great? Because he used foul tactics to crush better inventors?

Re:Edison = Microsoft of his time?

[sean23007]

When Tesla came to America, he came with an interesting and groundbreaking idea, the concept of using alternating current to distribute electricity over large distances. However, he also lacked money, so he sought a job working for none other than Thomas Edison. His job involved rebuilding the generators when they broke, and the only restriction on this rebuilding process was that he continue to use the direct current concepts that Edison had invented and was trying to push through to fruition. Edison honestly believed that DC was the future, and that it just needed a little more innovation. You see, DC cannot travel long distances at high voltages or with a lot of amps. AC, on the other hand, can, and Tesla recognized this. This recognition led to a rift between Edison and Tesla, with the latter being abrasive, arrogant, and obnoxious, and the former retaliating by stifling AC and Tesla even more. It was a reasonable reaction to Tesla's behavior.

But don't say that Edison "won," or that Tesla "lost." You may have noticed that electricity travels long distances (across the country, from the plant to your home) by AC, and short distances (from component to component inside your computer) by DC. They are both used because they are both useful.

Re:Edison = Microsoft of his time?

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, DC cannot travel long distances at high voltages or with a lot of amps. AC, on the other hand, can

Bull.

An electromechanical transformer cannot transform DC, which means it cannot raise the voltage to levels needed for low-loss long distance transfer.

But power semiconductors can transform to DC at very high voltages, hence the recent trend to transport power using 'HVDC' lines, to eliminate inductive losses, which become significant at long distances.

Re:A few things Edison didn't invent.

[0xB]

The lightbulb. Everyone thinks Edison did, but Joseph Swan actually invented the lightbulb before Edison

oh you are not paranoid

[Edmund Blackadder]

Do you remember the slashdot story about an year ago about how the Smithsonian put edison's bust over tesla's inventions.

The edison companies were big sponsors.

So yeah it still goes on.

What is more paranoid to think about are some of the Tesla files that are still in fbi custody.

Are they keeping them secret because of incompetence, or is there something truly interesting in there?

Re:Here's an example...

[nomadic]

Tesla was a brilliant inventor, who did come up with several interesting innovations, and didn't really get the recognition he deserved.

He was also, however, quite mad, and near the end of his life started working on some really far-out death-ray kinds of things. Unfortunately, too many people online have latched onto his latter "inventions" as being something other than dementia.

A good source about the life of Tesla is Clifford Pickover's book, Strange Brains and Genius : The Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientists and Madmen.

What I'm really curious about is why this fringe cult has grown up around Tesla. I mean, there have been plenty of unappreciated inventors before (look at Philo Farnsworth), and crackpot scientists, but for some reason the fringe people have a thing about Tesla in particular.

10,000 researchers and scientists - no way.

[Animats]

Edison never had "10,000 researchers and scientists working at his Menlo Park labs". He started with about 15 employees there in 1876, and ramped up to a peak of about 80 employees at Menlo Park by 1881. There was a lamp factory at Menlo Park, with another 40 or so employees in 1880-1881, as the electric light moved into production, but the Menlo Park operation never got big. In 1881, Edison moved operations to 65 5th Avenue, New York City, and closed down Menlo Park.

Edison's actual lab in Menlo Park was about 20 people in one big room. The whole place, with much of the original equipment, was rebuilt at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI, and can be seen there.

General Electric, which was formed by the merger of the Edison businesses and Thomas-Houston of Cleveland, became a very big company, of course. But that wasn't Edison's lab, although he was on the board of directors of GE for a while. Nor did GE ever do R&D in Menlo Park. GE R&D was (and is) in Schenectady, New York.

There's a substantial literature on Edison's life and lab. There are even movies; after all, he invented those, too.

Re:That's what they will be saying about Gates

[istartedi]

MS treats it's employees well!

So did Ford! The plants were famous for their five dollar day (just google that phrase and you can get a lot more links) which was considerably more than the typical daily wage at the time. Ford believed that if the workers made enough to buy the product, it would ultimately be good for the company too.

Edison Vs. Tesla

[Asmodean]

Tesla was first an inventor and second a showman, he absolutely sucked at business. Edison on the other hand would RUN to the nearby patent office when he had a new invention.

Telsa invented these, among other things:

The whole AC system that we use today including:
Rotating magnetic field and the motors/generators that use it. Polyphase. The Transformers to convert to high/low frequency for transmission.

Flourescent lights
Arc lights
Radio (Supreme court said he had it first)
Radar
The first remote controlled vehicle (small boats he made for the army)
X-ray (go read his bio's before arguing)
The Tesla coil (you probably have one in your monitor/tv)
First truly accurate oscillator
The Tesla turbine
Electricity collector from the difference in voltage from the sky/ground. (kinda like the recent 'tether' experiment on the shuttle. but from the ground)

Toward his later years he was working on wireless transmission of electricity. also the 'death ray' he was working on was nothing more than a anti-airplane beam that would melt their engines through inductance.

All his life it was his dream to harness the power of niagra falls, which he did. Westinghouse put him in charge of setting it up, but tesla only hung around for a short time. He wanted to get back to inventing stuff.

Re:Tesla

[VWswing]

Read the book "Man of lightning" It shows a lot
of truths about tesla..

For example, Tesla holds the patent for wirelss
transmission, not marconi.

Without tesla we'd have power statiosn every few
miles because.. well. DC doesn't go too damned far..

+5 Interesting?

[TheAwfulTruth]

Large scale energy trasmission by HF RF is ABSOLUTLE BULLSHIT! People freak out over 0.2 watt uW transmission from their cell phones and yet bathing in gigawatt RF transmitting our daily power is in any way a workable idea? We'd need RF transmission towers radiating millions of times more energy that a typical 50,000 watt FM station! Tesla was a brilliant mad man. He invented someinteresting stuff, but his plans for putting it to use were absolutely insane.

Thank god AC power won out over Edisons DC wishes however. Though maybe there's a lesson here for you conspiricy theorists out there. DC power transmission would also have been insane. And as usual saner and more practical heads prevailed. So now we have easily transmitted low loss AC power transmission and by WIRES not RF!