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.

Re:Bad slashbot.

[baronben]

Its not the idea of a patent which is bad, registering with the government for the express purpose of protecting your idea for a limited amount of time is great, it helps foster innovation and otherwise makes life a little easer to live.

However, you'll notice that Edison only patented his idea of passing electricity though a special filament in order to make light. He did not patent the idea of making light. He patented the idea for a phonograph which could reproduce sounds encoded on a wax cilender. He did not patent the idea of recording and playing back music.

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.

That's what they will be saying about Gates

[mmusn]

100 years from now, people will be looking back at Bill Gates and say the same thing: look, he ran a gigantic research and development lab, creating many of the inventions we take for granted today, and being responsible for the creation of thousands of patents. Never mind that almost all the technology Microsoft puts out was invented elsewhere.

Of course, Gates is not Edison, but think about how today's events are going to look in the future. That may give you a bit of a better idea of what to think of the past.

Not all things are the same.

[fireboy1919]

Consider a story also about the corporate workplace, "Working with Einstiens."
Heres a quote from a news segment I've seen:
Reporter: "Mr. Edison, how do you feel about Einstiens theory of relativity?"
Edison: "Well, I don't quite understand it."

Edison inspired his staff by working EXTREMELY hard all of the time. Also, because of this, he was certianly qualified to be the boss: he was the one who made it happen, and he didn't play golf to do it. Can the same be said of the local IT industry? Is the management a group of people who got there because their career path in life was to work harder than their peers? Or did they choose a path that they thought would net them the most money with the least amount of work?

My guess is on the latter for most management.

I like Edison's management technique a lot better:
"What a man's mind can create, a man's character can control."

His character gave him the respect and admiration of his assistants, who helped him with the mundane task of trying out thousands of different materials to find just the right one for the light bulb, among other things. Do you think we find the same in the IT industry? Will I do something "stupid" for someone else because I have faith in them? I think not. I'd only do it for a high rate of pay.

There is a place akin to this one: MIT media lab, as well as a lot of other Universities throughout the world, where the professors work like dogs for a lot less pay than they would get if they would sell some of their inventions on their own. But don't be so haughty as to compare this lab to IT.

Unpaid overtime's for suckers unless self-employed

[nabucco]

The ITAA, the anti-engineer lobbying group which is bankrolled by Microsoft, IBM and others, did away a few years ago with FLSA laws for "computer operators" which require overtime pay.

From government statistics, we know that Americans have surpassed even the Japanese in the hours worked per week and per year - Americans work more hours than people in any country in the world. This is very good for those who own the companies - the 1% of the US population that owns 42.2% of the stock. How about everyone else though?

Well, as the average working week gets longer and longer over the past thirty years, the average US inflation-adjusted hourly wage has dropped. Anyone who has a pulse can see what's been happening in the IT field lately - layoffs (with those over-burdened people still around picking up the "slack"), frozen wages, falling wages, ever expanding workloads requiring ever more hours worked.

If you work for yourself, and thus all work you do will profit you, then yes, hard work *does* pay off. If you're a wage slave working for someone else, all the unpaid overtime you work, all the hours on call you work are just making your boss look good, and the people who really own your company more wealthy. By really own I mean the people who really own your company, not the 1000 shares of underwater options you get that vest over 4-5 years and which are 0.000001% of the total shares, minus the strike price.

Sorry, I hear enough of this stick-and-carrot stuff at work, I hear people say it here and I have to say, BS! I wish I had listened to the guys at the Programmer's Guild during the bubble when they were pointing out how rising H1-B caps and the destruction of FLSA laws. If one looks at the industry polls which show engineers getting farther and farther away from the 40 hour workweek, it becomes apparent how many suckers there are in this industry. When somebody *aside from yourself* is getting your labor time for free, than you are the sucker.

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.