On Afghanistan's Thomas Edison

13.7BillionYears writes "The Institute for War and Peace Reporting details on the exploits of Ghulam Sediq Wardak, a 62 year old semi-literate Afghan with 341 clever inventions to his credit. His first was a radio powered by the low voltage produced by the human body. His most recent is a 1980 Volkswagen rigged to run on solar power. A handful of others are mentioned. Like many a Slashdotter, his parents were once very worried and he eschews patents. 'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,' he says. 'I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world.'"

Comments

Re:well

[Neil Blender]

If he wanted to that more completely, he could have gone about patenting his inventions and through that legal ownership making them freely available for all to use.

No kidding. It's almost always the 'assignee' who causes all the trouble, not the 'inventor'. Problem is, it's pretty damn expensive to get a patent, at least in the US.

Tidbit of the day

[TigerTime]

Edison made 1,093 patents in his lifetime. That averages out to 1 patent every 4 weeks of his life.

That definitely doesn't sound like this guy.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[orulz]

Notice that the article says 25kph, not mph. 25kph =~ 15.5mph. Sounds more reasonable like that, doesn't it?

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[DaveJay]

FYI: Nikolai Tesla invented AC generators, not Edison. Edison pushed DC, and publicly electrocuted stray dogs using AC as a demonstration of AC's "inherent dangers" (keeping in mind that DC of the same voltage would have been just as deadly.)

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Buran]

Without knowing what kind of engine is being used, its specs, and other details, it's hard to say. The Beetle is a very modifiable car and it's not that heavy -- it was designed, after all, for a small 34hp engine to be able to push it to cruising speeds on the Autobahns and yet be easily maintained by the ordinary people who would buy them.

The Beetle changed little from its mid-1930s beginnings as the KdF-Wagen to the final version that rolled off the Puebla assembly line in 2003.

Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[weston]

Edison was a patent fiend. Mind you, he probably deserved the patents. That didn't mean he was above some unethical behavior, such as trying to convince people that DC was perfectly harmless (it's not) while Tesla's AC was much more dangerous (and my understanding is that AC is indeed dangerous, but more likely to burn you than stop your heart). Read the Edison's FUD section in Wikipedia's War of the Currents for an overview.

Edison was a great man, but I don't know that he had the spirit of our Afghani friend.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[penguinland]

Mind you, he [Edison] probably deserved the patents.

From your own link:
Edison's patents "were actually made by his numerous employees - Edison was frequently criticized for not sharing the credits." He claims credit for some great works, and whoever invented them was a great person (or, more likely, people). However, Edison himself was a jackass. He employed people to invent things for him, and then he stole their IP.

Feel free to mod me "off-topic," but this needed to be said.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[GrpA]

Edison invented very little. His real skill was in taking the credit for other's work. Most of "Edison's Inventions" came from his employees, not the man himself.

Again, clearly not like this guy.

Edison represents everything that many real inventors resent about patents and the patent system.

GrpA

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[FleaPlus]

Exactly. He sounds a lot more like Nikola Tesla to me.

Not Edison

[tuxlove]

To compare this man to Edison does him a disservice. Edison was a capitalist to the core, to the point of pushing bad technology over good if it would make him more money. For example, he was an opponent of AC power, because with AC power you can have large central power centers; with DC power, you have to have many local power distribution centers because transmission is much less efficient over distance. He wanted DC power even though it sucks, because he wanted to have a stake in every one of the numerous distribution centers required to make it work. Lucky for all of us he lost that battle.

This Afghani sounds like a good person, one who actually cares about people more than money. That would set him far above Edison.

Re:Not Edison

[Idarubicin]

Every device/appliance has one, short of the original light bulbs and some heaters. Computers, TV's, stereos, microwaves, etc.. I could list at least 80% of the things in your house as needing a DC convertor.

Actually, microwaves contain a big step-up transformer--they need a big chunk of high voltage current to do their thing. If you had DC mains, you'd have to convert to AC first, then rectify back to DC at higher voltage. Others on the thread have noted that building DC to AC converters is more costly than going the other way, too.

Yes, you have many DC appliances--but they operate at different voltages. Heck, your PC has 3.3, 5, and 12 volt rails. Converting between one DC voltage and another is a real pain in the neck, unless you don't mind wasting a ton of juice.

The real killer problem is that if you want to supply DC to homes at a voltage directly useful in small appliances (say 12 V) then you need to have absolutely massive wires to carry all the current. Let's say you want 200 W at 12 V for your computer--that's going to be nearly 17 amps. To run a hair dryer (1000 W) that's going to be more than eighty amps. If you're cooking dinner in the microwave, the air conditioner is running, plus you have the computer and a few lights on, you're pushing three hundred amps. In newly constructed homes, my understanding is that 200 amp service is the norm; older buildings may only have 100 amp or even sixty amp service. At 200 amps you're looking at pretty hefty cables. If each home starts requiring cable that can handle a thousand amps, you're getting into a lot of copper awfully quickly--even if the supply is relatively local.

Internal wiring would also have to be much heavier to avoid overheating. Resistance heating goes up linearly with resistance--but as the square of current. You probably wouldn't want to have to lift a hundred-foot extension cord.

Yes, you could get away with the same thickness of wiring you use now if you supply high-voltage DC inside the home, but then you would need a step-down transformer for all the same appliances that have wall warts now.

Re:He's a Wardak, alright.

[nacturation]

I think I know where the lions share of dotters stand.

By the way (hey, the other guy got +5), the lion's share doesn't mean the majority. The lion's share is 100%... everything. It's from one of Aesop's Fables:

The Lion's Share

The Lion went once a-hunting along with the Fox, the Jackal,
and the Wolf. They hunted and they hunted till at last they
surprised a Stag, and soon took its life. Then came the question
how the spoil should be divided. "Quarter me this Stag," roared
the Lion; so the other animals skinned it and cut it into four
parts. Then the Lion took his stand in front of the carcass and
pronounced judgment: The first quarter is for me in my capacity
as King of Beasts; the second is mine as arbiter; another share
comes to me for my part in the chase; and as for the fourth
quarter, well, as for that, I should like to see which of you
will dare to lay a paw upon it."

"Humph," grumbled the Fox as he walked away with his tail
between his legs; but he spoke in a low growl.

"You may share the labours of the great, but you will not
share the spoil."

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[anethema]

It's true. Edison was a great business man, not so great an inventor.

What he was most famous for (the lightbulb) was invented long before him. He simply combined the old invention of the lightbulb, with someone elses long lasting filament, and bang, edison 'invented the lightbulb'.

Most of his inventions came out of his menlo park complex, where he had MANY employees who were told to invent any wacky thing they desired. But everything coming out of menlo park was credited to edison.

The mentioned nikola tesla was the exact type of inventor people idolize, its amazing that he doesnt recieve more recognition. He invented the AC generator, different types of transformers, the resonating (tesla) coil, the radio, and many other things.

Quite a few inventions of tesla's are somehow credited to other people in popular educational literature. For example, the radio. Ask most people who invented the radio they will say marconi. Yet tesla had patented everything marconi wanted to patent years before. There was a huge lawsuit going right to the supreme court and they ruled marconis patents invalid, since tesla's were prior art. Yet even wiht this supreme court decision, most encyclopedias will list marconi as radio's inventor.

Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.