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Essay on Thomas Edison
The versatile Thomas Alva Edison was born in 1847, in the town of Milan, Ohio. He had only three months of formal education and his school master considered him to be retarded!
Edison created his first invention, an electric vote recorder, when he was only 21 years old. It did not sell and thereafter Edison concentrated on inventing objects that he expected would be readily marketable. Not long after the vote recorder, he invented an improved stock ticker system which he sold for $40,000.A tremendous sum in those days.
A series of other invention followed and Edison was soon both wealthy and famous. Probably his most original invention was the phonograph, which he patented in 1877, more important to the world, however, was his development for a practical incandescent light bulb in 1879.
Fundamentally, Edison’s success in so many endeavors on such a massive scale was the result of good epistemology, that is, good methods and principles of thinking. In particular, Edison’s greatest strengths laid in his development of explicit methods for innovation, and in his integration of theoretical and experimental knowledge towards the end goal of inventing practical, valuable products.
Edison’s greatest invention was probably not any particular product, but the invention process itself. His idea for the invention factory, “organized application of scientific research to commercial ends” (Web, 1) was a radical new method for driving innovation. This factory combined research, development, design, manufacturing, and business administration into one facility meticulously designed towards the sole purpose turning an idea into a marketable product. As Edison says in his famous quotation, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”(Web, 2)
In his view, ideas are easy to come by, it’s following through with their development that is the difficult part. When developing an idea, Edison took a well defined approach:....
