Did you thank Edison today??

[Analok]

Today marks Thomas Alva Edison's 164th Birthday. I feel it appropriate to reflect back on recording history and realize that had it not been for "the Ol' Man" we would've never had the historic voices, sounds and music at our fingertips today. And so I raise a glass in toast to Mr. Edison for making sound recording and reproduction a reality, and for all the other great acheivements he fathered during his lifetime. Thank You Mr. Edison, and Happy 164th Birthday!!

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by Analok

Today marks Thomas Alva Edison's 164th Birthday. I feel it appropriate to reflect back on recording history and realize that had it not been for "the Ol' Man" we would've never had the historic voices, sounds and music at our fingertips today. And so I raise a glass in toast to Mr. Edison for making sound recording and reproduction a reality, and for all the other great acheivements he fathered during his lifetime. Thank You Mr. Edison, and Happy 164th Birthday!!

For hiring the best inventors and patenting their work? For the microphone (oh, that's Berliner...) or AC? (oh... that's Tesla....) or for the phonograph? (oopppps... Berliner again...)...a THE LIGHT BULB! (nope, Davys, Starr, Swann...) well, here's to a popular inventor on his birthday. (Tesla, though, he's the MAN!, and our worlds, audio and electric, for the most part run on AC).

[spice house]

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

For hiring the best inventors and patenting their work? For the microphone (oh, that's Berliner...) or AC? (oh... that's Tesla....) or for the phonograph? (oopppps... Berliner again...)...a THE LIGHT BULB! (nope, Davys, Starr, Swann...) well, here's to a popular inventor on his birthday. (Tesla, though, he's the MAN!, and our worlds, audio and electric, for the most part run on AC).

Thank you tesla!

[norton]

For general ******-bagg-ery, idea theft, and patent office inside self dealings?

Sure....

Oh yeah then there's that bit of Edison hiring folks to pluck dogs and cats off the streets, only to have them killed in order to "prove" that AC was a dangerous and lethal menace.

What a dick.
Edison is proof that History books are written by the victorious.

I salute you Nikolai Tesla!

[norton]

Really? D.o.u.c.h.e. Is censorship material?

[Jim Williams]

I thank Edison everytime I turn on one of my soon to be illegal and outlawed incandescent light bulbs.

[JohnRoberts]

Edison deserves respect for his accomplishments, but I wouldn't go so far as to say we wouldn't have eventually come to similar end points without him. His dislike of AC has not stood the test of time.

JR

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

I thank Edison everytime I turn on one of my soon to be illegal and outlawed incandescent light bulbs.

well guys, I was just kidding on the square. No reason to get too excited.

Edison deserves credit, if for nothing else (and there is more), for gathering the data and people together, and putting them to work finding practical applications.

As a side issue, the Ford-Edison estates down by Ft Myers Florida are worth a visit if you are nearby.

[spice house]

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

well guys, I was just kidding on the square. No reason to get too excited.

Edison deserves credit, if for nothing else (and there is more), for gathering the data and people together, and putting them to work finding practical applications.

... under slave labor conditions and stealing their patents ensuring workers remained destitute their entire lives... sweet...

[oxide54]

Tesla,
Tesla,
Tesla


end of

[Rick Sutton]

Yeah, I went and kissed the wall outlet. Got quite a buzz.

[audiogeek]

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

For hiring the best inventors and patenting their work? ...

Such was the spirit of the times; he wasn't any more (or less) guilty than any of his contemporaries... It's easy to hate the caesars when Rome ruled the world

[jaddie]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

I thank Edison everytime I turn on one of my soon to be illegal and outlawed incandescent light bulbs.

...and from thereafter we'll be thanking Tesla for the fluorescent bulb.

[jaddie]

Originally Posted by Rick Sutton

Yeah, I went and kissed the wall outlet. Got quite a buzz.

Hmmmm (@60Hz), Edison would have said that you were "Westinghoused", just like his dogs and cats...

[oxide54]

Originally Posted by jaddie

Hmmmm (@60Hz), Edison would have said that you were "Westinghoused", just like his dogs and cats...

you should have gone DC and shot down the blasphemer Tesla

[jaddie]

Originally Posted by oxide54

you should have gone DC and shot down the blasphemer Tesla

Well, we'd probably have less 60Hz hum issues, but we'd also be heating up wire everywhere. Overall, AC was a good move, and the Edison/Westinhouse battle makes electrical history more interesting.

Of course, if Tesla was allowed his way, no wires would have been required to distribute power, and our audio power supply designs would have really small filter caps! Power companies didn't like the concept, too hard to meter and charge for wireless power.

On one hand, I have a 1910 Edison bulb, and it is actually a thing of beauty, even if it's carbon filament only consumes a warm-ish 20 watts. It's a working bulb, by the way, though while in my possession it will never be fed more than 50% rated voltage.

On the other hand.... I have different fingers.

[Analok]

I DO have to admit he was quite stubborn in his views & practices. Like preferring DC over AC regardless of it's lack of practicality, he saw it safer for the general public (in fact it was this thick headedness that got him voted off the board of GE...a firm he co-founded!).

As recording science went, he insisted on cylinders over discs because of their linear tracking and constant speed from end to end (discs used the grooves for tracking & naturally change speed from edge to center). Public acceptance for easy-to-store discs over cylinders won out (and there's your very FIRST battle towards audio quality vs. format conveinence).

He insisted on acoustic recording means over electrical means due to their inherent distortion which, as history has shown, was greatly overcome. He saw radio as a fad that would go the way of the 'electric belt', and thus dragged his feet in entering the market until it was far too late. Even his recording artist approvals were bleak, and the Music Department would sometimes have to sneak a hot release through without his knowing for they were savvy enough to spot success. If Edison had his way we'd all still be listening to Stephen Foster songs on cylinders through a tin horn!

You need to understand that when the phonograph was invented in the late 1800's he didn't even comprehend its ability to be an entertainment medium, he invision things like talking clocks and mechanical stenographers (it was nearly 20 years earlier that a French inventor built a machine called the Phonautograph using Edison's root principles but only for SEEING an audio wave not HEARING one, and it'd be 10 years later that Sumner & Tainter of Bell Labs would produce the 'Graphophone' with the visions of using it in a coin-op parlor as public entertainment...the conceptions just weren't apparent to anyone way back then).

He'd stupidly pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into pet projects that wouldn't bear fruit (like ore mining and concrete furniture!!). And although at today's level of insight he might be seen as a theif of ideas or a slave driver, you have to understand that 120 years ago global science research simply wasn't at everybody's fingertips - it had to be 'stumbled upon'. And if you could pool commrades together that could build a better mouse trap but didn't have a clue on how to present it to the masses, Edison was that door of opportunity and nearly every business in recent history was built up this every same way (like Henry Ford himself invented the assembly line...NOT!! He followed Edison's root principles in manufacturing & adapted them to his own products).

Most engineers were grateful to Edison, some weren't..such as William F.K.Dickson, the primary engineer behind the Kinetoscope/Kinetograph. Thing was that Edison built up a reputation for greatness and the world had enourmous respect for any product that bore his name. A tremendous achievement in its own right. For the most part the engineers that worked under Edison were extremely proud., not bitter nor regretful.

So with ALL that said you really can't slander Edison's being without taking into account what the global mentality was like during his lifetime. In, fact if we've learned anything from Edison it was how NOT to stand firm on your beliefs & strategies but rather think outside the box on improving what you've already accomplished. Tesla, Westinghouse, Marconi...all those guys focused on one fundemental science throughout their lives and perfected them to a high degree. Edison embraced many sciences & left a prominent mark within each, and that's why you can't honestly place all of these men into the same realm. Edison was broad whereas the others were not.

I need a breath

[frans]

Thank you, Mr. Edison. I'm sure you invented useful things. As I wasn't present at the bespoke moments I could only guess what or read a few books ... that might have things wrong.

Thank you, Mr. Tesla, as the sheer amount of groundbreaking technologies you invented finds me in awe. (folks, read a Tesla bio)

Thank you, Mr. James Clerk Maxwell for laying the foundation of the theories of electromagnetics .. some of which are still misunderstood today, except by the people who build non-electromagnetic submarine telecomunications systems and other esoteric stuff that's outside the current boundaries of academic physics.

Thank you, Viktor Schauberger, for showing us how nature works with logarithmic spirals and neg-entropic systems.

Thank you, Ilya Prigogine, for getting a Nobel prize for kicking the clay idol of thermodynamics (as it was installed by the people in power) in the teeth.

Thank you, Dr. Royal Rife, for your works about electronic antibiotics, which the chemical industry didn't find amusing.

Thank you, Gerry Vassilatos, for writing "Lost science" so the world remembers the great inventors that did things nobody can do today.

Thank you, Jagadish Chandra Bose, so I can include a genius outside the western establishment.

Thank you, people at Steorn, for Orbo technology. I just hope you finish that darn thing one day (just as one example of thousands of folks working in that field)

Thank you, John Hutchinson ...


I could go on all day.


And about 60Hz hum: if the power plants would have gotten their idea of earthing right, this wouldn't be a problem. But they just were too stingy to spend money on one more wire.

[Analok]

Originally Posted by jaddie

...and from thereafter we'll be thanking Tesla for the fluorescent bulb.

Teah, and all the toxins released when they're broken open. Thanks a lot!

The foolishness of the environmental movement and congress! - YouTube

And just when we abolished all those CRTs being thrown into the landfills too...oh well. Regardless, this forum is devoted to audio recording, not lamp posts or power grids.

[panatrope]

Having read the Edison story as a child and several years ago spending a day at the Edison National Park, it is not hard to see how Edison (actually a chemist by inclination) is viewed as a role model by many. Whether his huge energy derived from an innate search for truth or burning personal ambition probably doesn't matter at this distance. But it was all conditioned by the politics of the time. He institutionalised innovation as a business, and it is only a smallish step from there to the Bell Labs of the 20th century.

It is worthwhile thinking about Edison of the 19th and 20th centuries when considering research, development and innovation in our particular field in the 20th and 21st centuries. A key thrust is the politics of getting your intellectual property accepted as part of a standard, and controlling and profiting through patents. What drives the next "big thing" in audio? Which corporate 'ideas factory' drives the future of audio?

Thankfully, audio technology is sufficiently small scale that innovation at the individual level is still possible, and often from unlikely sources. It is worth remembering that just over one hundred years ago, automatic telephony as we knew it in the 20th century got its start, not in something like Edison's ideas factory, but in the garage of a Kansas City undertaker ...

[Jim Williams]

Dr. Ben Franklin started it all with a kite and string...

[andybot]

Well, i didn't get an invite to his birthday so **** him.

[andybot]

And in reality this is not his but another inventors
birth date that he stole.
True Story.

[Boschen]

Originally Posted by norton

For general ******-bagg-ery, idea theft, and patent office inside self dealings?
Sure....
Oh yeah then there's that bit of Edison hiring folks to pluck dogs and cats off the streets, only to have them killed in order to "prove" that AC was a dangerous and lethal menace.
What a dick.
Edison is proof that History books are written by the victorious.
I salute you Nikolai Tesla!

I fully agree; Edison was a dick.
I simply refuse to forgive him for arranging for live elephants to be electrocuted in public view, using Tesla's competing AC current to demonstrate that it was risky. I've seen footage of these executions, and they were gruesome in the extreme. Edison approved them. Anyone who would condone the extreme suffering of animals in order to one-up his competition is just a loser of a human being.

I just have a really hard time respecting people who are that callous. And don't tell me this was a signal of the prevalent attitude of the time; lots of people were horrified at this stunt of Edison's, and made vocal objections about it.

If you want to hold up a scientist as worthy of real respect, look no farther than Tesla. Edison is a poor substitute, IMHO.

Edison's chief talent seemed to be in organizing and promoting projects, bringing together minds that could create products that made a profit and were useful.

[iluvcapra]

I just got a phone call from the ghost of Oliver Heaviside and he can't believe you guys are comparing Edison and Tesla. He said it was like counting the fingers on two lepers, compared to him

[iluvcapra]

Also Claude Shannon's birthday is coming up on April 30, I think we all owe a little more to him than Captain Lightning, Terror of Tunguska.

[cyjanopan]

Thank you Edison for electric chair

[ritelec]

Saw a documentary..........this photo was taken with a camera taped to the photographers ankle.......

By the way........any of you guys know how to get a pic up as I see so many of you do in the post rather than in attachments?

Thanks.