The Father of Invention - The New York Times The New York Times N.Y. / Region |The Father of Invention Search Continue reading the main story THE simple version of the story of Thomas Alva Edison, the one most schoolchildren learn, is that he invented the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and the motion picture camera. These three innovations were wonders in their time. But they do not begin to explain how this man -- who spent most of his adulthood living and working in New Jersey and whose 150th birthday is being celebrated this year -- changed the world. Virtually every Edison scholar now agrees that Edison's most important accomplishment was not the inventions themselves, but the invention of the invention industry. Edison is nothing less than the father of modern research and development. Part businessman, part scientist, part publicity man, Edison took his essential curiosity about the way things worked and -- using a large posse of laboratory assistants, the patent system and lawyers to enforce the patents -- leveraged it into an industrial empire that, at its peak in the mid-1910's, supported a 10,000-worker factory here.

''Edison does probably more than any individual in 19th-century industry to establish the idea that you can have a steady stream of innovations, and that technology can be deployed for strategic purposes,'' says W. Bernard Carlson, associate professor of technology, culture and communication at the University of Virginia. Continue reading the main story All the great R & D labs of the pharmaceutical industry, which dot Route 1 and other New Jersey highways, owe their existence to Edison's idea that great discoveries are best made not by solitary geniuses but in large, well-organized, well-financed groups. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But the limits of Edison's genius are as interesting as his accomplishments. One of the Edison's most important legacies is his part in creating the modern consumer market. Edison literally wired us, turning us into a nation of workaholics and insomniacs. It was his sound recording system and his movie camera that would lay the foundation for Motown and Hollywood. For all Edison's genius in creating the world of mass media, it was a world he never quite comprehended; although he delivered us into the 20th century he was still, at heart, a 19th-century man.

''Edison gets killed in the phonograph business and, more importantly, in motion pictures,'' Prof. Carlson says. ''What he never really understands is that a big piece of the business is going to be in what we would call the 'software' side.'' Although historians of technology will endlessly debate whether Edison's story can best be understood by looking at the modern-day figures of Steven Jobs, who largely invented the personal computer, or Bill Gates, who has profited most by that invention, Professor Carlson prefers to compare Edison to Moses. ''He invents the technology that undergirds the consumer culture of the 20th century,'' Professor Carlson says. ''He brings Americans there. But he's unable to participate. Like Moses, Edison was unable to enter promised land.'' Patents: Bell 30, Edison 1,093 To get a sense of why Edison will always be remembered, one only has to compare him with his competitor Alexander Graham Bell. Bell and Edison had a great deal in common. Both famous inventors were born in 1847, and both were concerned with the problems of the deaf.

Edison himself was partly deaf, a fact that Neil Baldwin, author of the 1995 biography ''Edison: Inventing the Century,'' says explains much of his personality and his life -- his inability to fit into a regular school, his reputation for being antisocial and his failure in the record industry. And Bell taught the deaf. And so it is no coincidence that both Edison and Bell would be instrumental in the two great inventions concerning sound. Although Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it was Edison's modification of the transmitter two years later that made the telephone a practical device. And while Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, using tin foil as the recording medium, it was Bell who nine years later introduced the wax recording cylinder, making Edison's device more useful. But while Bell went on from sound transmission and recording to tinker with aeronautics and hyrofoil boats, none of his later work approached the significance of Edison's electrification system, nor did Bell's inventiveness begin to match the breadth of Edison's. In the end, the story of the two inventors can be best told by the number of patents they were granted.

Edison was granted 1,093 patents, Bell only 30. ''Bell has a personal problem that he wants to solve and an idea. Edison wants to create change. He'll work for anybody and tackle any project,'' says Bill Pretzer, director of educational programs at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich., where Edison's Menlo Park lab has been reconstructed. ''Bell has a one-person staff in a small garret. Edison creates a business out of inventing.'' Advertisement Continue reading the main story Both in Menlo Park, where Edison invented the phonograph and the electric light system, and in West Orange, where he worked until his death at age 84 in 1931, Edison employed as many as 200 laboratory assistants and machinists. ''He brought together the skilled workers, the equipment they needed, the raw materials and a research library, with a librarian who read French and German,'' Dr. Pretzer says.

''Together with those things, he brought financial backing.'' The fact that Edison could think of an idea, sketch it out in a laboratory notebook, take it to his machine shop and see his concept materialize almost instantly gave him an enormous advantage over other inventors of the time. ''He was able to do things in a week that would have taken other people three months,'' says Bob Rosenberg, director of the Thomas A. Edison Papers Project, a joint project of the Edison site and Rutgers University, which has put five million pages of Edison documents into order. ''Edison was the Mozart of invention, at a time that was the heyday of American inventors.'' To put Edison in proper context, one has to imagine a world in which voices did not come out of boxes, and pictures did not move. ''They talk about people being frightened at the early motion pictures,'' says Maryanne Gerbauckas, a National Park Service employee who is superintendent of the Edison National Historic Site here. Even more amazing in its time was the phonograph. Although Edison had already made contributions to the world of telegraphy and had invented the stock ticker by this time, it was the phonograph in 1877 that made his name a household word.

''People couldn't believe it,'' says Neil Barker, a park service ranger who leads tours through the Edison site. ''People thought Edison was a trickster. Some thought he was a ventriloquist.'' The invention was so exciting that President Rutherford B. Hayes summoned him to the White House to demonstrate it. In a scene described in Dr. Baldwin's book, President Hayes and Edison stayed up past 3 A.M. to play with the new machine, even waking the First Lady to share in the fun. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy One gets a sense of this wonder at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, which is run by the Park Service. It is almost impossible not to be moved, as 60,000 tourists a year are, by hearing Edison himself singing ''Mary Had a Little Lamb'' on a copy of one of the world's first recordings, or by watching ''The Great Train Robbery,'' which Edison's company produced and which was partly filmed at the South Mountain Reservation nearby.

Nationally Revered But Locally Ignored If Edison's place in American history is secure, his place in New Jersey history is somewhat shaky. Consider, first, the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange. The red-brick building where Edison spent the last 44 years of his career is crammed between an A&P and a discount wallpaper store, and across a busy street from its small parking lot, with no traffic light to help visitors cross. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Four years ago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation put Edison's ''Invention Factory'' in West Orange on its annual endangered list. Although a lot of work has been done since then to protect the buildings and their contents, the site is still less than an archivist's dream. The ground vault containing Edison's papers has water leaks, and the main building's second floor -- which contains Edison's precision machine shop, trade catalogues, blueprints of Edison inventions and paper wrappers from many Edison phonograph disks -- is ventilated by an open door without a screen. There are plans to build a separate, properly ventilated building to house a visitor's center and administrative complex and protect the museum's artifacts, but so far not much money.

In Menlo Park, where Edison did some of his most important work, the main thing marking these accomplishments is the 131-foot concrete ''lightbulb tower.'' Remnants of the Menlo Park buildings were shipped to Michigan in 1929 to be part of what would become the Henry Ford Museum. John Cunningham, an expert in New Jersey history, says when he first came upon the West Orange facility in 1954 he was shocked to see a letter from the Studebaker brothers and Henry Ford to Edison ''just lying around.'' Mr. Cunningham adds that when he approached Gov. Brendan Byourne -- who came from West Orange -- to raise money for the Edison site in 1979, ''he told me point blank the state would have no interest in it. He said, 'You know,. hHe didn't treat his people very well'. '' Unloved as a Boss And a Neighbor Although Edison is venerated today, there are hints that he was not universally loved in his life. He lived in a grand home called Glenmont in West Orange in the affluent Llewellyn Park section.

His neighbors may have resented the pollution, noise and riffraff from the 10,000-worker factory nearby. Edison also worked himself hard -- keeping a cot in his office so he would not have to go home to sleep -- and undoubtedly demanded much of his employees. A framed quote from Sir Joshua Reynolds -- ''There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking'' -- hangs in several places in the West Orange facility, suggesting that Edison was on the lookout for shirking. Paul Israel, managing editor of the book edition of the Edison Papers, who is writing an Edison biography, says there are also stories of Edison ''walking through the plant, just sort of firing people.'' Edison certainly downsized when he pulled out of the music industry. ''A lot of the reaction that exists today in West Orange has to do with that downsizing,'' Dr. Israel says. Advertisement And while the people of Menlo Park were so proud of him that they named their township Edison in 1954, he left that town without paying his bills; his house was auctioned by the sheriff because of two unpaid notes. Edison was also notoriously litigious, a zealot for enforcing patents.

But his biographer Neil Baldwin believes that Edison is unfairly faulted for lacking social skills, when it was really his hearing that was the problem. His hearing was so bad, Dr. Baldwin says, that Edison trained his second wife, Mina, to secretly tap out the conversation in Morse code on his knee during dinner parties. Just as Edison has left an imprint on the New Jersey, the state played a role in the career of Edison. Edison missed his big opportunity in the music industry because he tried -- and failed -- to impose his own taste on the public. He hated jazz, and he didn't want to indulge celebrities like Enrico Caruso, who was the star of the Victor Talking Machine Company. Edison missed out on radio altogether, and couldn't believe people would want to let an uncensored stream of programming into their homes. And he made the same mistakes in the movie business. Professor Carlson of the University of Virginia blames some of this on New Jersey provincialism. The first great movie moguls were former furriers from the Lower East Side, who knew what the common people liked. Edison, and his top managers, living in prosperous Essex County, may simply have been out of touch with popular culture.

''By 1910, the movies had come to be viewed as working-class amusement, and it was no surprise that the elite of Montclair refused to permit movies in the town,'' Professor Carlson wrote in 1992. ''Edison's associates knew that their social standing in the wealthy New Jersey suburbs of Montclair and South Orange would not advance if it became known that their movies catered to the vulgar tastes of the working class.'' Thomas Edison Facts | Thomas Edison For Kids | DK Find Out Thomas Edison Toggle text Thomas Edison (1847–1931) was an American inventor. As a teenager he started his own business printing and selling a newspaper. He came up with his first invention at age 16, the “automatic repeater,” which helped to transmit telegraph signals. In 1876 he opened a laboratory where he developed most of his inventions. He and his staff improved the recently invented telephone . In 1878 he started the Edison Electric Light Company, and came up with a system for electric lights throughout cities.

His best-known inventions are the first practical light bulb, the phonograph (used for sound recording), and the kinetoscope, a moving-image projector which helped to start the age of movies. Find out more › When Edison Got His First Patent And Napster Lunched: This Week In Tech History When Edison Got His First Patent And Napster Lunched: This Week In Tech History {{article.article.images.featured.caption}} Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Full Bio The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Loading ... Loading ... This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe Promotional Napster stickers are seen at the Napster studio in this Aug. 2, 2006 file picture taken in Los Angeles.

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) May 31, 1961 Leonard Kleinrock submits his PhD thesis proposal at MIT, “Information Flow in Large Communication Nets,” establishing, in his words, “the underlying principles of data networks that are the basis of the Internet.” From the citation for the most recent award Kleinrock has received, the Dan David Prize: “Leonard Kleinrock has made seminal research contributions in communication networks, establishing the fundamental principles upon which many of the most important aspects of computer networking and information communications are based. He developed the key mathematical background to packet switching, the fundamental building block of the Internet. Furthermore, his theoretical work on hierarchical routing is now critical to the operation of today’s world-wide Internet.” Leonard Kleinrock, a computer scientist at UCLA, stands next to the refrigerator-sized computer that made the first-ever connection in 1969 to what was to become the Internet, Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999, at his UCLA office. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) June 1, 1869 Thomas of Boston, Massachusetts, is granted his first patent ( US No.

90,646 ) for an “electrographic vote recorder.” Edison wrote in his patent application: “The object of my invention is to produce an apparatus which records and registers in an instant—and with great accuracy—the votes of legislative bodies, thus avoiding loss of valuable time consumed in counting and registering the votes and names, as done in the usual manner.” A fellow telegrapher named Dewitt Roberts, we learn at The Thomas A. Edison Papers Project , bought an interest in the invention for $100 and took it to Washington , D.C. to exhibit to a committee of Congress. The chairman of the committee, unimpressed with the speed with which the instrument could record votes, told him that "if there is any invention on earth that we don't want down here, that is it." The slow pace of roll call voting in Congress and other legislatures enabled members to filibuster legislation or convince others to change their votes. Edison's vote recorder was never used. Edison went on to hold 1,093 U.S. patents, many of them commercially successful, such as the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the alkaline storage battery.

In 1929, Edison said: “None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Two years later, inventor and former employee Nikola Tesla had this to say (in the ) the day after Edison died: "If he had a needle to find in a haystack he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once, with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... I was almost a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor." Laurence Fisher, a specialist in mechanical music at Christie's holds one of 23 original light bulbs which was used as evidence in the 1890 trial where Thomas Edison defended his patent for the light bulb, at Christie's in London, U.K., Friday, December 8, 2006.

Photographer: Suzanne Plunkett/Bloomberg News June 1, 1999 Left to right: Shawn Fanning, creator and founder of Napster Inc.; Rap artist,Chuck D. ; Music Industry Executive Mark Kates; and Erick Gustafson, director of consumer choice at Citizens for a Sound Economy; at Napster's forum on file sharing at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Source: Napster Inc. Photographer: David Scull. Bloomberg News. Napster launches its file sharing service, letting people swap music stored on their computers. In July 2001, Napster shut down its entire network to comply with a court order. On April 3, 2008 , ’s iTunes Store surpassed Wal-Mart as the biggest music retailer in the U.S. Marilyn Hall Patel, Justice of the US District Court of the Northern District of California, speaks to the media in front of the State Federal Building on December 14, 2000 in San Francisco. Judge Patel ordered Napster Inc. to remove copyrighted works from its popular online service within three days after the receiving notice from the music industry.

The order will still allow the distribution of the music of unknown artists and labels which aren't involved in the 1999 copyright-infringement suit filed by the five leading distributors. Photographer: Xiang Xing Zhou. Bloomberg News. Thomas Edison Photo provided by: The Library of Congress Thomas Alva Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications.

These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York. Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–96, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871). His father had to escape from Canada because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837. Edison considered himself to be of Dutch ancestry. In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled". This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, "My mother was the making of me.

She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother homeschooled him. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union. Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. Around the middle of his career Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears. Edison's family was forced to move to Port Huron, Michigan, when the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854, but his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he sold vegetables to supplement his income. This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures as he discovered his talents as a businessman.

These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still in existence and is one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world. Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1866, at the age of 19, Thomas Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a lead-acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk below. The next morning Edison was fired.

One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey home. Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, (U. S. Patent 90,646), which was granted on June 1, 1869. For more information on Edison’s inventions, please visit: #Bibliography Copyright © 2011, Capitol Square Foundation, Ohio Statehouse Room 16, 1 Capitol Square, Columbus, OH 43215 Fed ID: 31-1222851 Thomas Edison's Creative Thinking Habits - Think Jar Collective Think Jar Collective Creativity Techniques Thomas Edison was granted 1,093 patents for inventions that ranged from the lightbulb, typewriter, electric pen, phonograph, motion picture camera and alkaline storage battery—to the talking doll and a concrete house that could be built in one day from a cast-iron mold.

When he died in 1931, he left 3500 notebooks which are preserved today in the temperature-controlled vaults of the West Orange Laboratory Archives at the Edison National Historic Site in New Jersey. The notebooks read like a turbulent brainstorm and present a verbal and visual biography of Edison’s mind at work. Spanning most of his six-decade career, the notebooks are yielding fresh clues as to how Edison, who had virtually no formal education, could achieve such an astounding inventive record that is still unrivalled. The notebooks illustrate how Edison conceived his ideas from their earliest inceptions and show in great detail how he developed and implemented them. Following are some of Edison’s creative-thinking strategies: 1. Go for QUANTITY For starters, Edison believed that to discover a good idea you had to generate many ideas. Out of quantity comes quality. He set idea quotas for all his workers. His own quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months. It took over 50,000 experiments to invent the alkaline storage cell battery and 9000 to perfect the lightbulb. Edison looked at creativity as simply good, honest, hard work.

Genius, he once said, is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. For every brilliant idea he had there was a dud like the horse-drawn contraption that would collect snow and ice in the winter and compress it into blocks that families could use in the summer as a refrigerant. Increasing your idea production requires conscious effort. Suppose I asked you to spend three minutes thinking of alternative uses of for the common brick. No doubt, you would come up with some, but my hunch is not very many. The average adult comes up with three to six ideas. However, if I asked you to list 40 uses for the brick as fast as you can you would have quite a few in a short period of time. “Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration” A specific quota focuses your energy in a competitive way that guarantees fluency and flexibility of thought.

To meet the quota, you find yourself listing all the usual uses for a brick (build a wall, fireplace, outdoor barbeque, and so on) as well as listing everything that comes to mind (anchor, projectiles in riots, ballast, device to hold down newspaper, a tool for leveling dirt, material for sculptures, doorstop and so on) as we stretch our imagination to meet the quota. By causing us to exert effort, it allows us to generate more imaginative alternatives than we otherwise would. Initial ideas are usually poorer in quality than later ideas. Just as water must run from a faucet for a while to be crystal- clear, cool and free of particles, so thought must flow before it becomes creative. Early ideas are usually not true ideas. Exactly why this is so is not known, but one hypothesis is that familiar and safe responses lie closest to the surface of our consciousness and therefore are naturally thought of first. Creative thinking depends on continuing the flow of ideas long enough to purge the common, habitual ones and produce the unusual and imaginative. To prove this to yourself, try the following exercise. Following is a list of five words. Write the first association that occurs to you for each word.

Now do this five more times as illustrated with the first word and for each time write an association that is different from the association you gave the same word on the previous occasions. Fish, Ocean, Marlin, Football, Crowds, Money Military Government Automobile You will note that the latter associations are much more original and unique than the earlier ones. The first responses are the common, dominant associations you have for that word. By arranging to give responses that are not common or dominant, there is an increase in originality and imaginativeness of the responses. A way to guarantee productivity of your creative thought is to give yourself an idea quota. For example, an idea quota of 40 ideas if you’re looking for ideas alone or a quota 120 ideas if a group is brainstorming for ideas. By forcing yourself to come up with 40 ideas, you put your internal critic on hold and write everything down, including the obvious and weak. The first third will be the same-old, same-old ideas you always get. The second third will be more interesting and the last third will show more insight, curiosity and complexity. 2.

CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS Edison felt his lack of formal education was, in fact, “his blessing.” This enabled him to approach his work of invention with far fewer assumptions than his more educated competitors, which included many theoretical scientists, renowned Ph.D.s, and engineers. He approached any idea or experience with wild enthusiasm and would try anything out of the ordinary, including even making phonograph needles out of compressed rainforest nuts and clamping his teeth onto a phonograph horn to use as a hearing aid, feeling the sound vibrate through his jaw. This wild enthusiasm inspired him to consistently challenge assumptions. He felt that in some ways too much education corrupted people by prompting them to make so many assumptions that they were unable to see many of nature’s great possibilities. When Edison created a “system” of practical lighting, he conceived of wiring his circuits in parallel and of using high-resistance filaments in his bulbs, two things that were not considered possible by scientific experts, in fact, were not considered at all because they were assumed to be totally incompatible until Edison put them together. Before Edison hired a research assistant, he would invite the candidate over for a bowl of soup. If the person seasoned the soup before tasting it, Edison would not hire the candidate.

He did not want people who had so many built-in assumptions into their everyday life, that they would even assume the soup is not properly seasoned. He wanted people who consistently challenged assumptions and tried different things. 3. NOTHING IS WASTED When an experiment failed, Edison would always ask what the failure revealed and would enthusiastically record what he had learned. His notebooks contain pages of material on what he learned from his abortive ideas, including his many experiments on will power (he conducted countless experiments with rubber tubes extended from his forehead trying to will the physical movement of a pendulum). Once when an assistant asked why he continued to persist trying to discover a long-lasting filament for the light bulb after failing thousands of times, Edison explained that he didn’t understand the question. In his mind he hadn’t failed once. Instead, he said he discovered thousands of things that didn’t work. Finally, he completed Patent 251,539 for the light bulb that ensured his fame and fortune. Before Edison hired a research assistant, he would invite the candidate over for a bowl of soup. If the person seasoned the soup before tasting it, Edison would not hire the candidate.

He did not want people who had so many built-in assumptions into their everyday life, that they would even assume the soup is not properly seasoned. He had an enormous talent for appropriating ideas that may have failed in one instance and using them for something else. For example, when it became clear in 1900 that an iron-ore mining venture in which Edison was financially committed was failing and on the brink of bankruptcy, he spent a weekend studying the company’s resources and came up with a detailed plan to redirect the company’s efforts toward the manufacture of Portland cement, which could capitalize on the same equipment, materials and distribution systems of the iron-ore company. Edison relentlessly recorded and illustrated every problem worked on in his notebooks. Whenever he succeeded with a new idea, Edison would review his notebooks to rethink ideas and inventions he’s abandoned in the past in the light of what he’d recently learned. If he was mentally blocked working on a new idea, he would review his notebooks to see if there was some thought or insight that could trigger a new approach. For example, Edison’s unsuccessful work to develop an undersea telegraph cable ultimately led to a breakthrough on a telephone transmitter.

He took the principle for the unsuccessful undersea telegraph cable— variable resistence— and incorporated it into the design of a telephone transmitter that adapted to the changing sound waves of the caller’s voice. This technique instantly became the industry standard. Edison would often jot down his observations of the natural world, failed patents and research papers written by other inventors, and ideas others had come up with in other fields. He would also routinely comb a wide variety of diverse publications for novel ideas that sparked his interest and record them in his notebooks. He advised his assistants to make it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully on other problems in other fields. To Edison, your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on. Edison’s lesson is to record your ideas and other novel ideas in a notebook— call it “The Bright Ideas Notebook.” When confronted with a problem, review your notebook and look for ways to cross-fertilize ideas, techniques and conceptual models by transferring them from one problem to the next. 4.

CONSTANTLY IMPROVE YOUR IDEAS AND PRODUCTS AND THE IDEAS AND PRODUCTS OF OTHERS Contrary to popular belief, Edison did not invent the light bulb: his genius, rather, was to perfect the bulb as a consumer item. Edison also studied all his inventions and ideas as springboards for other inventions and ideas in their own right. To Edison, the telephone (sounds transmitted) suggested the phonograph (sounds recorded), which suggested motion pictures (images recorded). Simple, in retrospect, isn’t it? Genius usually is. Einstein believed that every new idea is some addition or modification to something that already exists. You take a subject and manipulate or change it into something else. There are nine principle ways you can manipulate a subject. These ways were first formally suggested by Alex Osborn, the father of brainstorming, and later arranged by Bob Eberle into the mnemonic SCAMPER. S = Substitute? P = Put to other uses? E = Eliminate? R = Rearrange? = Reverse? You isolate the subject you want to think about and ask the checklist of SCAMPER questions to see what new ideas and thoughts emerge.

Think about any subject from improving the ordinary paperclip to reorganizing your corporation and apply the “Scamper” checklist of questions. You’ll find that ideas start popping up almost involuntarily, as you ask: Can you substitute something? Can you combine your subject with something else? Can you adapt something to your subject? Can you magnify or add to it? Can you modify or change it in some fashion? Can you put it to some other use? Can you eliminate something from it? Can you rearrange it? What happens when you reverse it? Edison was tireless in his persistence to change a subject into something else through “trial and error” until he found the idea that worked. In Edison’s laboratory there is a staggering display of hundreds of phonograph horns of every shape, size and material. Some are round, square, angular, thin, short, squat while others are curved and as long as six feet tall. This collection of rejected ideas is a visual testament to Edison’s approach to creativity— which was, in essence, to try out every possible design he could possibly conceive of. Once asked to describe the key to creativity, he reportedly said to never quit working on your subject until you get what you’re after.

Just Start acting Creative Finally, if you want to become more creative, start acting like you are creative. Suppose that you wanted to be an artist: You would begin behaving like an artist by painting every day. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you’ll become more of an artist than someone who has never tried. Similarly, to increase your creativity start acting like Thomas Edison. Cultivate the following creative-thinking habits: • When looking for ideas, create lots of ideas. • Consistently challenge assumptions. • Record your ideas and the ideas of others in a notebook. • Learn from your failures and the failures of others. • Constantly look for ways to improve your ideas and products and the ideas and products of others. You may not become the next Thomas Edison but you’ll become much more creative than someone who has never tried. Once asked to describe the key to creativity, he said, never quit working on your subject until you get what you’re after. How many United States patents did Thomas Edison successfully obtain? | Reference.com How many United States patents did Thomas Edison successfully obtain? A: Quick Answer The American inventor Thomas Edison successfully filed and obtained 1,093 United States patents.

His first patent application was executed while he was 21 years old on October 13, 1868. Edison's U.S. patents can be grouped into the general categories of electric power and light, phonographs and sound recording, telegraphy and telephony, batteries, mining and ore milling, miscellany, cement and motion pictures. Full Answer Edison's career as an inventor began in Newark, New Jersey, with his successful development of improved telegraph devices. It was his 1877 invention of the phonograph, however, that brought him to attention. The public reaction to displays of Edison's invention was unprecedented. The Washington Post described a display of the new device presented by Edison to Congress and the U.S. President in 1878 as a scene "that will live in history." Edison soon became a celebrity and gained the nickname "The Wizard of Menlo Park" after the section of Middlesex County, New Jersey where he had set-up his laboratory. The area has since been renamed Edison Township in honor of the famous inventor. Edison is also known for his invention of the first commercially practical light bulb and his development of one of the first systems for the distribution of electric power.

He established the first electric public utility company in New York City and began supplying DC power to 59 lower Manhattan customers in 1882. By 1887, Edison had 121 power stations in operation, but his DC systems were eventually replaced by the AC power distribution method championed by his adversary George Westinghouse. Edison also attempted to develop a practical X-ray device, or fluoroscope, but dropped the project after his assistant was severely injured by radiation exposure. Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin by Loyal Books on iTunes Opening the iTunes Store.If iTunes doesn't open, click the iTunes application icon in your Dock or on your Windows desktop.Progress Indicator Opening the iBooks Store.If iBooks doesn't open, click the iBooks app in your Dock.Progress Indicator iTunes iTunes is the world's easiest way to organize and add to your digital media collection. We are unable to find iTunes on your computer. To download and subscribe to Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin by Loyal Books, get iTunes now. Already have iTunes? Click I Have iTunes to open it now.

Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin By Loyal Books To listen to an audio podcast, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to download and subscribe to podcasts. Description One of the most prolific and multi-talented geniuses the world has ever seen, Thomas Alva Edison's life is indeed an inspiration for each new generation. Today we live in a world that would not have been possible if not for several of his important inventions – the electric light bulb, the motion picture camera, electric power distribution, the phonograph, and a host of other things that we take for granted today. In fact, he still holds the world record for the maximum number of patents, numbering 1093 in all! Edison – His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, published in 1910 was in fact a biography commissioned by Edison himself. Dyer was a patent attorney who worked for Edison, while Commerford was a technical magazine editor who published many of Edison's papers. There is consequently a great deal of focus on the technical aspects of his inventions and not so much on his personality and nature.

However, as a chronological account of his life, the biography does full justice to its title. This brilliant scientist, businessman and inventor had in fact, practically no formal education. He actually went to school only for three months in his life. His mother provided support and motivation for the hearing-impaired child, who taught himself to read and discovered his love for science by reading books like Parker's The School of Natural Philosophy, etc. A notable feature of the book is that it was written in Edison's own lifetime and hence captures the feel of being very contemporary. There are many anecdotes and stories which the great man himself has contributed or has directly conveyed to the authors, hence the flavor is very authentic and realistic and conveys the excitement and thrill of the life and times of this master inventor. A great inspiration for all ages! USATODAY.com - Search for the most prolific inventors is a patent struggle Text Search for the most prolific inventors is a patent struggle What living person holds the most U.S. patents? In this era of information and lightning searches — when patents are both more valuable than ever and a source of raging controversy — you'd think such a simple question would be easy to answer.

The top patent-holder at IBM is a researcher Ravi Arimilli, based in Austin, who specializes in computer chips. IBM You'd think somebody could push a button and get a list. But, uh, no. America cannot identify its most prolific living inventors. We can't single out these people who should be considered national treasures. (Related item: Kevin Maney's blog ) I found this out because I wanted to interview the top 10 living patent holders for a story. I got in touch with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and asked for a list, thinking it was about the same as calling Billboard and asking for the top 10 songs. As it turns out, the USPTO has but one guy who does statistical studies of the agency's 7 million-patent database. He last sorted for individual inventors in 1997, and has since been too busy with other projects to update that list. I asked for help from a few commercial companies that do patent database searches. Thomson gave it a college try and for a while had a team working on my question. Others just said it couldn't be done.

The question, with variables including inventors with same last names and multiple names on patents, is apparently a database operator's nightmare. "The last five years include some 1 million granted U.S. patents," Thomson's Ryan Sheppard e-mailed me, explaining why Thomson couldn't pull it off, either. "Ten years of data would be roughly double that. So we are talking astonishingly large numbers of documents." Anyone can go to the USPTO's website, type in an individual's name, and get a list of all the patents granted that person. But you have to start with a name. You can't set up an open-ended search that finds the names that appear most often. There's no easy way to let the database generate a list of top inventors. Since the question can't be officially answered, I thought I'd hack at it in other ways. It's possible to use a variety of resources to tease out a few names who would likely make the top 10 list of living inventors. And that leads to some pretty wild surprises. For more than 50 years, Thomas Edison has been considered the nation's all-time most prolific inventor.

He has 1,093 patents to his name, including the electric light bulb and phonograph. He is to American innovation what Thomas Jefferson is to American politics. However, Edison is apparently NOT the top American inventor. He has been bested by Donald Weder of Highland, Ill. — a man who, in contrast to the stupendous impact of Edison, has mostly used his inventive powers to give the world better floral arrangements. This is as deflating as finding out that Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak has been surpassed by a stadium peanut vendor. Weder, who is still alive and whose family runs floral packaging company Highland Supply, has his name on 1,321 patents. Almost all have to do with items you'd find at a florist. Weder's most recent patent — No. 6,962,021, granted Nov. 8 — is for a sleeve for holding a group of flowers. Before that, on Oct. 11, Weder was issued a patent titled, "Method of covering a flower pot." On Sept.

20, he was issued a patent titled, "Method of covering a flower pot or floral grouping." Much of Weder's list goes on in a similar fashion. (Weder didn't return phone messages.) Aside from Weder, who else would make the list of most prolific living inventors? While the patent office doesn't keep a list of top individual inventors, it does track which companies get the most patents. For the past decade, IBM has been first on that list every year. I figured the top patent holder at the top patent-holding company would be a good bet. Ravi Arimilli is IBM's top patent holder, with more than 300 patents. He's a researcher, based in Austin, who specializes in computer chip innards. Arimilli's most recent patent, issued Nov. 29, is for "Layered local cache with lower level cache optimizing allocation mechanism." He must be great at cocktail parties. In 2002 alone, Arimilli won 78 patents. That's three patents every two weeks. Either he's a wonder-dude who makes the rest of us look like slugs, or his name winds up on a lot of work done by teams of people.

Either way, at only 42, he'll probably continue to climb up the patent-holding ranks. In the search for prolific inventors, here's the biggest shock: The all-time champion of U.S. patents might be a foreigner. When the USPTO made that 1997 list of living prolific inventors, the No. 1 patent holder was Shunpei Yamazaki. Most of his work involves computer and video screens for his Tokyo company, Semiconductor Energy Laboratory. As of 1997, Yamazaki held 372 patents. Today, a search of the USPTO database turns up 1,432 patents bearing his name, whupping both Edison and Weder. Yamazaki's most recent patent, granted Nov. 22, was titled, "Reflective liquid crystal display panel and device using same." His first patent, for a computer chip design, was granted in 1980. Yamazaki has averaged about a patent a week for 25 years. It doesn't seem unusual to have a foreigner holding so many patents.

Of the top 10 living patent holders on the 1997 list, eight were from other countries. Six were Germans, and two were Japanese. The only two Americans were flower guy Weder and oil industry researcher Hartley Owen. So much for the legend of Edison. America's greatest inventor is apparently an obscure guy in Japan who makes stuff most people can't comprehend. And the nation's greatest native inventor seems to be a man who has come up with 100 different ways to make a flower pot. Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of Technology columns. E-mail him at: kmaney@usatoday.com .

Question: Which scientist was granted 1093 US patents for his inventions?
Answer: Thomas Edison