February 2008
Intermediate to advanced
192 pages
4h 1m
English
Surveying the career of Thomas Edison, the obvious thing to do is marvel at the range of his invention: telegraphy, telephony, the phonograph, motion picture technology, incandescent electric lighting, power generation, battery technology, ore processing, cement production, rubber production, and so on.
The big things, the civilization-altering inventions, these are the obvious Edison projects. Less obvious are the many instances in which the inventor carved out sometimes arcane specialties and innovated within them. Although his range was undeniably and remarkably broad, the vast majority of his thousand-plus patents were for variations on devices in a limited number of areas, especially telegraphic communications. ...