February 2008
Intermediate to advanced
192 pages
4h 1m
English
Despite his love of speed, Edison was never too proud to plod, and the most famous example of Edison's prodigious plodding was his worldwide search for the best material out of which to fashion filaments for his electric light. Thousands of substances were collected and tested, it is true, but this does not mean that Edison's plodding was aimless and without plan. At one point, he had impregnated horseshoe-shaped pieces of cardboard with lampblack (carbon) and used them as filaments. They worked, but their useful lives were short. Instead of blindly groping after a better material, Edison studied the cardboard under a microscope in an effort to understand just why the material had proved unsatisfactory.
After close examination, ...