Most historians agree that Edison had one of the most brilliant minds of the last 200 years. He had a naturally prolific gift for invention and tenacious work ethic that kept him at the forefront of science for decades. Yet when looking at the man's life putting his missteps besides his successes, I can't help but notice some intriguing contradictions in his work and his personality.
- Edison became known for his constant tinkering, working to improve on his inventions even after he patented and released them. He famously tested thousands of possible filaments for his light bulb until finding one that satisfied him. Of course if Edison wanted to sell everyone light bulbs, he first had to build an electrical grid to power them. Edison crafted a system around direct current. When Edison's rival in the power business George Westinghouse put up his own electrical system run on the superior alternating current, Edison obstinately stuck to his original system. Rather than adapting to the new technology, Edison tried to put his competitor out of business. Granted Edison made some pretty inspired attempts to ruin Westinghouse's reputation. He publicized and marketed an electric chair that utilized alternating current, declaring that anyone exposed to AC would suffer instantaneous death.
- Because Edison worried that the telephone was too expensive for the average person to buy, he wanted to create a way that everyone could use the service affordably. He proposed a network of telephone stations where people could go to drop off and pick up messages, sort of like telegrams. Of course to take advantage of the telephone's main feature -the ability to hear a live human voice from a great distance- Edison tried inventing a "telephone repeater". His device would allow people to record the sound of their voice and then play it back later. He also called it a phonograph. Since no one else was trying to create a "telephone repeater", Edison had the only patent on a sound recording device. He had incredible foresight and a unique creation, but he apparently never gave the idea of recording and distributing music a moment's thought. Edison had a reputation as a shrewd business man, yet it took years before he believed that the phonograph had a commercial future. Of course he was mostly deaf, so maybe he just didn't have any musical appreciation.
- In a similar episode, Edison directed the creation of an early motion picture device. He released the kinetoscope which could capture and display brief movies, and from which most modern filmmaking technology descends. Yet he thought it would only appeal to small children, a toy that would provide visual accompaniment to his phonograph (by this time he had learned that people liked music). His assistant Laurie Dickson had to convince him that people would watch movies that told a story. Edison eventually conceded that people might like educational films, though he insisted that creating a film projection device would kill public interest in motion pictures. Once again, Edison had a genius for identifying gaps in existing technology and developing gadgets to fill those gaps, but no sense of what people would find most useful about his apparatuses.
- In a truly unexpected twist, Edison never earned a cent from his most frequently used invention. This creation he did intend for wide spread use and people used it in exactly the way he predicted, as well as in several other contexts. Almost no one who uses it daily in modern times has any idea Edison invented it. In fact if you asked most people where it came from, they probably wouldn't even think that at some point someone had invented it. It has become so common place its existence is take for granted. Edison invented the word "hello". He proposed it as the word people should use when answering the phone. The man we know of a s the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell used "Ahoy-hoy" (a nautical expression I personally use when answering the phone). True there were other similar words to "hello", but they all had different meanings and never would have fit into the context in which Edison used "hello". Edison actually tried his hand at creating other words too. Reportedly it was Edison who first called for a word to describe death by electricity - a term he undoubtedly would have applied to alternating current. Edison's suggestions included "ampermort" and "dynamort". An assistant would land a little closer to the mark with "electrocide".
When you survey all those strange stories of Thomas Edison's life, you cannot resist the urge to label him a strange person. Certainly, his mind worked in a unique and wonderful fashion. His thinking process and occasionally odd behavior have led some to theorize that he had some kind of mental disability or disorder. I don't think any of Edison's oddities amount to a mental defect. In fact I think Edison nicely demonstrates that no individual can truly be all things. Edison may have had one of the most inventive minds humanity has ever seen. Despite that he lacked the imagination to fully realize the potential of some of his inventions or the insight to know what people wanted out of their technology. To put it simply, just because someone is a genius doesn't mean they're always going to be all that bright.
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