Edison

[greg furey]

Gar, thanks for the history you are a greatan be well

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[gar]

190213-1420 EST

grich:

I see you are a broadcast engineer. When I was 6 I can remember visiting the WJR 760 kHz 50,000 W transmitter and seeing the very large transmitter tubes that were water cooled.

I have been an amateur radio person since somewhat after WWII. Also for a short time after WWII I had a first class radio telephone operator's license. Only used it for taxi cab radio repair.

My Western Union telegraph experience was a one time event. Each year different students performed the function.

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[iceworm]

Gar -
I recall talking to a guy in the 1960 (high school time for me) that said the railroad used "clicks" instead of variable lengths tones. Do you recall anything about that?

 

[GoldDigger]

Gar -
I recall talking to a guy in the 1960 (high school time for me) that said the railroad used "clicks" instead of variable lengths tones. Do you recall anything about that?

The classic railroad telegraph "sounder" was basically a relay with no contacts in a wood resonator.
It made one sound as it pulled in and a distinctly different sound when it released. The code was still dots and dashes (short and long closed circuit intervals), but what was heard was the length of time between the two clicks. There was not enough energy to power a buzzer (the only audio oscillator available), given that all of the sounders on a given telegraph line were in series.
For really long circuits or lots of receivers you could use an actual relay to regenerate the signal, with care in the relay design to avoid time distortion with minimal dependence on magnitude of incoming line current.

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[gar]

190213-2424 EST

Are you an idea person, do you know or work with an idea person, how do you identify an idea person?

Were Hewlett and Packard idea persons? de Forest? Mark Twain? An average production worker? Roberta Peters? Betty Grable? Hedy Lamarr?

In the early 1960s I was doing some consulting work at a small company that manufactured circuit breakers. This company was bought by Howard Aiken Industries. Possibly 15 years earlier I had bought a book by Aiken. This I did not remember at the time. Aiken was a graduate student at Harvard in the mid 1930s, about 1935. At this time he said the way to build a computer was digital. He was laughed at, can't be done. Harvard would give no consideration to this idea. But some at Harvard had connections with IBM. Thus, the Harvard Mark I was started. This was a programmable computer, but largely electromechanical.

The small company, Mechanical Products, made various types of protective devices, some using snap blades. In a meeting with Aiken he started asking questions about how one might make a snap blade perform logical functions. Here was an idea man probing for new ways to do something in an effort to broaden the base of the company in an area where the company already had skill.

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[growler]

Edison bought any brains he had, summarily screwing the one genius he employed.

Well, that's just how we do things here in America. And if those foreign geniuses don't like it they can just go back to whatever highly evolved, fair minded countries they come from.

This is for the purpose of humor only and not to be taken seriously.

 

[ggunn]

Depends on where the satellite is intercepting the energy. If the earth is not in its shadow, then there will, in effect, be more total energy reaching the surface of the earth. But it will produce zero greenhouse gasses.

In the shadow of the satellite? A powersat in geosynchronous orbit is not going to throw much of a shadow at that distance, what there is of it will virtually never be in the direction of the earth, and when it is it will be moving very rapidly relative to a stationary position on the ground. The satellite would virtually never be in the shadow of the earth, either.

 

[drcampbell]

... about 1935. At this time (Aiken) said the way to build a computer was digital. He was laughed at, can't be done. ...

Every great innovation begins with the "experts" saying it can't be done.

 

[xformer]

Edison bought any brains he had, summarily screwing the one genius he employed

It took him (and his minions) thousands of attempts to light up a bulb, where it took said particular gifted man a stick to draw the concept of 3phase in the sand in a moment of inspiration.

~RJ~

AMEN.

 

[junkhound]

Acknowledge that Tesla likely higher intelligence than Edison (after all, Westinghouse and time proved Tesla premise of ac superiority to dc in the technology of the 1880s),
but do not quite understand those who seemingly try to denigrate Edison's accomplishments?

 

[grich]

190213-1420 EST

grich:

I see you are a broadcast engineer. When I was 6 I can remember visiting the WJR 760 kHz 50,000 W transmitter and seeing the very large transmitter tubes that were water cooled.

I have been an amateur radio person since somewhat after WWII. Also for a short time after WWII I had a first class radio telephone operator's license. Only used it for taxi cab radio repair.

My Western Union telegraph experience was a one time event. Each year different students performed the function.

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Oh, my...I have seen the WJR building via Scott Fybush's web site. Fabulous example of art deco design back when radio was king. The WHO transmitter site near me was never quite that fancy, but still impressive. The water-cooled RCA transmitter of 1933 with two floors of support gear has given way to a box the size of a large refrigerator.

 

[ggunn]

Every great innovation begins with the "experts" saying it can't be done.

That's a truism that ignores all the times the "experts" were correct.

 

[gar]

190214-2329 EST

How many of you have your name on a US patent?
Are you an inventor?

What is an invention? How is one invention distinguished from another?

Have you worked for an inventor?
Do you believe you were part of the idea generation of an invention? And not included as a coinventor?

Do you believe someone stole your idea? If so what does that mean?

Have you worked on the development of an invention, but did not contribute ideas to the invention?
Have you worked on the preparation of a patent application?

Have you studied patents to determine whether they may read on your work?

The great Selden Ford patent trial should never gone on trial because Selden's patent did not read on a Ford car. The difference being the Selden engine was a 2 cycle engine, and Ford's was a 4 cycle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden
https://www.autonews.com/article/20...ent-case-broke-selden-s-lock-on-auto-industry

None of these directly mention the 2 cycle vs 4 cycle difference.

I believe many persons are inventors, but do not pursue their inventiveness.

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[romex jockey]

190214-2329 EST



Have you worked for an inventor?
Do you believe you were part of the idea generation of an invention? And not included as a coinventor?

Do you believe someone stole your idea? If so what does that mean?

Have you worked on the development of an invention, but did not contribute ideas to the invention?
Have you worked on the preparation of a patent application?

Have you studied patents to determine whether they may read on your work?


I believe many persons are inventors, but do not pursue their inventiveness.

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Yes i've been involved , w/o going into detail , i'll simply say one quickly learns the system is not a meritocracy , far from it.....
:happyno:
~RJ~

 

[drcampbell]

... do not quite understand those who seemingly try to denigrate Edison's accomplishments?

Because most of "Edison's" accomplishments were not actually his: He took credit (and profit) for other people's work.
His know-nothing attitude toward research: He would have his lab techs test 10,000 random items instead of trying to understand the underlying physics & metallurgy, then proclaim that the brute-force approach is a good thing.
His shameless promotion of business interests over real science & engineering, most-notorious of which was the claim that AC is dangerous and DC is not.
(admittedly, 50-60Hz AC will produce more trauma than the same amount of DC current, but it's 30% more, not night & day. And 400 Hz AC current is about the same as DC for inflicting trauma)

That's a truism that ignores all the times the "experts" were correct.

It doesn't ignore it; it's merely outside the scope. When the experts were right, it doesn't become a great innovation. I can't count the number of times I've told someone you can't run an infernal-combustion engine on water, (or water vapor, water mist, dissociated water, et al.) or the number of times they didn't successfully build one and prove me wrong.

 

[ggunn]

It doesn't ignore it; it's merely outside the scope. When the experts were right, it doesn't become a great innovation. I can't count the number of times I've told someone you can't run an infernal-combustion engine on water, (or water vapor, water mist, dissociated water, et al.) or the number of times they didn't successfully build one and prove me wrong.

Well, OK, but that and similar language is often used to imply that if something is deigned to be not possible by the majority of people, that in and of itself is proof positive that it is possible. It's pretzel logic.

 

[MTW]

Acknowledge that Tesla likely higher intelligence than Edison (after all, Westinghouse and time proved Tesla premise of ac superiority to dc in the technology of the 1880s), but do not quite understand those who seemingly try to denigrate Edison's accomplishments?

Because most of "Edison's" accomplishments were not actually his: He took credit (and profit) for other people's work.
His know-nothing attitude toward research: He would have his lab techs test 10,000 random items instead of trying to understand the underlying physics & metallurgy, then proclaim that the brute-force approach is a good thing.
His shameless promotion of business interests over real science & engineering, most-notorious of which was the claim that AC is dangerous and DC is not.
(admittedly, 50-60Hz AC will produce more trauma than the same amount of DC current, but it's 30% more, not night & day. And 400 Hz AC current is about the same as DC for inflicting trauma)

Only half of the story is commonly told about Thomas and Nicolas, and it's largely due to politics and money. As usual, money usually wins.

Being from Dearborn, MI. right under the exhaust stacks of the Ford Rouge plant, I learned early from family members, personal bodyguard to the Ford family, there is a lot of politics involved in any successful venture. Henry and Thomas were very close friends and spent much time together in Port Huron, MI. At the end of the tracks on the water, there still exists the Edison Inn to this day.

Thomas's first interest was printing newspapers and selling them on the train from Detroit to Port Huron. He then started printing them in the caboose on the train. On those trains, he then began experimenting as a chemist in the caboose, where he did his printing. After several caboose fires, he was banned from operating on the trains. I believe that the chemistry interest and background was what steered him to pursue the brute force method, in finding a suitable filament, and then discovering that a vacuum was the key ingredient missing for longevity.

With Henry's friendship and support, Thomas was introduced to J P Morgan. Once Morgans money got involved, things in the budding electrical industry really started to change. This is where Dr Campbell story came into play. Morgan was the boss, Thomas became the slave driver supervisor, Nicholas became a short footnote in the organization, and the organization eventually morphed into General Electric with Morgans backing.

Nicholas moved on from Thomas and eventually partnered with Westinghouse to pursue his AC system, mainly to get backing and resources. They agreed on a royalty for every AC motor sold, but eventually got cheated on that deal as well. Politics and money struck again.

Nicholas was brilliant as a concepualist thinker, but many others were involved in the hard work of profecting the systems and motors. Steinmetz was one of the brilliant minds behind the perfection of the AC system. He was just as brilliant as Nicholas. He was the one that could take the conceptualizations and prototype builds and apply mathematics, to be able to properly engineer an efficient and workable system without doing things purely by experimentation.

I got into this study at the beginning of my career in the field from the discovery of that most of the control manufacturers started in Detroit, but almost all left Detroit and moved across lake Michigan to Milwaukee Wisconsin. This turned out to also be due to politics, unions and money. Many in the trade never knew that Square D, stands for Detroit. The first metal enclosed disconnect, now owned by the French. Similar was Bulldog Electric, manufacturers of plant overhead busway and enclosed disconnects. They morphed into ITE in Pennsylvania, and later became part of Siemens in Germany.

 

[junkhound]

190214-2329 EST

How many of you have your name on a US patent? ........
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A few, but 100% rights to everything owned by company.

Interesting sidelight: Patent trolls

As a condition of employment, we (engineers, technicians, factory workers, janitors, CEO: everyone) are required to submit 'invention disclosures' to company whenever we think we have developed anything that is not already well known. Most often in the past, company had determined, if idea of minimal financial value, to not do the paperwork for a patent. Often work was related to military contract for which company had no financial rights, and a few times a patent WAS pursued at the direction of the government contracting agency to protect government interests.

Trolls have changed all that, about everything gets patented now if one has a technique or device not previously patented and patent search shows no 'prior art'.

Used to be about 1 in 20 or even 1 in 50 disclosures to the company intellectual property office were actually patented.

Last year I received 4 patents. Just 10 years earlier NONE of those ideas would have been worth the effort to apply for a patent. 1st patent 40 some years ago had a number in the 4 millions, latest was 10,xxx,xxx!

 

[gar]

190216-0931 EST

MTW:

Is your last name Wilson?

Some corrections to your comments.

Ford and Edison never met until some time in the late 1890s. By this time Edison is about 50 years old. In Port Huron in the movie young Tom Edison a Mr. Waddell is mentioned. I have wondered if this was possibly the great grandfather of several of my schoolmates.

I believe it was baggage car rather than caboose.

Edison's early financial connections were I believe via Western Union.

I don't believe Ford had any particular connection with Morgan. Ford and bankers did not get along very well.

.

 

[gar]

100216-1024

To understand inventions and patents you need definitions for these words.

Invention ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention

US Patent ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law

To a great extent new inventions are non-obvious modifications to previous inventions.

Swan's light bulb was low resistance, and not long life.

The following provide some useful information.
https://www.bulbs.com/learning/history.aspx
https://www.thoughtco.com/thomas-edison-1779841
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan

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