Let There Be Light Or "Son Et Lumiere"

"Tell us, what does it feel like to have failed 700 times?"

"I've not failed 700 times. I've not failed once. I've succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work, and when I've eliminated the ways that won't work, I'll find the way that will."

With words to that effect, Thomas Edison is alleged to have spoken to the syndicate of leading financiers who supported his endeavours to invent the electric light bulb. He had boldly announced that he would invent a safe, mild and inexpensive light bulb that would replace gaslight. And to our enormous benefit, he eventually did succeed.

Edison did not allow lack of theoretical knowledge or formal training to stand in his way. He is perhaps the quintessential American inventor, holding a world record 1,093 patents., but he had failed at school which he quit at the age of 12.

As we will see, a reason for this, his deafness, he turned to his advantage throughout his career. He had inherited severe hearing problems, and because much teaching was by rote, he was bored and was thought to be a misfit. To compensate, he became an omnivorous reader.

His first inventions grew out of a practical necessity. As an apprentice telegrapher, he spent much energy in improving the equipment and inventing devices to help him overcome his hearing difficulties in transcribing the messages.

His success led him to become a full-time inventor and entrepreneur, and he worked to improve the automatic telegraph system. In the process, his work advanced his own knowledge of chemistry and ultimately led to the development of important devices in the early office machine industry, such as the mimeograph. He was paid $100.000 by Western Union's bitter rival Jay Gould for his invention of the quadruplex system.

Edison made a major theoretical discovery at his laboratory and machine shop. This involved the use of carbon instead of magnets to vary and balance electric currents and led to the improvement in the amplification of the telephone, a device which was patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Edison also developed the carbon-button transmitter which is still used in telephone speakers and microphones.

His hearing handicap, together with his ingenuity and insight, led to inventions to improve the efficiency and speed of telegraphy and the audibility of the telephone. We have come a long since then in recording and reproducing sound. A long way from the first phonograph, and we owe a lot to Edison for our present day stereo systems.

Edison had the gift of serendipidy - often he went in a new and fruitful direction as a result of observing some unexpected phenomenon. While devising a machine to transcribe signals as they were received from the telephone in the form of the human voice, he was led to his most original discovery, the phonograph.

Earlier researchers theorised that if a sound could be graphically recorded, it would produce a distinct shape, or phonography. The sounds from his embryonic phonograph employing a stylus-tipped carbon transmitter to make impressions on a cylinder wrapped in tinfoil were declared to be the trick of a clever ventriloquist. But Edison became world famous overnight and a commercial product was eventually developed from this laboratory curiosity.

It is difficult to imagine a world today without reproduced sound and universal lighting. How easy it is to take for granted that the switch in the cupboard near the front door can plunge our house in darkness or flood it with light, yet the incandescent electric light had been the despair of inventors for 50 years. The basic problem was to keep the burner or bulb from being consumed, by  preventing it from overheating.

Edison in his search for a solution did not let his lack of theoretical knowledge of physics stand in his way, and used the expertise of others. He said "At the time I experimented on the incandescent lamp I did not understand Ohm's law." He also said "I do not depend on figures at all. 1 try an experiment and reason out the result, somehow by methods which I could not explain."

He experimented with a platinum filament, but the cost made it impractical. Eventually he found that carbonised bamboo fibre made a satisfactory material for the filament, providing a good light with the necessary high resistance. He himself supervised the installation of the world's first permanent commercial power system in central Manhatten in 1882. Edison's reputation as the world's greatest inventor was established.

He might also be considered the progenitor of the electronics industry by anticipating the discover of the electron, another accidental find made when a blue glow was observed at the positive pole and a blackening of the wire at the negative pole, which became known as the 'Edison effect'.

In his grand new laboratory he produced the commercial phonograph and developed the alkaline storage battery, a derivative of the phonograph. But as an industrialist he now had less time for inventions. He was a poor manager and worked best in unstructured surroundings with close associates.

Another great achievement of Edison's at this time was the foundation of the motion­picture industry. He conceived the idea of giving the illusion of motion to photographs shot in sequence, but did not succeed in synchronising sound and motion. But his work helped give birth to the silent movie era.

Edison was the principal supplier of alkaline batteries for submarines and electric vehicles and he even formed a company for the manufacture of electric automobiles. Henry Ford asked him to design a battery for the self-starter on the Model T.

His one disaster was derived from his work on the incandescent lamp. He developed a device to cull platinum from iron-bearing sand, but this failed commercially due to engineering problems and a slump in iron-ore prices.

Edison's career epitomised the ideal of applied research, for he always invented from necessity, and tried to devise something new he could manufacture. He never questioned whether something might by done, only how. His deafness served him in that his isolation fostered his conceptual thinking.

He was an egotist, tyrannical, charismatic, entertaining, yet often had difficulty socialising. The contradictory nature of his forceful personality must be partly attributable to his deafness, yet he became a legend and a folk hero, the fulfillment of the American dream of rags-to-riches through hard work and intelligence.

In the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "he was venerated and mourned as the man who, more than any other, had laid the basis for the technological and social revolution of the modern electric world."

Written by staff writer Hilary O'Nions