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‘Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.’ Part 2 – by Kevin Poulter. This month marks the 75th anniversary of Edison’s death. While his genius was recognised during his lifetime, it’s only since his passing that the magnitude of that genius started to become appreciated. Edison wins the patent wars 8  Silicon Chip siliconchip.com.au T homas Edison discovered three amazing keys to business success: hire people with different skills than you possess, employ others to multiply your expertise. . . and the company who has the patents wins. He organised hundreds of inventors and craftsmen working in buildings, soon called ‘invention factories’. Edison was titled by journalists ‘the wizard of Menlo Park’, as creations such as the phonograph were so startling, some thought only black magic could produce such amazing technology. This is difficult to imagine today, as we are surrounded by masses of sound devices but in an era when the only sounds came from nature, recorded sound was beyond belief. In its early years, the phonograph was so startling and mystifying, it was even demonstrated personally to the US President and presented by spruikers in side-show alley tents, alongside other amazing sights, fakes and illusions. Edison hated the time-consuming and expensive process of engaging patent attorneys, preparing the patent documents and applying but he knew exclusive patents guaranteed business. By patenting part of a process or design, Edison held the trump card, even if he was not the original inventor of the device. For example, some of his patents supported and described a particular detail, like the shape of the light-globe envelope, or the method of making the envelope. One patent even covered the style and design of a wooden phonograph cabinet, right down to the ornate scrolled cut-outs. Edison applied for his patents in many countries, even the Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania! A recent search (for this article) resulted in records of Edison patents granted in Australia from 1878 to 1903. Edison established 1093 US patents, more than issued to any other, through the ‘Edison Department’ in the US Patent office. His genius reached worldwide, with successful patents in over 20 nations. Few people of this era have an inkling of the vastness his billion-dollar empire grew into, or the wide range of Edison inventions and production. Most of all, Edison had a passion and fire to invent. One of his workers said years later, “Mr Edison had his desk in one corner and after completing an invention, he would jump up and down, doing a kind of Zulu war dance. He would swear something awful. We would crowd around him and he would show us the new invention and explain it to the pattern-maker and tell us what to do about it.” His inventions (or improvements) include the electric lamp, concrete houses, the phonograph, methods of processing ore, weapons, ‘alkaline’ batteries, document duplicators, electric pen, magnetic ‘iron finder’, electric generation stations, multi-channel telegraph signals over one wire, plus an electric train. Edison also made other’s inventions a practical reality – like making the telephone loud enough to Edison purchased rights to the Phantoscope, producing the projector as a new Edison invention named the Vitascope. Exhibitors could choose films from the Edison Studio inventory. siliconchip.com.au October 2006  9 The 1892 Edison Multipolar Dynamo, driven by a Triple-Expansion Engine and designed for large electrical power requirements, like town grids. One of Edison’s few mistakes was to apply all his inventive powers into DC for town and rail supplies. Until recently, DC remained as the preferred supply for railways, with the inevitable voltage losses along the line. be heard over long distances. Electricity generation To grow his business, especially supplying town electricity equipment, Edison spent a fortune taking huge dynamos and equipment to major shows in America, Europe and the United Kingdom. Equipment was sold in the area, where possible, to save the expense of a return journey. His phonograph was sorely needing development, forgotten for years after the initial launch, as Edison was distracted by new inventions, especially those related to developing electricity supply systems. When Edison decided to take the bold and expensive step of participating in the 1881 International Exposition of Electricity in Paris, an associate suggested an improved phonograph would create interest. So the amazing sound reproducer was finally revived and improved. At the Paris Exhibition, Edison displayed his super-dynamo, though many people and press thronged enmasse to his phonograph demonstration, listening in amazement! 10  Silicon Chip Prominent buildings around the world and the Exhibition were illuminated with lamps from a number of inventors. The dynamo was later moved to London, where it lit 3,000 street-lamps, a church and the main post office. Not all of Edison’s inventions made money; in fact some lost a fortune. He was convinced a concrete house made from standard mouldings would offer the masses a strong, economical, comfortable home. He was right but hurdles like the availability of alternatives such as cheap and plentiful timber killed the project and Edison lost money. More than a century later, concrete panels are the material of choice for most factories, skyscrapers and even homes – in the form of apartments. His biggest mistake was an unwavering support for DC, with its inherent losses along long lines. Edison declared that AC was unsafe and had public arguments with people like Westinghouse. He even tried to get AC over 800 volts banned. Edison’s staff included carpenters, glass-blowers and metal engineers, as inventions had to be made into working examples, to test, display and prove the idea was practical. Well-crafted working prototypes were presented to financiers, for funding the production in large numbers. He also employed the best scientific minds of the era, such as Tesla, who championed the concept of AC. Tesla left, complaining Edison had cheated him out of a $50,000 bonus for improving the dynamo. Tesla next sold an improved AC electric motor design to George Westinghouse. In 1912, when Edison and Tesla both were nominated to receive the joint Nobel Prize, Tesla declined and neither ever received this honour. Other brilliant inventors liked the secure jobs of the ‘Invention Factory’, as few had the production and promotional acumen of Edison. Despite being the administrator, Edison worked around the clock, his hands marked with cuts, cracked and stained like any of his production workers. His clothes were not the elegant suits of a leading businessman either, rather the well-worn appearance of a manufacturing worker. Visitors somesiliconchip.com.au A re-enactment of Edison and his staff producing the first glass envelopes for lamps – from the 1940 Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer film, ‘Edison the Man’. Spencer Tracy (right) portrays Edison, with a genuine glassblower (centre), employed by the Studio. This globe is a replica of the one that is believed to have been used by Edison to achieve a perfect vacuum. times would mistake Edison for one of the workmen. Edison established financial and production partners across the world, creating new companies to manufacture and market his products. Some developed from legal conflict, like the patent battle with the British inventor, Sir Joseph Swan, a chemist and electrical engineer. The lamp The concept of the electric lamp was known for many years but the elusive component was the filament. No metal known to the science of the time could be heated to incandescence, without burning away. Also it was becoming clear that any filament needed to be in a complete vacuum to remain intact. Edison experimented with 1600 earths, minerals, plants and threads in the quest for a reliable filament. A broken fan in his workshop was cannibalised for a strip of bamboo, giving such promising results, Edison declared ‘Somewhere in God Almighty’s workshop, is a dense, woody growth with fibres almost geometrically parallel and with practically no pith from siliconchip.com.au which we can make the filaments the world needs’. In his quest for this extraordinary plant, Edison despatched people to the ends of the earth; to far-flung lands such as the Orient, China, Japan, Brazil, Cuba, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. As a result, Edison obtained 6000 distinct plants, most of them bamboos. During his experiments, he discovered the ‘Edison Effect’, where electrons not only flowed through a vacuum but only in one direction. He coated the outside of a lamp with tin foil and noted a current flow between the hot positive terminal of the filament and the tin foil. Edison incorporated the phenomenon in a patent as a voltage regulating device but nearly 25 years later, Fleming found the first use of this ‘diode effect’. Soon Lee De Forest employed the same techniques in his radio inventions. Enter Joseph Swan In 1845, Swan was sure a carbon filament lamp would work and from 1848, he too experimented with numerous materials to produce the carbonised filament. By 1855, he made a bright glow from a short strip, powered by fifty battery cells. Like Edison, Swan was almost simultaneously finding the lack of a perfect vacuum was the remaining problem. And like Edison, he found technology that produced a near-perfect vacuum and then a longer-lasting filament, producing working lamps in 1878. To his regret, for nearly two years and despite prompting from his assistant, Swan didn’t patent the concept. Swan said so many people already had worked on the electric lamp, it was not capable of sustaining a patent. How wrong he was! Edison saw the international potential and patented the carbon filament lamp in the UK on November 10, 1879. Edison now had the UK patent, contesting Swan’s right to manufacture electric lamps. Edison won the patent war but Swan then patented the method of creating a perfect vacuum, by making the filament glow while evacuating the globe, plus another breakthrough – parchmentised celOctober 2006  11 Edison in his lab. First and foremost, Edison was a chemist. lulose thread filaments – soon to become the standard for all commercial lamps. This impasse was solved by Edison commercially joining forces with Swan in the UK in 1881, forming a virtual monopoly, the Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company Limited. Their lamps were later marketed under the ‘Ediswan’ brand. Patent wars with other electric lamp pretenders continued, fuelled by competitors, who decided if Swan could be shown as the inventor of the filament lamp in the UK, then Edison’s patent would be bad, based on ‘prior user’. In an astounding move, to protect the now successful Edison/Swan commercial enterprise from all outsiders, Swan’s factory mustered great resources to show the carbon conductor was not a filament. They won the case but this further obscured Swan’s honour as the inventor of the first practical lamp. Sir Joseph Swan is also recorded in history as the inventor of a carbon 12  Silicon Chip printing process and patented photographic paper coated with bromide emulsion in 1879, plus other products such as artificial silk. Edison’s lamps first illuminated theatres in London, Berlin and Prague, breweries, paper and woolen mills in France and Germany and factories in Europe. He even illuminated Australia, providing lighting for the government buildings in Brisbane and The House of Assembly in Melbourne. In the book ‘Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 1984’ Shar Jones Glebe states ‘Electricity was established in Sydney in 1879. Three years later an entrepreneur, Henry Kingsbury, purchased exclusive rights to sell Edison bulbs. Kingsbury was later sued for infringement of patent rights and as a result, Edison’s rights were upheld in New South Wales. The first suburbs of Sydney to be connected with electricity were Redfern and Woolloomooloo.’ In a development that foreshadowed the glare of Las Vegas, an illuminated ‘Edison’ sign was featured at London’s Crystal Palace Electrical Exposition in 1882, followed by a motor-driven sign at Berlin’s Health Exhibition the following year. The sign spelt out Edison’s name, letter by letter. He was also a good promoter, employing a man to walk around exhibitions, handing out leaflets, with lamps wired to his clothes from the hat down. When the spruiker reached discreet contacts in the floor and stood on them, he would light up. Similar displays illuminated promoters in busy streets. Edison’s lighting systems reached across the globe, including a lighting and electrical fire-alarm system, installed in four hotels. Back in New York, the benefits for industry and commerce were rapidly revealed. One wholesale grocery company had 50 clerks working under gas-light, at risk of their health. The huge room of staff soon enjoyed pollution-free electric light. siliconchip.com.au Thomas Edison worked closely with George Eastman of Kodak, using Eastman’s film in early motion pictures filmed by Edison’s crews. Many of Edison’s first movies remain and can be seen on-line. The 35mm film shown here is the same dimensions as the miniature film used in domestic cameras by the late 1930s, through to today. often I will work at a thing and get where I can’t see anything more of it and just put it aside and go at something else... the first thing I know, the very idea I wanted will come to me. Then I drop the other and go back and work it out.” Even in company, he would reach for his notebook and sketch or scribble new ideas. He filled 3000 notepads from the age of 30. While developing the cylinder phonograph, Edison also precursored designs for recording sound on disks and tapes, predicting the audioreproducer’s main use as a dictating machine. He also made miniature versions of the phonograph, installed in talking dolls and children’s pianos. The talking doll housed the tiny cylinder phonographs, with girls in the factory recording nursery rhymes. His companies produced media too, like cylinders with recorded speeches, sounds of nature and music (later on 78 rpm discs) and motion picture films. Telephone transmitter Many inventors experimented with the telephone or ‘speaking telegraph’, as it was then called. One year after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876, Edison designed a superior transmitter, the carbon microphone, one of the most important inventions ever, installed in billions of telephones until recent times. He also determined how to increase the electrical signals, boosting the telephone’s range from a few kilometres to hundreds of kilometres. Western Union bought the improved telephone patents for $100,000, which Edison asked to be paid in seventeen yearly instalments – not trusting himself with all the money. He had made and lost fortunes before. Western Union promoted the telephone as a super-telegraph, connected and spoken by an operator. Home use was not considered, as homes didn’t have electricity. Comparing Bell’s and Edison’s telephone was no contest. Edison’s was much louder. Despite battles over the telephone patents, Edison and Bell became friends and business partners. Working with Edison was reportedly friendly, with Edison rapidly developing new ideas. He said “very siliconchip.com.au Edison produced ‘Alkaline’ batteries for use in electric vehicles, as seen in this 1911 photograph. October 2006  13 in Northwest States. People in the northwest had heard of electricity and Mitchell believed if he established electrical power in one town, the others would want the same. Initially they sold 250 lamps in Seattle and financed a company to build a small steam-generated power station and distribution system along the waterfront. Soon another 600 lamps were sold in Tacoma. From these humble beginnings, the Edison General Electric Co. started the giant Pacific Power and Light Company, worth $836 million in 1970! By the 1890s, hundreds of communities throughout the world had Edison power stations. After investing in manufacturers and forming companies that produced generators, power cables, electric lamps and lighting fixtures, the General Electric Company was formed in 1892. In New Jersey, he built a laboratory 10 times the size of his Menlo Park ‘invention factory’. This lab had a three-story office, housing thousands of journals and books, space for mechanical, chemical and electrical experiments and later included facilities for manufacturing. Motion pictures Edison with optical components in 1913. Note the microscopically enlarged photographs on the wall. Edison’s main achievement with optics was the motion picture projector. In order to sell large numbers of lamps, there needed to be a readilyaccessible supply of electricity, so Edison concentrated on town supply systems. In 1881, Edison’s company moved to New York City to promote the construction of electric power plants in cities. Other companies were trying to get contracts to light the city but when Edison hosted the city politicians an electrically-lit dinner at Menlo Park, they were soon won over and work began, digging up New York streets for Edison’s cables. Edison built the Pearl Street Station, a steam electric power plant in 1882, providing electricity to many customers. Soon he established a training school for electrical engineers, who worked at the Pearl Street generating 14  Silicon Chip station and Edison’s machine shops. One trainee was a young naval officer cadet, Sidney Mitchell, who had enjoyed the opportunity to assist installing and operating an incandescent lighting system on the USS Trenton – the Navy’s first electric lighting system in a vessel. Mitchell learnt how to make dynamos and travelled around New York with the wiring squads. The installation of electricity in homes was rather like the roll-out of cable TV: first the electrical cables and associated connections had to be placed in trenches and past your house, before being able to connect up. Mitchell learnt about power distribution, insulation, lamp sockets and power connections. In less than 12 months, Mitchell was offered the exclusive agency for Edison products Edison was a founder of the motionpicture industry. In 1888, he met British-born photographer Edward Muybridge, who was studying motion, by taking a rapid series of still photographs at a very high shutter speed. Projected on a spinning frame, the almost motion-picture effect inspired Edison to investigate the field. Edison planned a motion-picture device that looked like the cylinder phonograph, writing “I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear.” Edison and his lab photographer, WKL Dickson, began recording a series of images on celluloid film, then projecting them in rapid succession like continuous action. Over five years, Edison invented the peephole kinetoscope, the first practical motionpicture device that used a roll of film. It consisted of a cabinet with a peephole or eyepiece on top, displaying a 90-second film. The camera was called the kinetograph and employed George Eastman’s 35mm sprocketed celluloid film, very similar to today’s film. siliconchip.com.au onstrating it successfully, the project failed. It was hard to compete with the rich iron ore discovered in Minnesota, which was less expensive to mine and process. Storage batteries. Edison’s ‘Alkaline’ batteries were more reliable, at a premium price. The 1911 model is shown here. The first Kinetoscopes in Australia were exhibited in Sydney on 30th November 1894 and ‘were shown in city after city to much acclaim’. In 1893, Dickson built the all-black studio, nicknamed ‘Black Maria’. Edison’s motion-picture film studio was the first in the world, filming many people, performers and actors. Few know that in 1908, Edison and most other movie inventors pooled their patents, forming the Motion Picture Patents Company, a virtual monopoly, controlling the production, distribution and exhibition of motion pictures for many years. Finally, in 1917, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled the company was an illegal monopoly, reducing Edison’s influence and opening the way for many other film companies. Ore milling Edison’s inventions and businesses included interests in processing ore and Portland cement production. His ore processor featured giant electrically-operated magnets, to separate iron from iron ore. The processing plant in northern New Jersey moved raw ore on conveyor belts, in a system like the assembly line later employed by Henry Ford. Despite investing more than US $1,000,000 in ore milling and demsiliconchip.com.au Batteries were essential for communications, railroad systems, electric vehicles, starters for petrol-driven vehicles and much more, so the Edison factory was on a major quest to produce lighter, more durable and powerful batteries. They made outstanding progress. If only electricity had prevailed, we would not have such a current demand for petrol. In 1911, he was producing an ‘alkaline’ battery (named after the alkaline electrolyte – not the same as alkaline dry-cell batteries today). The positive plate had nickel-hydrate active material in perforated tubes and the negative plate active material was iron oxide, in perforated flat pockets. The Alkaline battery was lighter and cleaner than the lead battery, at a premium cost. Other advantages included its light weight – about half the weight of a similar performance lead battery, much longer life and relative immunity to rapid discharge, full discharge, standing idle while charged or discharged, or overcharging. It was primarily marketed for electric vehicle work, with two models, rated at 40 and 80 ampere-hours. A gas valve prevented the loss of electrolyte during charging, plus reduced fuming; ensuring maintenance was only an occasional top-up with distilled water. Portland Cement One of Edison’s companies began mass-producing Portland cement in the early 1900s. The plant used some equipment from his failed ore project and was one of the biggest in the United States, located in western New Jersey. He introduced poured concrete houses and cement for large factories, plus supplied cement for buildings in New York city, like the Yankee Stadium. He also designed concrete furniture – even a phonograph cabinet made of ornate-design concrete. Phonograph Disk records were easier to produce and store than cylinder recordings. Reluctantly, Edison switched to the disk format in 1913. However, he continued to develop and later sold the Ediphone, a dictating machine based on his cylinder phonograph. During the 1914-1918 World War, Edison produced chemicals, plus batteries for submarines. He offered many inventions but the Navy refused them all. Edison concluded they didn’t like civilian interference! Even in his eighties, Edison tested 3000 plants, to find another source of rubber. He found a suitable plant but by then factory-synthetic rubber was invented. Edison was rarely ill and worked around the clock, believing most people ate and slept too much. Edison was honoured by his friend, Henry Ford, who reconstructed Edison’s lab in his museum complex. On completion, Edison inspected the building, complete with much of the equipment he used to make worldfamous inventions. After so much effort to perfectly recreate the entire lab, all attention focussed on Edison, when he commented “you have one thing wrong.” He then wryly said, “my lab was always much messier!” Edison was known by close friends for his story-telling and sense of humour but his strongest friendships were with business associates. Henry Ford became his strongest confidant and friend, joining Harvey Firestone and naturalist John Burroughs on camping trips. Along with millions of references to Edison on the web, travellers today can see four major historical sites and museums: his birthplace in Milan, Ohio, winter home in Fort Myers, Florida and the restored Menlo Park laboratory, which Ford moved from New Jersey to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The US National Park Service manages the Edison National Historic Site at West Orange, including Edison’s West Orange laboratory and the inventor’s home in Llewellyn Park. Edison, the genius, died on October 18, 1931. As a tribute to the most famous inventor who had changed the world, at President Hoover’s request, the lights were extinguished for a short time at the White House and throughout the SC nation. References: www.aaa1.biz/sc.html October 2006  15