Can Somebody (or Everybody) Help Me Figure This Out

[coylo]

Why didn't we have electric lights before 1879?

Despite what you have been taught, Edison did not invent the light bulb. What he did was commercialized it.

Yeah this is true!
Whats the point in inventing a device when the infastructure is not there to power it?
That was what Edison realised, therefore he would make most of his money in not electrical goods, but in suppling the electricity.....hence the worlds first electrical grid system was American.....he was a very clever businessman as well as an inventor!

I guess this is the difference between success and failure in this field!.....because as far as I know Swan made no money from his invention.

[ken_behrendt]

Jim wrote:

Edison was so convinced that he could make a light bulb work that he lied to the public and his financial backers saying that he had a working light bulb.

In the movie version of Edison's discovery of a working lightbulb design (this is the one in which Spencer Tracy portrays the inventor), they show one of Edison's employees, not Edison, who tells the newspaper reporters that Edison already had a working filament. Edison then chastises the employee for making the premature and unwarranted announcement.


Well, I found this discussion of Edison interesting because I live in the area of New Jersey where he prefected his lightbulb. I've visited his various laboratories in the area and am still in awe of the man. Some of this original lightbulbs are on permanent exhibition at a site in Menlo Park, NJ were they erected a huge tower to commemorate his invention of the lightbulb.

A lot of people do not realize that the material that Edison first used in the lightbulb that actually held up was a simple piece of baked and carbonized cotton thread! The much more durable tungsten filaments that are found in modern lightbulbs were developed by a black inventor years later.

There is some contention as to who actually invented the lightbulb and I think I've heard of inventors in both England and Germany who made prior claims to the device. But, their bulbs, although they used incandescent filaments, could not operate for more than a matter of minutes before they burned out. Only Edison's bulb was good for thousands of hours which made it practical.

I have often wondered why Edison had not tried something like using some sort of inert gas to protect the filament from oxidation instead of a vaccuum. Maybe such gases were not readily available in the 1870's or he found the vaccuum easier to work with.



ken

[docfeelsgood]

didn't "T. Henry Moray" build a free energy device only to be squashed by the government and have it destroyed by the fbi ?? seems like i read about it somewhere. it was an interesting story. "Doc."

[digitaljez]

This link seems a pretty average account of the invention of the light bulb.
There was a documentary some years ago that claimed the French inventor of the 'moving picture' fell off a train shortly before Edison claimed that as his own too. It gave accounts of many of the inventions and their true inventors. It painted a very nasty picture of the man.
Even Tesla claimed that Edison never made good on the terms of payment they had agreed. Edison dismissed the promise as 'American humour' that Tesla would need to familiarise himself with if he wanted to become a US citizen.

[jim_mich]

Yes, Moray build free energy devices. I have pictures. A number of attempts were made on his life and he started carring a gun for protection.

Gray was given a government suppression gag order. He then left Illinois in the middle of the night and moved to California where he thought he might be safer from the government.

Bearden was in the middle of negotiations (in the US) with a Japanese inventor of a free energy motor when agents from Japan burst in and hustled the inventor away.

The list goes on and on. Were they all just paranoid or were there people who didn't want their ideas to become known?

[pstroud]

Jim,

Makes you wonder..... There may be government spies monitoring this website, waiting for one of us to hit the lotto ticket to get the free ride to the back of the filing cabinet, under 6 ft of concrete.....

Preston :)

[P.T.]

Makes you wonder..... There may be government spies monitoring this website

Count on it.

[winkle]

i thought this was a government website

[ken_behrendt]

There are government "spies" monitoring websites, but they are interested in child predators and jihadist postings...I think they gave up on UFO's and free energy gadgets long ago!


ken