Ask A Genius 1111: Invention and Public Relations
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/09/27
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yeah, let’s keep it short. What do you think Thomas Edison felt when he finally got the light bulb to work?
Rick Rosner: Well, Edison ran an invention factory. He had dozens of people working for him. He was great at PR, so the image we have of him personally working all the time is probably more of a myth. There’s that story of him taking short naps and standing up in a closet because he had no time to spare—maybe it’s true. But he had tons of assistants. Developing the light bulb was likely running electricity through many filaments, trying different materials to see what worked without burning out too quickly. He probably tried hundreds, if not thousands, of materials.
Jacobsen: Yeah, was he feeling lost, like he’d never find the right material? Or was it just another project among many that his assistants worked on?
Rosner: I don’t think it was like Einstein’s lonely search with general relativity, which took him years to develop. Einstein sometimes despaired, wondering if he’d ever devised the mathematical structure to describe how gravity worked. Eventually, a mathematician friend suggested a matrix structure, and it clicked; where you can’t distinguish between being pressed into the back of an accelerating train and standing in a gravitational field, the principle is that an accelerating frame and a gravitational field are essentially the same.
But I don’t think Edison had that same kind of despair. He had a lab, a team, and a reputation for inventing. They worked on ideas until something clicked—like the phonograph. They probably had a process of brainstorming, testing, and eliminating ideas that weren’t worth developing. Half the ideas probably got dropped early, and more would be scrapped because they couldn’t find the right technology. However, the ones that worked were what made Edison famous.
Jacobsen: So it was more like business as usual in his lab, right? Refining ideas until they worked.
Rosner: It must have been exhilarating once they realized something was finally working, but it was likely a process of refining materials to last longer. The first light bulbs didn’t last very long, after all.
You’d get about 6 or 8 hours out of the early bulbs. Then they had to work with materials that could last longer—maybe a year or two, depending on how many hours you kept them on. Plus, they needed cheap materials for mass production.
So, it wasn’t just about making it work—it was about scaling up, making it affordable. But Edison was also a vicious businessman. Books have been written, and movies have been made about the “war” between Tesla and him and Westinghouse over direct current (DC) versus alternating current (AC).
Jacobsen: Ironically, Elon Musk named his company Tesla because he acts more like Edison.
Rosner: He’s a ruthless bullshitter but a good administrator of companies—he gets the right people in place. Yeah, when you compare Musk and Edison, they have many similarities. You wonder if Musk’s excesses are as much a product of the time we live in as they are of his personality. If he’d lived 100 years ago, society might not have supported him being such a big asshole. The monstrousness of industrialists took different forms back then.
Rosner: There’s a book called The Psychopath Test that talks about the emergence of psychopaths in positions of leadership—in business and politics. Robert Hare was one of the pioneers of that research.
Jacobsen: Oh yeah, Hare came out of Canada, right? His research was based on the West Coast, maybe Vancouver. Robert Hare—like a rabbit. A lot of good research in the social sciences has come out of Canada.
Rosner: Definitely. Canada is overrepresented in certain areas, including entertainment. You’ve got people like Shatner and Trebek and many of the Second City people—plenty of Canadians in the spotlight.
Funny enough, on the first show I worked on, we had a category called “Dead or Canadian.” You’d name a famous person, and the contestants had to say if they were Canadian or dead. It was a hit.Jacobsen: That’s hilarious.
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
License & Copyright
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.
In-Sight Publishing 