Thomas Edison’s Ambitious “To-Do” List from 1888
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* Cotton Picker - didn't get done in Edison's time, done in mid 20th century
* New Standard Phonograph, Hand turning phonograph - product improvements
* New Slow speed cheap Dynamo - ?
* New Expansion Pyromagnetic Dynamo - ?
* Deaf Apparatus - hearing aid. Edison never developed a good amplifier
* Electrical Piano - also needed an amp, (but see Teleharmonium)
* Long distance standard Telephone Transmitter which employs devices of recording phonogh - something else that needed an amp
* Telephone Coil of Fe [iron] by tt in Parafine or other insulator - loading coil?
* Platina Point Trans using new phono Recorder devices - point-contact microphone, a dead end.
* Grid Battery for Telephones, etc. - a battery improvement
* Improved Magnetic Bridge for practical work - something to replace the Wheatstone bridge and mirror galvanometer, a sensitive but un-amplified lab instrument. Again, if only he'd had an amp...
* Motograph Mirror, relay, Relay, Telephone practical - the motograph was a really clunky way to amplify, using an unusual physical effect where the friction between a rotating chalk cylinder and a contact changes with the current through the contact. Dead end, although the phenomenon was used once in an IBM line printer paper drive clutch.
* Artificial Cable - ?
* Phono motor to work on 100 volt ckts - routine job
* Duplicating Phono Cylinders - the Edison Amberoll process; many playable cylinders still exist.
* Deposit in vacuo on lace, gold + silver also on cotton molten chemical compound of lustrous surfaces to imitate silk— also reg plating system - ?
* Vacuous Ore milling Large Machine, Magnetic Separator Large, Locking material for Iron sand - part of Edison's cement and rock crushing period
* Artificial Silk, Artificial filaments - trying to find something better for incandescent lamps, pre-tungsten
* Uninflammable Insulating Material - General Electric Deltabeston felted asbestos insulation - "Will not age or crack". Worked great, except for the asbestos hazard
* Good wax for phonograph - he did that
* Phonographic Clock - "speaking clock - was done eventually, but not by Edison
* Large Phonograph for Novels, etc. - long-playing records, not in Edison's time
* Pig Iron Expmts with Electricity + Magnetism, Malleablizing Cast now in Vacuo - ?
* Drawing fine wire - figuring out how to draw tungsten wire for lamps was really tough, but GE eventually did it. Edison not involved
* Joy phonograph for Dolls - somebody did that in Edison's time. Mass produced as Mattel's Chatty Cathy in the 1950s.
* Cable Motograph, Very Loud Motograph telephone with 1/3 siz phonogh motor. - more attempts to amplify
* Magneto telephone with actual contact end magnet compression of an adjustable rubber press as in new phones - ?
* Snow Compressor - ??
* Glass plate water ore repeator - ??
* Tinned faced [illeg.] for Stove Castings - somebody did that, old stoves often have tin facings
* Refining Copper Electrically - somebody did that too, but not Edison
* Quad neutral relay - another multiplex telgraphy component
* Cheap low induct Cop Insulating material for Lead Cable people - insulating materials were a big problem in Edison's day. No plastic, no synthetic rubber. Lots of wood, fabric, paper, tar, etc., all bad.
* 200 volt 20 cp lamp - another size of light bulb
* Recording Volt Indicator - done, but not by Edison
* Box balancing System - ?
* Alternating Machine + Transformer - Tesla's department
* Platinum wire [illeg.] cutting Machine, silver wire wood cutting system - hot wire cutting? Dead end for wood, although today we have laser cutters.
* Boron fil. - Boron filaments didn't happen
* Hg [mercury] out of Lamp - beginnings of environmentalism?
* Phonaplex Repeater - another problem that needed an amp.
* Squirting glass sheet tube etc. Nickel [illeg.] - glass extrusion worked fine, but Edison didn't invent it
* Artificial Mother Pearl - too early for plastics
* Red Lead pencils equal to graphite, India Ink, Tracing Cloth - shopping list?
* Ink for blind - not by Edison
* Fluffy Incandescent Burner for gas - lantern mantle. Done, but by Edison?
* Regenerative Kerosene Burner - ?
* Centralized arc in arc Lamp, Cai–[illeg.] Tesla arc lamp test - ?
* Strengthening alternating cli by sternt Dynamo - ?
* Electroplating Machines for Schenectady - OK, must do day job
* Condenser Transformer - a charge pump? Common today in IC size
* Sqr ft diffraction gratings in silver by 5000 [illeg.] tool special [illeg.] lathe for ornamental purposes - popular with hippies in the 1960s
* Cheap plan produce Mimeograph surfaces - Edison mimeograph upgrade?
* Miners battery + lamp - good product idea, done by many
* Sorting Coal from Slate Machine - mechanize a job done by kids. Coal floats, slate doesn't, and coal breakers exploit this.
* Butter direct from Milk - ?
* Burning asphalt Candles by high chimney - bad idea
* Magnets RR signals - ?
* Soften [illeg.] of books transfer to Cop plate + plate to [illeg.] matrix - ?
* Telephone Repeater - another need for an amp
* Substitute for Hard rubber - not really solved until neoprene in WWII
* Artificial Ivory - ABS plastic was a long way off
* Revolving Thermo - ?
* Caller Indicator for Jump Telegh - ?
* Marine Telegraphy - undersea cable, or ship to shore?
* Long distance speaking tube filled H20 2 dia pressure - dead end
* Lend plate battery for modifying attending Current - ?
* Two revolving bands in battery Lead faced press in liquid close together + out into separate chambers to [illeg.]reduce by gas the other - ?
* Siren phonogh - another need for an amp
* Perm mag like an electromag of [illeg.] hand steel high polish separately magnetized + forced together powerfully[illeg.] - magnetic materials in Edison's day were weak by modern standards. If he'd tried adding some cobalt...
* Telephone working more [illeg.] - yes, focus on day job
* Eartubes formed crescent [illeg.] wire - ?
* Cheap Voltmeter - outsource to New Jersey?
* Chalk Battery - dead end
* Dynamo or motor long tube in long magnetic field top + bottom contacts forcing water through generator current by – passage. [Illeg.] - the beginnings of magnetohydrodynamics?
* Thermo battery slick Copper oxidized then plated over surface oxide nailed to make good contact [illeg.] - ?
* Disk Phonograph - that worked out very well
Infact, I'm going to not finish more now.
His telephony and phonograph inventions all suffered from the lack of an amplifier. He was close. He discovered the "Edison effect", the beginnings of electronic vacuum tubes, in 1875, but didn't follow up. Instead, he developed workarounds - a loudspeaker driver connected to carbon button microphone, the clunky motograph, and a microphone diaphragm driving a needle valve on a steam line, the "steam shout" PA system. None worked well. Not until 1906, when de Forest invented the triode vacuum tube, was there a useful electrical amplifier.
Having all the gain you can use in a small, cheap package was a century in the future for Edison.
All to prove the dangers of AC power.
http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/10/19/edison-publicly-tortured...
Edit: In all seriousness, the man and the elephant were already scheduled to be killed. So it sucks, but he did so many amazing things that this is easily overshadowed.
Torture is never "easily overshadowed" in my book. Some things just cannot be erased, no matter how many great things you accomplish.
I don't see the difference between this statement and saying that it's alright to conduct experiments on inmates as long as we discover something amazing.
There's nothing "modern" about not hurting things. That is something a person understands on a fundamental level, because it can happen to them. People just rationalize and don't care and think they're above it. There were people who were against such things in all times, perhaps just not a lot of them.
Wonder what it says about genius and hard work if something so trivial was impossible for them despite all their accomplishments?
Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List (circa 1490) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187316
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:openculture.com+intitle...
Johnny Cash's Short and Personal To-Do List:
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/johnny_cashs_short_and_pe...
[1] Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century
You might be interested in "Edison", by Josephson.
I get the exact opposite impression.
I'm not sure how to describe it better, but I do most sincerely wish that they had cooperated, rather than competed; I think the two together would have been an awesome powerhouse of invention and ideas, with Tesla's formal education and knowledge tempering and informing Edison's "independent inventor's" can-do attitude.
I believe had they, we likely would have had an electronic amplifier much sooner (given Edison's discovery of the "Edison effect" which led to the vacuum tube much later), plus radio, possibly even advancing the ideas and such of Hollerith (then again, I am surprised that a relay computer wasn't created much earlier, as Babbage knew of Boole and undoubtedly boolean algebra, and likely had knowledge on electrical telegraph circuits and early relays).
Then again, maybe it's better that it didn't happen, given the later horrors of WW1 (although, maybe that wouldn't have happened - perhaps the economy would have improved, or something else - no way of knowing, of course).
Audio books as thing in 1888!
I wonder what Elon Musk's "To-Do" list looks like... or Bezos or anyone with the resources like these two gagillion-aires.
-New Expansion Pyromagnetic Dynamo
-Deposit in vacuo on lace, gold + silver also on cotton molten chemical compound of lustrous surfaces to imitate silk also reg plating system
-Malleablizing Cast now in Vacuo
-Snow Compressor
I'm working on a fusion reactor, have wanted to evaporate and experiment with metals in a vacuum chamber, and I want to build a snow brick maker for fun in the winter...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uninflammable
Even more oddly, the double-negative (un & in) has no impact on its meaning "not flammable."
But in- is not necessarily negative, it's also a prefix that can mean "in" (like indoors, ingrown): inflammable means it "can be in flames".
Actually, French makes it more obvious, as the verb for setting aflame is "enflammer" where "en-" is clearly the prefix that means "in", not the prefix that means "not".
At least English uses two different prefixes for "uninflammable", even if there's some confusion possible. French has it as "ininflammable", with two "in-" prefixes that mean different things.
- New Standard Phonograph
- Invent the lightbulb
- Trick Telsa to do work for free
A much more insightful todo list for me would be to see one of the day-to-day todo lists I find myself writing for every weekend. These include things like "Finish writing chapter 15" or "Refactor [component] into [design pattern]." I want to see the granular tasks Edison and other "great men" worked on in the day-slivers of their lives.
Seeing a big list like this reinforces my impression of Edison as a less of the hands-on inventor our society tries to make him out to be and more of a high-level manager who put mostly signed the patents for everything his workshop of inventors produced.
If you haven't, read some more biographies about the man. You'll discover that things were a bit more complicated than what you may currently believe; above all else, Edison was a businessman who invented, and an inventor who knew business, and saw opportunities where others didn't.
That doesn't mean he was a saint - he had and did plenty of things that on retrospect weren't very moral, and questionably illegal. The way he treated his wife and children was terrible - but wasn't out of the norm for the era (unfortunately). And he was a master of taking and expanding on other's ideas and marketing them as his own; you can call that theft - perhaps plagiarism is a better term? - but it isn't anything different than what still happens today.
Excusable? No - but again, it's more complex - and Tesla had his own faults. I've found in my reading about both men, that they were both complex characters of their time. The real tragedy, IMHO, is that their individual prides got in the way of the possibility of their mutual cooperation; had they done so, history would likely be much different today.