Edison didn't invent the light bulb either, merely improved existing designs, of which there were more than 20 at time. Additionally he was a patent troll who stole the designs of others and claimed the work of his assistants as his own. Hardly the lone genius working outside the system some people seem to think.

That doesn't change the point of this article, of course. It's just a personal bugaboo of mine.

A lot of Edison-bashers whine about his "patent-trolling", when what he did was exactly the same as others in that time frame. For one example, his invention of the carbon microphone was stolen by Berliner, working for Bell. Another was his invention of the phonograph, which was stolen also by Bell, who managed to get a patent for his 99%-the-same phonograph that was a near-copy of Edison's already-patented gramophone.

Edison was an early champion of equal-opportunity. The person he employed to convey his proposed patents to the US Patent Office was an African-American. He had many women employees. This was at a time when pretty much 100% of the other "hi-tech" employers only had white male employees. In contrast, Alexander Graham Bell (his chief rival in the 1875-1890 timeframe) was a racist, funding anti-black eugenics "research".

Most of the Edison-bashers are also Tesla fanatics. Tesla was brilliant but unfocused. Without Westinghouse, all his ideas on AC would've been just academic papers (later JP Morgan financed him as well). Westinghouse was another "patent-troll", but his contributions to AC cannot be faulted. However, his allegiance to AC was based upon trying for an end-run around the DC patents Edison had. Basically, he "lucked out" by picking AC, and by obtaining the services of Tesla (the anecdote about Edison not paying Tesla $50,000 is a wives tale)

Edison had many of his inventions stolen by others. Just one example is the huge example of Talkies, and film in general. His work on film is largely forgotten nowadays, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences didn't forget when they gave him a special award in 1929 thanking him for being the inventor of movies.

BTW, all modern electronics owe their operation to something called the "Edison Effect", which Edison discovered.

Without tubes, there would have never been semi-conductors.

Without vacuum tubes, you wouldn't be able to listen to radio or TV - right now. They are still used for all high-power switching, since there is no such thing as a piece of silicon that can handle the current they can, as in transmitters.

There is more to electronics than wikipedia

> It is entirely possible that solid state electronics could have evolved without your apparently-beloved Edison.

Yeah, and maybe Hitler would've been killed by Professor Farnsworth and we wouldn't have had WWII.

I don't "love" Edison. I love historical accuracy. Fleming & De Forest came decades after Edison. Did you know Edison had almost no formal education? He was self-taught, and in light of the fact that his accomplishments (for the time) were cutting edge in the most "hi-tech" field there was is remarkable.

BTW, I was certainly aware of the primitive semi-conductors you mentioned, but as I said before, wikipedia is no substitute for an in-depth knowledge of electronics & science history.