Congress declines new vote recording system...146 years ago today

Today marks the day in 1868 when Thomas Alva Edison filed his first patent paper for his Electrical Vote Recording machine. Congress said no thanks.

Designed to speed up the vote tallying process, it was soundly defeated by politicians who said it would not allow them to take their time voting. The chairman of the committee, unimpressed with the speed with which the instrument could record votes, told him that "if there is any invention on earth that we don't want down here, that is it." The slow pace of roll call voting in Congress and other legislatures enabled members to filibuster legislation or convince others to change their votes. Edison's vote recorder was never used.