Abstract
Thomas Edison wrote this in a letter to an acquaintance in 1878, soon after starting work on his electric lighting system. It is a telling description of his way of inventing because his laboratory notebooks are filled with descriptions of bugs – things that “gave out” – and the ways in which he overcame them. Edison used the word bug for these problems so early and so frequently that he probably coined it. As early as 1873 he described a “bug trap” that overcame a bug in one of his telegraph inventions, 16 years before the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary (1889), also from Edison.,
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Notes
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TAEB 4:1570.
- 2.
TAEB 2:348.
- 3.
Third edition Oxford English Dictionary, “Bug, N.2,” (Oxford University Press, 2006). http://www.oed.com/
- 4.
Charles (‘Charlie’) Pitt Edison (1860–1879) Thomas Edison’s nephew and promising inventor. After the death of James Adams, Charles Edison followed him to Paris where he too died, aged 19.
- 5.
Thomas A Edison, The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison, ed. Dagobert D Runes (New York: Philosophical Library Inc., 1948), 43.
- 6.
Washington Post. “Genius before Science.” Washington Post, 19 April 1878.
- 7.
TAED MBSB1:171.
- 8.
Thomas A. Edison Papers. 2019. “Thomas A. Edison Papers.” [web site]. The Thomas Edison Papers, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. http://edison.rutgers.edu/
- 9.
Thomas A Edison, Menlo Park: The Early Years, April 1876–December 1877, ed. Paul B Israel, Keith A Nier, and Louis Carlat, vol. 3, The Papers of Thomas a Edison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
- 10.
Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) Bell was a Scottish-born inventor-entrepreneur who initially followed his father in becoming a teacher of the deaf. Bell migrated to Canada, later moving to the United States, there taking as a student Mabel Hubbard, the deaf daughter of Gardiner Hubbard a prominent Boston lawyer and financier. Bell had been experimenting with automata that produced speech and with telegraphy for some years and at Gardiner Hubbard’s suggestion developed his own ideas for the telephone. In 1877 Bell married Mabel Hubbard and in the same year, with her father’s assistance, established the Bell Telephone company. Bell’s telephone patent was recognised over competing claims including that of Elisha Gray giving the company a monopoly on the telephone. Bell’s priority and honesty in relation to the invention of the telephone have been questioned. Conot claims that a patent examiner was bribed to show Gray’s patent caveat to Bell. Bell was later charged with larceny in connection with Antonio Meucci’s telephone but the case did not come to trial due to Meucci’s death. Bell subsequently withdrew from active involvement in the company that bore his name, turning to non-commercial interests that included founding and becoming president of the National Geographic Society.
- 11.
Thomas A Edison, The Making of an Inventor, February 1847–June 1873, ed. Reese V Jenkins, et al., vol. 1, The Papers of Thomas a Edison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
From Workshop to Laboratory, June 1873–March 1876, ed. Robert A Rosenberg, et al., vol. 2, The Papers of Thomas a Edison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
TAEB 3, 3.
The Wizard of Menlo Park, 1878, ed. Paul B Israel, Keith A Nier, and Louis Carlat, vol. 4, The Papers of Thomas a Edison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
Research to Development at Menlo Park, January 1879–March 1881, ed. Paul B Israel, et al., vol. 5, The Papers of Thomas a Edison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
Electrifying New York and Abroad, April 1881–March 1883, ed. Paul B Israel, et al., vol. 6, The Papers of Thomas a Edison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
Losses and Loyalties, April 1883–December 1884, ed. Paul B Israel, et al., vol. 7, The Papers of Thomas a Edison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).
- 12.
Thomas A. Edison Papers. 2019. “Citing Edison Papers Documents.” [web page]. The Thomas Edison Papers, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. http://edison.rutgers.edu/citationinst.htm
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2019. “Search Method: Retrieve a Single Document or Folder/Volume.” [web page]. The Thomas Edison Papers, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. http://edison.rutgers.edu/singldoc.htm
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Wills, I. (2019). Introduction. In: Thomas Edison: Success and Innovation through Failure. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 52. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29940-8_1
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