I am reading a book about Captains of American Industry and I thought y’all might find this Blog Posting interesting.
After years of effort and thousands of
experiments, Thomas Edison achieved an incandescent lamp that had burned 45
hours and he said to the world, “World,
the practical incandescent lamp has been born”.
After that he just sat back and watched the money
come rolling in.
The prior sentence is absolutely not true.
Before Edison had an incandescent lamp that was viable and marketable to
consumers he had to invent the Electrical Industry:
Ø He
had to build a central power station.
Ø He
had to design and manufacture his own dynamos to economically convert steam
power into electrical energy.
Ø He
had to come up with a way to insure an even flow of current.
Ø He
had to connect a 14-mile network of underground wiring.
Ø He
had to insulate the wiring against damaging moisture and the accidental
discharge of electrical charges.
Ø He
had to install safety devices against fire.
Ø He
had to design commercially efficient motors to use electricity in daylight
hours for elevators, printing presses, laths, fans and the like.
Ø He
had to invent and manufacturer a plethora of switches, sockets, fuses,
distributing boxes and lamp holders.
Ø He
had to design and install meters to measure individual consumption of power.
For all of this he had to put up most of
the money himself and fight against the Gas Company Lobby at every turn as they
used their political influence to stop him.
I’m wondering if you had been his next-door
neighbor and he had come to you asking for a loan of $1,000 would you have loaned
him the money or would you have turned him away telling him to go out and get a
real job.
I would have loaned him the money...Or would I
have?
Would I kid u?
Smartfella
