Edison also publicly electrocuted dogs.

I can haz fried dog?

Isn't Earth the world's oldest and youngest planet?

AntonChigger: hammettman: Edison also publicly electrocuted dogs.

I can haz fried dog?

Dude was brilliant, but completely ruthless towards his competitors (Westinghouse/Tesla).

/Tesla thread?
//The things Tesla could've accomplished if he had enough money...

J.P. Morgan had a hand in ruining Tesla. Wanking bankers. I see nothing's changed.

Wow.

I wish MY name was Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg.

ivan: I wish MY name was Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg.



Do want

Roll the ugliness . . .
Could there be a God that would let this happen? (new window)

Ah so that's why they call him the "Michael Vick of inventors." Sick fark.

In 1896, the Internet was still very primitive. Created the year before by Thomas Alva Edison and his young assistant, Albert Gore, Jr., who was just a twinkle in the eyes of Albert Gore, Sr., Edison's chauffeur and gardiner, the Internet suffered from a lack of hardware and software.

In order for the first LOL Cat, shown here, to be exchanged between friends, they had to put the film, which was only a single reel, in a bucket and give the bucket to a walrus with a codfish in payment. Binary code had not yet been invented, so the message was written in Morse code, so called from the French "morse", meaning a walrus.

But what it lacked in technical power and sophistication, the Internets (because there were several of them, each with its own walrus) more than made up for in heart. As you can see, the pointless and contrived nature of internet communications was already well established. But it had a long way to go before it could beat film, which had already progressed to chimpanzees washing cats and Benz automobubbles driving through chicken coops at high speed (12 miles per hour and higher!).

Edison understood that it was crazy to try to use the internets for education and business, which were being perfectly handled by his older invention, the gramophone, but that the future was in mindless amusements for ninnies and nincompoops. He hired Ronald W. Reagan, then a mere tyke of seven, to narrate the events shown on the screen of his mobile telephony carts which took mindless inter-tainment to the masses for five cents for five minutes.

And so on and so forth ... and so let us salute the thousands of brave LOL cats who died horribly to make the modern Internets possible.

chaddsfarkprefect: I think children should be taught that Thomas Edison is a group of scientist inventors headquartered in Edison, new jersey.

Close enough. He realized that there was a lot of money hiring engineers and inventive young men to make a lot of incremental inventions for $15 a week or whatever, and then slapped his name on their patents. He no doubt racked up quite a few patents of his own, but his laboratories were essentially invention mills with dozens of men working on hundreds of ideas. His famous quotation that genius was "one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration" was true of his method: when he "invented" the light bulb he tested large numbers of filaments and finally settled on tungsten as the perfect material. The light bulb idea itself he purchased from its inventor.

Plod, plod, plod and plod some more. His real genius was applying the techniques of mass production and specializatio to invention the way that the Industrial Revolution had earlier applied it to manufacturing, and the way that Henry Ford was about to apply the assembly line to the manufacture of automobubbles.

Tesla was more the public's idea of a genius inventor. Edison was the guy who tried to discredit Westinghouse by electrocuting an elephant with Westinghouse's current. That was his real genius: marketing himself and his labs. P.T. Barnum should have had a good look at him. He'd have been impressed. He might have added Edison to his Museum. Edison was only a genius in the etymological sense of "the spirit of a place or time". He was a new way of doing business, science and creativity, the collectivization of invention.

Correction: "He realized that there was a lot of money to be made ...." I seem to be sloppy today. Went to bed too late. If I'm not in bed by 2:00, 2:30 a.m., I'm useless the next day.