Social Inventor

"Discovery is not invention, and I dislike to see the two words confounded.  A discovery is more or less in the nature of an accident. If America wants new products, they can wait for discoveries"...the words of the then 29 year-old of "social inventor," Thomas Alva Edison.  Edison wanted to turn out a "minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so."  By invention, Edison meant a social, marketable product.

When just 15 years-old (1862) Edison had his first encounter with telegraphy quite by accident.  Telegraphy at that time had been electricity's most important practical application.  Edison was selling newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railway in Mount Clemens, Michigan, when he rescued the stationmaster's son from a moving train.  The father invited Edison to live with his family and trained him as a telegraph operator as a thank-you for his heroic action.  Edison was thus brought into the mysterious new world of electricity.

Edison was granted his first patent before he was twenty years-old.  He invented the telegraphic vote-recording machine for the roll call in Congress.  After seeing how long it took to register each member, Edison invented a machine that would allow each Congressman to press a button at his seat which would register on the Speaker's desk.  It wasn't a hit...Congress said that it would abolish the traditional opportunities to filibuster which each minority party needed.  This taught Edison a lesson that he always remembered - commercial demand was important in the equation of any invention.

Next time..Edison on Wall Street
_____________________________
Today in Pioneer History: "On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio.  In 1952, an epidemic year for polio, there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States with more than 3,000 deaths.  Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time.  (Still got the scar on your arm?)