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1554 : STEP TWO – GENERATING NEW IDEAS

he was now familiar. In subsequently exploring the underlying principle
of recording, Edison was led to consider recording any sound and playing
it back as something separate. The resulting experiments led to the
invention in 1877 of the tinfoil phonograph, by which sound could be
recorded mechanically on a tinfoil cylinder.

Edison initially expected the phonograph to be of most use to
businesses for dictating letters. In the North American Review of 1878,
however, he published an extraordinarily prescient ‘brainstormed’ list of
possible further applications for the product, including books for the
blind, music, speaking clocks, elocution aids, the ‘family record’,
including the last words of the dying, and the preservation of native
languages. Edison can also lay claim to having invented the term
‘distance learning’, given the inclusion within the brainstormed list of
‘educational purposes, such as preserving the explanations made by a
teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling
or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in
committing to memory’.

Edison demonstrated his ability to see the complete opportunity, to
think outside the box, by effectively creating the recording industry
during the subsequent process of making the phonograph practical. His
company not only manufactured phonographs but also ran recording
studios, produced cylinder recordings of some of the most famous talent
of the day and produced the range of manufacturing equipment which
the new industry required.

Although Edison’s name is perhaps most closely associated with the
incandescent electric light bulb, he did not in fact invent the lamp bulb;
Humphry Davy had invented the first electric light in 1809 and Joseph
Swan invented the first practical long-lasting electric light bulb in 1879.

Edison perceived the mass-market opportunity for refining the existing
ideas to create a practical product which was safer and less flickering
than the open-flame gas lights prevalent at the time and less intensely
bright than the electric carbon-arc commercial and street lights also in
existence.

The selection of the carbon filament was not the Eureka moment of
myth. It was only after testing more than 1,600 materials to identify
the correct filament, including coconut fibre, fishing line and even hairs
M