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1574 : STEP TWO – GENERATING NEW IDEAS

Edison’s ability to transfer the sound-recording analogy to the world of
pictures was encapsulated in his 1888 submission to the Patents Office,
describing his ideas for a device which would ‘do for the eye what the
phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of
things in motion, and in such a form as to be both cheap, practical and
convenient’.

Edison developed a motion picture camera called the kinetograph, as
well as a projector called the kinetoscope, the first machine to produce
motion pictures by a rapid succession of individual views. Like a
phonograph without discs to play, or like a light bulb without power to
light it, the kinetoscope lacked films to show. As ever, Edison literally
saw the bigger picture and established a studio on the laboratory
grounds. Given the technical limitations of the lighting systems at that
time, the studio’s roof opened to let in sunshine. The studio itself was
mounted on a turntable so that it could rotate to follow the sun. Covered
in black felt, the studio was nicknamed the ‘Black Maria’, contemporary
slang for police vehicles. Edison later combined his phonograph and
kinetoscope to produce the first talking moving pictures in 1913.

Edison had his share of failures, including talking dolls, whose tiny
integral phonographs were too fragile for effective commercialisation,
and concrete furniture. But the sheer volume of ideas generated,
coupled with his ability to extract value from apparent failure, always
kept him moving forward.

Although his efforts to extract iron ore from exhausted mines failed, for
example, he saw how the milling machine which he had developed could
be applied in another setting, namely to produce Portland cement, a new
building material gaining favour around the turn of the 20th century. The
original Yankee Stadium was constructed of Edison Portland cement,
proving Edison’s dictum that ‘Just because something doesn’t do what
you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless’.

In 1928, Edison received the Congressional Gold Medal ‘for the
development and application of inventions that have revolutionised
civilisation in the last century’. By stressing both development and
application, the combination of left-brain and right-brain thinking, the
award paid a fitting tribute to perhaps the consummate innovator who
went beyond mere products to create entire industries.