Don’t get me started. He did not invent the lightbulb. Did he “perfect” it? Maybe? But only after trial and error of 100’s of filaments including human hair.
Can it even be said that it was perfected when later we switched from carbon filament to tungsten, and from there to halogen-surrounded tungsten.
And on the other side, Edison’s lamp wasn’t even the first one to be mass produced and commercially sold.
There’s a certain style of education that really wants to draw a hard line between “before the thing” and “after the thing”, and credit its invention to a single guy. But really the line is quite wide and fuzzy.
Don’t get me started. He did not invent the lightbulb. Did he “perfect” it? Maybe? But only after trial and error of 100’s of filaments including human hair.
Can it even be said that it was perfected when later we switched from carbon filament to tungsten, and from there to halogen-surrounded tungsten.
And on the other side, Edison’s lamp wasn’t even the first one to be mass produced and commercially sold.
There’s a certain style of education that really wants to draw a hard line between “before the thing” and “after the thing”, and credit its invention to a single guy. But really the line is quite wide and fuzzy.