Successes and Failures of the Great Inventor

Thomas Edison was almost certainly most prolific inventor of all time. He is best remembered for three inventions : the incandescent lamp, the Kinetoscope (peep-show ancestor of the cinema) and the phonograph. But in a long life, lasting from 1847 to 1931, he patented more than 1300 inventions in the United States and abroad. At the height of his powers, in the 1880s, he was filing a patent every five days on average.

Needless to say, not all his ideas were successful. His first patented invention, devised in 1868, was an electric system to speed up the cumbersome process of recording votes in the United States Congress. Each Congressman was to be provided with 'yes' and 'no' button linked to an automatic central display. This eminently sensible system worked - but Congress was hostile to the innovation and declined to buy it.

Word power

One of Edison's most bizarre ideas was the phonomotor, a spin-off from his famous phonograph. This 'vocal engine' attempted to harness the energy of sound vibrations from the human voice to drive machinery. Thus a sewing machine would be powered, not by a pedal or electricity, but by the seamstress talking in a loud voice. However, the device proved impractical.

Also related to the phonograph were the talking dolls made in the 1880s. Each tin doll contained a small phonograph cylinder with a recording of a nursery rhyme or other text, operated by turning a key.

When Edison focused his attention on the building industry in 1908, he was, as usual, startlingly innovative. He proposed replacing slum tenements with cheap new housing using concrete. Each house would be made in one piece, by simply pouring concrete into an iron mould - the whole process taking only three hours. Edison's proposal was much ridiculed, but he proved it actually could be done by casting a concrete house himself. While the use of concrete in buildings continued to increase throughout the early 20th century, Edison's single mould houses did not catch on.

His curiosity stretched beyond the bounds of the material world. In his later years, spurred on by the millions who had lost relations in the First World War, he applied his skills to attempts to contact the dead. Skeptical of Ouija boards (a board on which are marked the letters of the alphabet. Answers to questions are spelt out by a pointer or glass held by the fingertips of the participants, and are supposedly formed by spiritual forces) and other standard spiritualist equipment, he sought to invent a machine to amplify whatever weak vibrations might emanate from beyond the grave. Unfortunately, this last quest of the great inventor's lifetime proved a failure.