That’s what I would describe as a ‘banal truth’ - it’s correct, but not remarkable, because you can argue it in a sort of no-true-scotsman-on-a-slippery-slope way.
“Hey! Look at my brand new invention - I’ve made a widget that does something nobody ever thought of before!”
“Ugh! You used metal to make it? That’s hardly original!”
Indeed the ideas were taken from Xerox Parc and other places.
eg Mouse and GUI from Xerox Parc.
Motorola had built the 32 bit CPU for it which gave it future proofing for long life of the design, enough time to get heaps and heaps of Mac’s in use before they had to change OS.
For some reason, Apple didnt want to put a user friendly bus into their computers.
They could have had a S100 or similar bus in the back,even if it was just a single slot.
Because a single slot could be stretched to a backplane that would allow multiple industrial uses… and for flexibility with use of hardware such as hard drives and so on. If they had a real bus, Apple could have blocked the IBM PC from stealing the market …
In the event the first three Mac models (128 512 and 512e) only had the floppy drive interface for expansions … other companies sold hard drives that could be fitted to the floppy interface. They even had no slots to add RAM to. (there were hardware hacks to get get a 4 times expansion.)
The bottom line of this type of thread is: History goes to the victors. Typically, and yeah there are exceptions, the person/company that popularizes the innovation that changes how we live our lives gets the credit.
Was Edison innovative? Of course! But with an eye towards commercialization. It’s my understanding that filament-based lights that worked very poorly had been around. What Edison did was have his team brute force their way through materials to arrive at tungsten. 99% perspiration of course. More power to him.
Some innovators are better at commercialization, and also at building an approach that looks at current innovations with a “better commercial eye.” Edison and Jobs qualify.
Not sure what to do with this. It’s kind of like picking stocks. The randomness cannot be reduced, and Black Swan events happen.
William Moulton Marston created the systolic blood pressure test, the polygraph[sup]*[/sup], and Wonder Woman.
I invented both the Bacon Easter Egg and the Inside Out Pie.
These are both major inventions, because bacon, and because pie.
Maurice Hilleman developed vaccines for measles, mumps, Hib, hep A, Hep B, chickenpox, meningococcus, one form of pneumonia, diphtheria, and did them all personally. These are all the vaccines still used today. He also played a role in developing a number of other vaccines. Robert Gallo, a man usually stingy with compliments, called Hilleman “the most successful vaccinologist in history.”
Louis Pasteur developed the rabies vaccine, pasteurization, and the germ theory.
Women, FWIW, have developed most of the recipes used-- a woman invented chocolate chip cookies, and another invented German chocolate cake, and their names are recorded, although I’m not including them because I don’t know if they have multiple inventions. I do know that Chef Julia Child developed multiple recipes.
I personally have developed vegetarian versions of lots of traditional Jewish recipes that have been big hits even with non-vegetarians, but I didn’t invent them from the ground up, just modified them.
So I think we have two options. One is we say that this is how credit gets dished out. The other is we just accept that modern inventions are complex and we don’t generally get to point at a single hero any more.
Personally I prefer the latter option but I appreciate we might sometimes prefer the former for e.g. inspiring the younglings.
Sure, but filament material was just one problem of many; getting to that stage of “filament light that works badly” was non-trivial. For such a simple-appearing device it’s actually quite a fascinating history.
I respect all of that. And I very much agree with the observation about complexity. Question: if we were back in the day for some of these inventions, e.g., the printing press or light bulb or automobile, wouldn’t we see a similar complexity within that context?
It feels like the inexorable Simplication of History™ will boil things down. We can rail against it and anyone who takes time to look will find ample evidence of complexity, but we still simplify things to “Gutenberg = Printing Press”; “Edison=Bulb”; “Jobs=smartphone/truly “personal” computer”.
But looking at this OP feels like it accepts that historical shorthand as truth. It’s truth in a shorthand way, okay, but it doesn’t illustrate a clear path to multiple patents.
At that, Wonder Woman’s schtick is her this-confirms-you’re-telling-the-truth device.
Just for the record, Edison didn’t invent the tungsten filament light bulb. Edison’s bulb used a carbon filament. Although he and previous workers had tried metal filaments, carbon worked better. Tungsten, at the time, was hard to work and very brittle. It wasn’t until 1904 that Hungarian Sándor Just and Croatian Franjo Hanaman were granted a Hungarian patent (No. 34541) for a tungsten filament lamp that lasted longer and gave brighter light than the carbon filament.
I think so - Barring some fundamental shift in physics that opens up a whole new domain, the ‘gold rush’ period of pioneering invention is mostly over, but there will always be exceptions, such as the inventors of blue LEDs
Ignorance fought - thanks.
My dad’s name is on at least five inventions associated with the development of Armour’s thyroid medication.
didn’t ron popiel of ronco fame have a thousand or so of his own/?
Thanks - Great points
I am well aware that inventions are usually more complicated than a single person toiling away but as mentioned, usually a single person historically is commonly given credit for it.
What I was asking (and got some great answers) is what a single person has done does for an encore after a major invention/idea