|
| About This Section |
 |
| BioMedNet Reviews |
Is the world’s largest life science reviews
database. It includes over 16,000 articles drawn from over 150 life
science and biomedical journals.
|
|
|
| Access To This Section |
As a BioMedNet member you have:
Free full-text access to this
article within BioMedNet Reviews for 14 days.
Access to abstracts of all articles
in the Reviews database.
You will have a full-text access to all other articles if your
institute subscribes.
Recommend to your librarian.
|
| |
| Did you know? |
Full-text access to BioMedNet Reviews is
available on subscription for your institute or company.
More information
|
| Email Alerts |
You can customize your email alerts from
BioMedNet Reviews to keep up to date with your own interests.
Sign up
here
|
|
|
 |
| |
Inventing industrial research: Thomas Edison and the Menlo
Park Laboratory |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Paul B. Israel |
|
|
|
Endeavour 2002, 26:48-54 |
|
|
|
 In
the 1870s, American inventor Thomas Edison forged the first
industrial research. At his laboratory at Menlo Park, New
Jersey, Edison merged the machine shop with sophisticated
electrical and chemical laboratories and employed teams of
researchers who could experiment on all aspects of his
inventions and move them rapidly from research to development
and commercialization.
|
Thomas Edison's death in
October 1931 seemed to many to mark the passing of an era. At
the end of his life Edison seemed a figure from a bygone era,
an untutored genius whose cut-and-try method of invention had
given way to organized scientific research. This view of the
inventor was certainly evident in an issue of Science
that appeared shortly after his death, in which some of the
country's leading directors of industrial research appraised
his work. As historian Thomas Hughes notes, by the time Edison
died 'the words ''invention'' and ''inventor'' had fallen into
disuse and '', ''development'' and ''industrial scientist'' '
seemed to signify a new style. In his own appraisal, Hughes
suggests that these directors of industrial research should
not have 'compared him to the industrial scientist of the
1920s; they should have compared him to themselves'
1.
It had been more than 50 years since Edison had created the
first industrial research laboratory at Menlo Park, New
Jersey, USA, and some 20 years since he had developed a
significant invention at his later, larger laboratory in West
Orange, New Jersey. During the intervening years, 19th century
inventions had come to be seen as the work of lone geniuses
drawing on some kind of innate Yankee ingenuity. In fact, most
were the product of what we might term 'shop invention'. In
shop invention, manufacturing and experimental machine shops
served as the central institutions for the development of new
technology. Furthermore, rather than being a lone enterprise,
shop invention was a cooperative venture in which skilled
operatives, superintendents, machinists and manufacturers in
various industries forged technological communities that drew
on practical experience to design, build and refine new
technology. Finally, shop invention went well beyond the
simple method of cut-and-try experimentation that is often
attributed to 19th century inventors, who often kept abreast
of scientific and technical research that might contribute to
their work, and sometimes undertook experiments designed to
give them more general knowledge that might prove crucial to
their success
2.
It was out of this tradition that Edison forged the first
industrial research laboratory. When Edison set up his Menlo
Park Laboratory in 1876 he was seeking to extend, not replace,
this shop tradition. Nonetheless, Menlo Park prefigured a new
model of research, as Edison merged the shop tradition with
sophisticated laboratory research into basic scientific and
technical principles. In addition, Edison increasingly turned
to teams of researchers in order to develop all aspects of his
inventions and move them rapidly from research to development
and commercialization. By the early 1880s Edison transformed
his 'invention factory' into a true research and development
laboratory, and, by doing so, he laid the cornerstone of
modern industrial research.
Edison began his career as an inventor in the late-1860s while
working as a telegraph operator, and by the early 1870s he had
achieved a reputation as one of the industry's leading 'electromechanicians'.
This term encapsulated both the mechanical character of much
19th century electrical technology and the role that machine
shops and skilled machinists played in the inventive process.
Most of Edison's early success had come from his great skill
in manipulating the mechanical elements of stock tickers and
other telegraph instruments. Edison also learned early the
advantage of having a machine shop devoted to his own
inventive work, and took advantage of his success as an
inventor to open a telegraph manufacturing shop that provided
not only another source of income for himself but steady work
for the skilled machinists who assisted him with his
inventions (
Fig. 1).
|
|
Go to the Full Article > > |
|
|
|
|
 As
a BioMedNet member you have free
full-text access to this article
within BioMedNet Reviews for 14 days
You
will have full-text access to all articles if your institute
subscribes.
Recommend a subscription to your librarian
There
are 15,000 more Review articles in
BioMedNet Reviews
Please
send us your
feedback on this magazine
|
|
|
|
BioMedNet Magazine
31st July - 13th August 2002 |
|
|
|
|
|
| Related
Links in BioMedNet Reviews |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
