Thomas Alva Edison inventions and work had great impact in making electricity available to everyone, but his work were merely instrumental. He improved existing technologies and obtained patents. From the viewpoint of the innovation process the role of Edison is located in the product development and the diffusion phase.
“He asks himself when a new idea is suggested, Will this be valuable from the industrial point of view ? Will it do something important better than existing methods ?“
In 1878 Thomas Edison after having examined William Wallace’s dynamos and Moses G. Farmer’s arc lights, saw the enormous commercial potential of electricity. It could power a new generation of industrial machines and bring light to the offices and homes of the entire world. Therefore Edison decided to concentrate on electric light, and after a mere week from the tour of Wallace’s shop he invented the first practical incandescent light bulb, one where a wire inside the glass bulb glowed brilliantly as electricity flowed through it.
Edison’s vision wasn’t just to start a successful business of mass production
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Then he started testing a miniature lighting network in the field around his laboratory in Menlo Park. Edison’s plan was to generate electricity in a central station and then send it to the world via insulated copper wires buried just below the city streets in sunken subways. Once those insulated copper wires reached a building, they would just be run through the existing gas pipes into existing gas lamps, where light bulbs would be attached. By 1880, Edison’s experimental inventor’s laboratory had been transformed into a production and testing facility for light bulbs, dynamos, conducting wires, and insulation. This was completely new and complex technology, and no one really knew how long it would take to make it work or what it might ultimately