Book description
>In Edison: The Man Who Made The Future Ronald Clark describes the
inventors early untutored upbringing, his struggles in the industrial
jungle which grew up in the aftermath of the American Civil War, and his
vital contributions to what became the motion picture industry. A
prolific inventor in his own right, he was also a developer of other men
s ideas. A pacifist, he became President of the U. S. Naval Consulting
Board in the First World War. Thrusting, enquiring, and determined to
leave his mark on history, he was, perhaps, the archetypal American of
his era. It is almost a century since Thomas Alva Edison, the world s
greatest inventor, gave the world electric light - and exactly one
hundred years since he built the first successful phonograph (forerunner
of the gramophone). The man who declared that "genius is 1 per cent
inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration," and who on average
lodged a patent every two weeks of his adult life, was the most famous
American of his day. Only now, however, is it possible to present him
clearly against the background of his times and to access fairly his
achievements and his often controversial business and working methods.
>In Edison: The Man Who Made The Future Ronald Clark describes the
inventors early untutored upbringing, his struggles in the industrial
jungle which grew up in the aftermath of the American Civil War, and his
vital contributions to what became the motion picture industry. A
prolific inventor in his own right, he was also a developer of other men
s ideas. A pacifist, he became President of the U. S. Naval Consulting
Board in the First World War. Thrusting, enquiring, and determined to
leave his mark on history, he was, perhaps, the archetypal American of
his era. It is almost a century since Thomas Alva Edison, the world s
greatest inventor, gave the world electric light - and exactly one
hundred years since he built the first successful phonograph (forerunner
of the gramophone). The man who declared that "genius is 1 per cent
inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration," and who on average
lodged a patent every two weeks of his adult life, was the most famous
American of his day. Only now, however, is it possible to present him
clearly against the background of his times and to access fairly his
achievements and his often controversial business and working methods.
