Thomas Edison

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2010

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the innovations and influence of Thomas Edison, one of the architects of the modern age.Edison is popularly remembered as the man who made cheap electric light possible. Born in 1847, he began his career working in the new industry of telegraphy, and while still in his early twenties made major improvements to the technology of the telegraph. Not long afterwards he invented a new type of microphone which was used in telephones for almost a century. In the space of three productive years, Edison developed the phonograph and the first commercially viable light bulb and power distribution system. Many more inventions were to follow: he also played a part in the birth of cinema in the 1890s. When he died in 1931 he had patented no fewer than 1093 devices - the most prolific inventor in history. As the creator of the world's first industrial research laboratory he forever changed the way in which innovation took place.With:Simon SchafferProfessor of the History of Science, University of CambridgeKathleen BurkProfessor of History, University College LondonIwan MorusReader in History, University of AberystwythProducer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the NRTIME podcast. For more details about NRTIME and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk forwardslushradio4.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:11.0	Hello, United States Patent at number 9,646 is for a device described by its inventor as
0:20.0	an apparatus which records and registers in an instant and with great accuracy
0:25.0	the votes of a legislative bodies thus avoiding loss of valuable time consumed in counting
0:30.0	and registering the votes and names as done in the usual manner.
0:34.0	The arrow was 1868, the inventor a 21-year-old entrepreneur called Thomas Alba Edison.
0:40.0	This was his first patent. By the time of his death 63 years later he'd registered
0:45.0	a further one thousand and ninety-two of them making him the most prolific inventory in history.
0:50.0	His contributions to modern technology are legions from affordable electric light and power
0:54.0	to major improvements to the telegraph and the telephone. He created the phonograph
0:58.0	and was one of the fathers of the cinema. Edison's genius was commercial as well as technical
1:03.0	and it's not just his inventions which have shaped the modern age.
1:07.0	We'll meet you discuss Thomas Edison and Kathleen Burke, professor of modern and contemporary history at University College London.
1:13.0	Simon Schaffer, professor of the history of science and fellow of Darwin College
1:17.0	at the University of Cambridge and you and Morris read in history at the University of Aberystwyth.
1:23.0	Kathleen Burke, before we discuss Edison let's talk about the USA into which he was born.
1:29.0	What's going on there in the middle of the 19th century?
1:32.0	Well he's born in 1847 which actually is rather a good start because the US is just coming out of a profound recession dating from a panic
1:41.0	and just at that point railways take off. For that time there's more railways and canals
1:50.0	and within of course the next 20 or 30 years the two coasts are gathered by railways.
1:57.0	It's the beginning of an industrial revolution to the extent that oh I don't know when they had indices of steel production.
	...

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