Thomas Edison: Moonshot Inventor?

There is ample evidence that Edison was a great inventor, but much of his work built on existing technologies.

Author

George Pillari
January 15, 2024

Going for the Moonshot. When we talk about a moonshot, what we really mean is not aiming high, but aiming for the moon. Setting objectives so high that they appear to be unattainable or at least, unrealistic.

Moonshot thinking may sound dynamic and even romantic. The problem is that emotional and impulsive thinking takes over and we buy into the “vision,” whatever it may be. Yes, some moonshots do work out, but almost all moonshots are driven by magical thinking and hoping for perfect alignment of the stars. In reality, going for the moonshot is an extremely low-probability scenario and will likely fail.

When we examine more closely the “inventions” and “moonshots” of others, we observe a pattern. Despite claims made by sponsors and participants, many moonshots are not moonshots at all, but are incremental improvements on existing technologies.

Moonshots do entail risk. They are not called “Freeshots,” and the potential financial, reputational, and other collateral damage from a failed moonshot should be considered.

Most importantly, when embarking on a Tectonic Decision like a Moonshot, it must be done in an environment that can not only withstand a Moonshot gone wrong but be able to fund and support the Moonshot without conflicting priorities.

Thomas Edison is often considered to be the greatest inventor ever. But did he create any true moonshots?

Going for the Moonshot is one of the Seven Deadly Stupidities.

Edison with the phonograph

More than anything else, Thomas Edison was a good businessperson. While still in his teens, he created a mini-empire selling newspapers on trains. At the age of 21, his first patent was granted for an electronic vote-counting machine to be used in counting votes in congress. The device was a flop.

The chairman of the congressional committee evaluating the new device famously said, “if there is any invention on earth that we don't want down here, that is it.”

If Edison could only have seen 150 years into the future and been able to witness the never-ending controversy surrounding vote counting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. But that’s another story. Edison pressed on with his side hustle of building and testing new ideas while he toiled at unexciting day jobs.

Edison’s first success was the quadraplex telegraph.  The quadraplex telegraph was timely, as it provided the North a tremendous tactical advantage over the South in the Civil War. Many believe the ability of the North to quickly relay information about troop movements, weather, and other elements of battle was decisive in the outcome of the war. Edison did not invent the telegraph, but incrementally improved a version of it that allowed multiple messages to be sent in each direction simultaneously.

After selling the quadraplex telegraph, Edison had the funds to set up shop and become a full-time inventor. He did so by creating the now-famous Edison Menlo Park research facility in New Jersey in 1878.  (Hence the Edison moniker, “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”)

Edison with the kinetoscope (early movie camera)

Until his death in 1931, Edison and his researchers were credited with more than 1,000 patents.

However, his most important invention was one that couldn’t be patented: the process of modern invention itself. By applying the principles of mass production to the 19th-century model of the solitary inventor, Edison created a process in which skilled scientists, machinists, designers, and others collaborated at a single facility to research, develop, and manufacture new technologies.  From the Menlo Park Museum

Edison’s factory of invention was staffed by dozens of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians (sounds like a real party crowd). Out of this process came many of the most important inventions of modern life, including:  the phonograph, electric light bulb, the kinetograph and kinetoscope (early motion picture camera and viewer), and the first alkaline battery.

But, as we further analyze Edison’s production, we see that most of Edison’s inventions were not wake-up in the middle of night strokes of genius. He is credited for many things that involved large teams of people and he was shrewd in gaining patents on derivatives or upgrades of existing inventions. No doubt a genius, but also quite a businessman.

After his vote-machine failure, he vowed, “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” 

After decades of operation, the Edison shop did produce a handful of apparent moonshots, which upon closer examination, were mostly incremental and commercial improvements to existing technologies. Most famously, he is credited with the creation of the incandescent light bulb. The concept of incandescence means that light is created through heating an object. Think about that glowing burner on the stove, the heat is generating the light. With the light bulb, electricity runs through a filament (that wiry looking stuff inside the bulb) causing the filament to glow. 

There were more than 20 other inventors who created incandescent light bulbs before Edison. But Edison and his army at the Menlo Park lab kept experimenting with different materials for filaments, since the burn time, or the time light was created, was always too short.

The Edison team tested thousands of materials to improve on existing light-bulb technology before settling on a type of carbon that would burn for 14 hours. Later improvements by Edison and his team included using bamboo instead of carbon, which burned for more than a thousand hours.

One of the world’s most important inventions was not a moonshot after all but a series of incremental improvements of an existing technology.

There is no doubt we have a better world as a result of Edison’s efforts, but should modern professionals and companies model their moonshot approaches based on the Edison system? If only they could separate themselves from the glamor and wow-factor, no contemporary technology company would talk about moonshots and realize almost everything, even from the genius Thomas Edison, is an incremental improvement on something else.

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