Thomas Alva Edison

I grew up about 20 minutes from Schenectady, NY which is where Thomas Edison eventually moved his Edison Machine Works (now General Electric). So I’m a little bit excited that LeFevre has given me the opportunity to talk about Edison in this post.

When speaking about the implications of a social perspective of invention, LeFevre extends “invention” to include physical innovations, arguing that scholars should “study the ecology of invention - the way ideas arise and are nurtured or hindered by interaction with social context and culture” (p. 126). She continues, “We will also do historical studies of invention in which we examine the social relationships of writers with other thinkers, or those of inventors with collaborators who aid invention in a variety of ways” (p. 127).

Charles Bazerman’s The Languages of Edison’s Light is a fantastic example of the type of re-interpretation of the invention process for which LeFevre is calling. If people were asked who invented the light bulb, or more generally electric light, most people would name a solitary individual – Thomas Edison. However, Bazerman’s book shines a light (pun most definitely intended) on the countless teams of researchers that worked on the project, the interactions between them, and the ways in which rhetoric was crucial to every single step of the invention process – from the research notebooks, to formal and informal meetings between scientists, to Edison’s attempts to dazzle the public and get funding for his project.

According to one review, the book “represents the best of what can be done when contemporary theorizing about the historical and social nature of language is grounded in analyzing the rhetorics surrounding a particular invention, innovation, or discovery; the result is an accessible and enlightening re-understanding of the original "incident" and a re-appreciation of how rhetoric is the field through which we negotiate our inventions, our discoveries, and their various meanings for us.”

I imagine that a similar, more contemporary study of how either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs worked with others to create their respective operating systems and have great influence on our society could produce interesting results. Does anybody have any special knowledge of those guys?