In article , Kristian Ukkonen says...

Edison gave nothing, and just said "Tesla, you don't understand
our American humour". ...

Edison was a crook and a businessman, not a real scientist.
History is written my winners, either of war or business.

Edison was *all* those things. Crook, businessman, and scientist.

He was the inventor of an amazing thing: the corporate
research laboratory. The principles he discovered are still
in use today. What ones are those?

1) go out and get venture capital, by trading on your reputation
as a big wheel.

2) promise whatever you have to to get the money.

3) use the money for anything else you feel like when you get it.

4) you don't have to deliver what you promised in the first
place.

5) be sure the PR machine is running all the time.

6) never pay any bills.

7) hire young folks and pay them next to nothing.

8) when they start to learn and wise up about what's going on,
fire them and hire new young kids.

9) keep all the information about what you are doing secret.

10) most important: be sure that everyone knows you never sleep
and work around the clock, and you expect them to do so likewise.
Pretend to be at the lab "all the time" but in reality have
regular life just like your employees would like to have.

But just because he was a crook and a charlatan, does not mean
he was not an innovator and a genius. He was all those things.

The most important thing he invented: corporate resarch laboratories.
They did not exist before him, they are ubiquitous now.

Jim


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