[LINK] GE Announces Advancement in Incandescent Technology

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 08:08:17PM +1100, Ivan Trundle wrote:
> But since when was Edison credited with the invention of the light  
> bulb? And since when is it only 125 years old?

since Edison rewrote history in his relentless self-promotion (the
thing he was best at).

but don't mention it when any americans can hear. they might take
offense if it is revealed to them that he wasn't entirely the great man
he promoted himself to be. anyway, he must have invented all that stuff
- he was an american, and americans invented everything worthwhile.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

Currently listening to: Chris Organic - The Shaman

But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a
brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and
lived in New Jersey.  Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the
phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where
it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented.  But Edison's
greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company.
Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit:
the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then
immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is
the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of
electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few
customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the
last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937;
the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is
why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"