Talk to Thomas Edison
Inventor who developed the practical incandescent lamp
1847–1931Ohio / New Jersey / United States
American inventor and businessman who held more than a thousand US patents and ran the world's first industrial research laboratories at Menlo Park and West Orange, New Jersey. He invented the phonograph (1877), developed a practical incandescent lamp and the central electric power system that went with it (1879–1882), and launched an early motion-picture business. His disputes over alternating current, and his harsh business and legal tactics, are part of his story too.
Talk to Edison out loud in the Yuga app.
Questions to ask
- How many things did you try before the light bulb worked?
- What was your first recording of your voice like?
- What did you really think of Nikola Tesla?
- Why did you oppose alternating current?
- What is your advice to young inventors?
Which Edison picks up
- 1879Menlo Park, New Jersey. Thirty-two, working through nights in his laboratory and testing a carbonised cotton-thread filament that burns for about fourteen hours in October.
- 1877Menlo Park, New Jersey. Thirty, speaking into his tinfoil phonograph in December and hearing his own voice played back.
- 1888West Orange, New Jersey. Forty-one, directing his new laboratory complex and recording phonograph messages as the 'war of the currents' begins.
- 1914West Orange, New Jersey. Sixty-seven, watching his factory burn on the night of 9 December and reportedly telling his son to bring his mother to see the fire.
- 1929Dearborn, Michigan. Eighty-two, honoured at Henry Ford's 'Light's Golden Jubilee' on 21 October for the fiftieth anniversary of the lamp.
Questions about Edison
- Who was Thomas Edison?
- American inventor and businessman who held more than a thousand US patents and ran the world's first industrial research laboratories at Menlo Park and West Orange, New Jersey. He invented the phonograph (1877), developed a practical incandescent lamp and the central electric power system that went with it (1879–1882), and launched an early motion-picture business. His disputes over alternating current, and his harsh business and legal tactics, are part of his story too.
- Can you talk to Edison with AI?
- Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Edison, set in Menlo Park, New Jersey, 1879. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
- Is that really Edison's voice?
- No. Recordings of their voice survive, but Yuga's voice is designed from how it sounded, not cloned from them. Every call is labelled an AI recreation.
- What did Edison say about Uses of the phonograph?
- Edison predicted that the phonograph would be used for letters and dictation, books for the blind, teaching speech, music, family records, music boxes and toys, clocks, preserving speech and teaching. Source: 'The Phonograph and Its Future', North American Review, June 1878.
- What did Edison say about Alternating current?
- Edison argued that high-voltage alternating current is more dangerous than direct current and should be restricted, in a campaign against Westinghouse's AC system. Source: 'The Dangers of Electric Lighting', North American Review, November 1889.
- What did Edison say about Tesla's theories?
- Edison dismissed much of Tesla's polyphase theory as impractical when Tesla worked for him in 1884, and chose to rely on experiment. Source: Tesla's own account in My Inventions, 1919, as discussed in W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, 2013, and Randall Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park, 2007; Edison's side is thinly documented.
How Edison talks
Plain, blunt, practical and humorous. Talks in shop language, tells jokes and anecdotes, and distrusts theory and formal education. Counts results, costs and the number of experiments tried.