Harry T. Roman's Blog, page 14

Thomas Edison – Home Schooled by his Mother

All you technology/engineering teachers, educators and STEM facilitators…listen up!

Down through the years, the wisdom of Edison’s mother (Nancy Elliot Edison) still rings true to us today. Here are the simple truisms she urged young Tom to keep uppermost in his mind. She home-schooled him when the local one-room schoolhouse could not motivate him. Young Tom was certainly a different kind of learner.

Fortunately, Mrs. Edison was a formally education normal school teacher, but was not practicing at the time, busy with raising her family. Here are the four maxims she taught young Tom…so relevant to your classrooms today.

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Samuel and Nancy Edison – Tom’s parents

Do not be afraid to fail. Keep trying, learn from failure; and try again. This later gives birth to the old Edison adage …  “fail your way to success”. Empower young minds to look at the world as an intellectual challenge-often composed of iterative cycles that improve solutions or even the development of new products. Empower students to fail, not be ashamed or overwhelmed by it. That is why erasers are on the backs of pencils!

It is OK to work with your hands and your head. Not everything important comes from books. Experience the world and learn from it. There is a world beyond the classroom that is brimming with learning opportunities. Take advantage of all this information and knowledge-just as valid as what books my teach you. Bring experts from the world of work into class to show the relevancy of school work to life –on-the-job. Every company is a learning campus, filled with on-the-job experts and leaders who can inspire young employees to reach for the stars. Help your students learn early the value of head and hands learning. After all … isn’t this what STEM, technology education and maker spaces are all about?

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Young Tom Edison

Read across the entire span of literature, not just what you like. Reading and studying literature brings new ideas into your mind acting as a catalyst for mental stimulation. Throughout his life, Edison read and memorized poetry, prose and literature. This made him a great communicator, able to draw on the great lessons of written culture and history. One of his great historical heroes was Thomas Paine and his writings leading to the Revolutionary War.

Never stop learning, keep improving yourself. This can be seen in the great Edison library and office from which he ran his legendary West Orange Labs. Probably 10,000-20,000 volumes were there at his fingertips to support his enormous appetite for information and knowledge. He knew to lag behind in his constant quest to learn meant competitors would soon catch up. He may have been the first great corporate innovator to consider retaining a corporate library for himself and his staff to use. With the Internet at our fingertips, continuous learning is a snap. Promote this important life lesson.

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The Edison home in Milan, Ohio

Throughout his life, Edison credited his mother’s love and patience with giving him a firm footing in the world as a precursor to his great success.

Keep all this in mind when school once again resumes in September. Draw inspiration from the great inventor. Check out this website often, especially its webpage dedicated to free resources for the classroom teacher. Also, check out our sister website at thomasedison.org.

Thomas Edison said, “I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent …”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

 

Thomas Edison Salutes a New Form of Energy Storage

Since the 1920s about 2% of the world’s electrical capacity has been supplied by pumped hydro installations. These massive hydroelectric storage batteries can respond within seconds, and improve overall grid efficiency. However hydroelectric facilities can be severely site limited; and cause significant impacts on the environment.

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Typical hydroelectric pumped storage facility is a large scale, environmentally intense project

What if we had a large storage device that could be recycled indefinitely with no lasting environmental concerns either? Furthermore, what if something else could be used instead of water, with little environmental impact?

Such a concept is called the Advanced Rail Energy Storage system (ARES); and a 50 MW utility-size system is now in operation in southern Nevada. Check it out. The system is also much cheaper than traditional pumped hydro facilities.

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An ARES “shuttle train”

ARES energy storage technology employs a fleet of electric traction drive shuttle-trains, operating on a closed low-friction automated steel rail network to transport a field of heavy masses [rocks, concrete, etc.] between two storage yards at different elevations.

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During periods where excess energy is available on the grid, ARES shuttle-trains draw electricity from the grid, which powers their individual axle-drive motors, as they transport a continuous flow of masses (rock/concrete) uphill against the force of gravity to an upper storage yard. When the grid requires energy to meet periods of high demand, this process is reversed. The shuttle-trains provide a continuous flow of masses returning to the lower storage yard with their motors operating as generators, converting the potential energy of the mass’s elevation back into electricity in a highly efficient process.

At the Nevada site, shuttle trains move up and down a change of about 3,000 feet. At the end of the system’s 40-year lifetime, the rails are removed followed by regrading of the land back to original conditions—no lasting environmental impacts. Think about this … large wind turbines could also supply the excess energy to charge up this energy storage system!

Edison’s original electric storage batteries can be considered tiny portable pumped hydro facilities. He realized his electric utility equipment would function more efficiently if it could run all the time, even with the daily ups and downs of electric demand. Energy storage would make it possible to charge batteries for use later during the day … in electric vehicles. Certainly, Edison would like this innovative ARES concept!

Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Would Love Artificial Intelligence

Mention artificial intelligence and folks automatically think robots … sometimes true but certainly not always. It is our desire to associate something physical with this highly mathematical science. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior.

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Visualizing the AI Thing

It’s not all that new, harking back to the 1950s; modern versions of it being built within high level chess games, medical diagnostic programs and trouble-shooting fixes. Anyone who has read through automotive repair manuals negotiating a series of questions to funnel down to a likely problem is actually using a common form of AI known as an “expert system”

Neural networks mimic complex systems.Riding a bike is a neural network function-balance for a biped walking robot is another. Seeing trends in massive data streams is another application; as are classifying problems into similar basic categories/groups.

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Some common application families under the AI umbrella

The main goals of artificial intelligence include reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing (communication), perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects. Just a quick smattering of the kinds of applications AI can be used for:

Pattern recognition/classification
Optimization problems
Image processing
Simulation
Autonomous control of aerial vehicles
Pilotless cars/vehicles
Missile navigation
Smart homes/smart utility systems
Robotic control and mobility
Advanced learning techniques
Stock market simulation/modeling

When Edison codified how to transform raw ideas into marketable products through what became R&D labs, his process, composed of discrete steps (sub-processes) was actually an expert system. In fact, this versatile expert system soon spread all over the world, changing forever the business community and its realization of what technology driven product development could do for a country’s standards of living … what we recognize today as “progress”. GE immortalized this in their 1950’s corporate tagline …”progress is our most important product.” Way to go, Tom!

Keep your eyes on AI and be patient. It will change the world and how we do many things.

Thomas Edison said, “If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves …”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Salutes Founding Father Inventors

Necessity is the mother of invention as the old adage opines, and taming a wild country certainly qualifies as a necessity. Fascinating it is to realize our founding fathers were inventors as well as statesmen, legislators and leaders. Consider the inventions of our great forefathers…

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Franklin Playing His Armonica

Benjamin Franklin

Bi-focals, the Franklin stove, lightning rod, the glass armonica (musical instrument) and being major supporter of lending libraries, community hospitals, and volunteer fire departments

 

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Typical George Washington Wheat Threshing Barn Design

George Washington

Drill plow, wheat threshing barn

 

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Jefferson’s Wheel Cipher

Thomas Jefferson

Iron plow, swivel chair, macaroni press, dumbwaiter, pedometer, folding ladder, and a great clock, wheel cipher

James Madison

Combination walking stick and microscope

Lest we forget, Thomas Jefferson almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia. Jefferson was also the first administrator of the U.S. Patent Office, the formation of which was empowered by law thru the Constitution. This office is probably our oldest federal agency, and one that through its fee schedule for patent application/maintenance essentially pays for itself.

We would be remiss not mentioning an Edison life-long favorite as well, Thomas Paine, noted for inventing a single-span iron bridge and a smokeless candle. Paine may not be as well-known as the great men mentioned above, but many of the documents of the time and discussions about the kind of government we would have derived from Paine’s logic and sometimes incendiary speeches to rally the populace.

Noteworthy is the kind of process thinking that Franklin, like Edison, proposed. Think how lending libraries, hospitals, and fire departments have made a significant and enduring impact on our quality of life.

Thomas Edison would consider his inventive activities in good company with the founding fathers … practical with great utility!

Thomas Edison said, “I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Smiles Down on Young Inventors

To an excited crowd of parents, students, and teachers, the winners of the 7th annual Thomas Edison Invention Challenge were announced and celebrated at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park [TENHP]. The contest celebrates inventors from across the country, and in this case, some overseas entries as well.

Originally 118 student teams from over 80 schools entered the contest, with about 22 teams qualifying for run-off. From this, 6 winning teams shown below were celebrated at TENHP.

Here is a summary of the awards in both the elementary/middle school and high school award categories.

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All finalists

Elementary/Middle Schools

1st Place – Montague School: Team NATEX: Solar Key Light

Solar panel charges during the day which charges two batteries. These batteries give energy to the light in the evening giving an efficient light that allows for users to view their keyhole while entering their home at night. This is a unique way of saving energy and omitting a homeowner from needing to use their porch light at night to enter their home.

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Middle School First Place: Nathan and Teacher Karen Goyette

2nd Place – Betsy Ross Elementary: Mahwah Inventors Team: Lung Exerciser for Assisted Living Folks L.E.A.F

This invention will help people in assisted living get more oxygen to their lungs and get rid of carbon dioxide. This will improve lung function of assisted living residents, make them stronger, improve the quality of their lives, and prevent very serious complications like pneumonia. This device is used as an exercise, as the user must blow the turbine which will then give them an idea of their lung capacity and strength. If the user continuously uses this device their lung capacity will theoretically grow.

3rd Place – Pequannock Valley Middle School: Panthers: Solar Charged Fitbit

This device will aid and prompt users to get outside and walk more. A never ending supply of solar power to a “Fitbit” would aid consumers in wanting to get out and walk challenging themselves on a daily basis to push themselves to further limits.

High School

1st Place – Seton Hall Prep: Design Team 1: Heated Shovel

This invention was created to aid individuals in the winter. The heated shovel allows for users to shovel for extended periods of time without getting cold hands. The warmers heat up two grips that in turn warm the hand. The device is rechargeable making constant use feasible.

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High School First Place: Charles and David—Teacher, Kelly Ford

2nd Place – Seton Hall Prep: Design Team 2: Solar-Pirate

This device allows for users to charge their cellular device without the need of an outlet. This device is both cost and energy efficient. The user simply plugs in their device and places the solar panel in direct sunlight. The device is marketed at roughly half the market value of portable charges creating consumer ease and financial savings.

3rd Place – Mt. Olive High School: Public Assisted Lift Chair

This chair acts as an aid in going from a sitting position to a standing. This device will aid in lower the risk of osteoporosis, stress on the knees and even fractures. The device uses sensors that would assist the user in standing as the sensors pick up weight differentiation. The prototype would be powered by wind or solar energy alternative forms of energy. This device is marketed to the elderly and those with joint issues.

Thomas Edison said, “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Pioneered Team-based Innovation

The very notion of “innovation” traces back to when Edison perfected his invention factory, later to morph into commercial R&D labs, team-based problem solving—a seismic and permanent worldwide economic shift .

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Edison enjoying a meal with one of his teams at his legendary West Orange Labs.

Of all he invented, this was his most significant achievement. Before Edison died in 1931, every major corporation adopted this powerful innovation tool; and it remains fundamental to this day, whether a company does it in their own labs or joins in alliance with other labs.

R&D labs gave birth to legions of project managers who today manage and lead new product development teams all over the world-a process that creates jobs and whole new industries, and continually disrupts the status quo, the very heart beat of capitalism. It has been said of Edison that his life’s work has probably been responsible for one-fourth of all the jobs on planet Earth today; as well as account for 10% of the annual world economy … about $6 trillion.

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Teams like this developed many of the new innovations at West Orange

General Electric had a powerful slogan back in the 1950s-“Progress is our most important product”. Edison is the fellow, in 1887, who unified progress with team-based innovation-exactly what we teach our children in school in STEM classes today. Thanks Tom!

Thomas Edison said, “I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent …”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Intellectual Property Can Work for You

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Edison on the Walk of Fame

Would you be interested in advertising just how entrepreneurial your company is, linking it to the most famous inventor/entrepreneur of all time; someone whose light bulb invention itself is the very symbol of a bright new idea? You can use Thomas Edison images to turbo-charge your sales and advertising. You can afford to do this.

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Edison on a Chick-fil-A Commercial

Edison Intellectual Property [ “I.P.” ] has been licensed and used all over the world. It has promoted many things, including the popular educational paradigm known as STEM. Thomas Edison is perceived as “smart” and “entrepreneurial” so his name is selected for marketing innovative and disruptive new products. The world’s greatest inventor lives on not only in his inspiration to future generations, but also in his linkage to popular culture and advertising.

Edison IP has been most recently used by the world’s premier electronic company, Intel. Their microchip designed to facilitate rapid prototyping by budding entrepreneurs has been named the Intel-Edison compute chip; and can be seen at the end of this post.

Other examples of I.P. use include:

International car manufacturers, both for gasoline and electric vehicles
Korean electronic maker; and an industrial company
Japanese Patent Office
Wall Street Brokerage
Edison Nation
European pharmaceutical company
Large software company
Commercial for a personal hygiene product
Electric lighting product company

They all licensed Thomas Edison’s name and image for use in advertising their products and services.

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“Edison’s Desk“ is a trademark and a symbol of innovation for licensing

The cost for an I.P. license is dependent on numerous factors including Geography (national or worldwide), Time Period (6 months to a year or more), Media (print, TV or Internet) and Size of Audience (“eyeballs”).

To learn more, check us out at Thomasedison.org/licensing, and for assistance in learning how you can use Edison I.P. , contact:

John P. Keegan

Chairman & President

Charles Edison Fund / Edison Innovation Foundation

973-648-0500

Info@thomasedison.org

Thomas Edison said, “If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves …”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Likes the Internet of Things

[image error]Did you know there is an Intel microprocessor (chip module) named after Thomas Edison, known simply as the “Edison”. This powerful processor can be used for rapid prototyping by entrepreneurs, for wearable applications, and also for supporting the exciting and burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT); where addressable objects (equipment, appliances, and subsystems) may communicate via a programmed or self-assembling network.

Check out this YouTube video for the essential details of what this amazing piece of technology offers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NeJisPvHcU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geHpBHGu4vE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVDL2-bFT3Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlJv7Ctgc9c

Suites of micro sensors and instrumentation linked together with powerful expert systems, neural networks and analysis packages would work in conjunction with the data and information gathered via IoT sources, and be capable of predicting potential problems and suggesting avenues to avoid trouble. Here is a very quick and by no means exhaustive listing of the industries where the IoT would be very useful:

Instrumentation of bridges and critical infrastructure to determine safety and stresses on aging equipment
Monitoring of air and water to detect intrusion of toxic, radiological and pollutant into the environment
Detection of weather movements and micro weather systems that could cause not only dangerous conditions but early warning for large area disturbances
Monitoring of geographically disperse electric utility systems to prepare for storms and to also minimize potential terrorist threats to these systems
Linking together of large wind systems to determine the dynamics of a wind farm and its response to changing electric loads
Monitoring seismic activity from a wide geographical area-making predictions of possible impacts and earth movement far away.

Utility companies have fully embraced the concept of the “smart utility”-where engineers can automatically monitor the status of critical equipment. The key emphasis being to maintain high service reliability to customers, anticipating and avoiding power interruptions; and minimizing and restoring outages as quickly as possible.

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Utility Workers Busy Maintaining High Service Reliability for Customers

Edison would certainly be proud of this IoT movement, as a major tenet of his business philosophy was to continuously improve his products. To the legions of engineers and technicians today employed in the design, operation and maintenance of the nation’s critical infrastructures, he would extend his heartfelt gratitude. And thanks Intel for the Edison microprocessor and your related family of IoT products that truly link our critical infrastructures and world together.

Thomas Edison said, “If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves …”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Likes the Glass Battery

Like Thomas Edison, John Goodenough is a life-long learner, and also like Edison, Goodenough is seeking to improve what he has already made.

You see, John Goodenough is the fellow who long ago co-invented lithium-ion storage batteries, those little fellows that now power electric vehicles and many of our hand-held and other devices. Now at age 94, John has another idea to make his batteries even better; and people in the know are listening. He wants to create an electrolyte matrix of glass, doped with alkali metals, like lithium and sodium.

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John Goodenough

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Edison cradling his nickel-iron storage battery—alleged to have involved over 10,000 experiments to perfect.

The lithium- or sodium-doped glass electrolyte offers a new medium for novel battery chemistry and physics. The lithium- or sodium-glass battery has three times the energy storage capacity of a comparable lithium-ion battery. But its electrolyte is neither flammable nor volatile, and it doesn’t appear prone to internally shorting out [spiky “dendrites”]; that have plagued lithium-ions as they charge and discharge repeatedly. This could prevent the battery fires we have seen recently with consumer appliances that run on lithium-ion batteries.

The solid glass electrolyte would act more like a super capacitor. And if sodium can be used in place of lithium, that means a more abundant and less expensive source of raw material. Hey … you Tesla lithium-ion battery folks … you listening to this?

Edison’s work with his legendary nickel-iron storage batteries at the turn of the last century began the story of alkali storage battery technology. These batteries became the gold standard for electric storage in a wide variety of industries, including electric vehicles. Manufacturers still make nickel-iron storage batteries today.

Thomas Edison said, “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.

Thomas Edison Advocated Movies in the Classroom

[image error][image error]Think how students learn in the classroom today, using smartboards where videos and various science and math oriented animations help them to grasp complicated information and relationships. Seems so futuristic compared to how classroom information was explained 20 years ago. We all learn so much from the blizzard of videos available through our smartboards, cell phones, computers and tablets—think YouTube and the many other sources of cyber videos out there.

In 1910-1912, Edison was expanding his motion pictures industry and making great overtures about how movies would be making great inroads in the classrooms of tomorrow…even trying to get some local schools to work with him. Thomas Edison envisioned an end to textbooks, in favor of movies that explained not only educational subjects but showed how commonplace items were made from raw resources. Today, you can watch on various cable channels how things are made and brought to our tables…..something very few teachers and students grasp even today, seemingly removed from how our whole economy works.

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Edison on the cover of Scientific American 1909. His motion pictures would do for the eye what his phonograph did for the ears.

While Edison seems to have been right on the mark about the power of visual learning in the classroom, his ideas created quite a storm from educationalists of the day. His boat rocking was not so well received. He was way ahead of his time, with an interview that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in late 1912, entitled “Going to School at the ‘Movies’.

Thomas Edison said, “If I were a school teacher, I would put lazy pupils to studying bees and ants. They would soon learn to be diligent.”
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Left: Intel-Edison module now available world-wide for developers. Right: The “Tommy” award given by the Edison Innovation Foundation.