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Edison: A Life of Invention
From the preeminent Edison scholar . . . The definitive life of the inventor of the modern age
The conventional story is so familiar and reassuring that it has come to read more like American myth than history: With only three months of formal education, a curious and hardworking young man beats the odds and becomes one of the greatest inventors in history. Not only does he invent the phonograph and the first successful electric light bulb, but he also establishes the first electrical power distribution company and lays the technological groundwork for today's movies, telephones, and sound recording industry. Through relentless tinkering, by trial and error, the story goes, Thomas Alva Edison perseveres-and changes the world.
In the revelatory Edison: A Life of Invention, author Paul Israel exposes and enriches this one-dimensional view of the solitary "Wizard of Menlo Park," expertly situating his subject within a thoroughly realized portrait of a burgeoning country on the brink of massive change. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of corporate America, and with it the newly overlapping interests of scientific, technological, and industrial cultures. Working against the common perception of Edison as a symbol of a mythic American past where persistence and individuality yielded hard-earned success, Israel demonstrates how Edison's remarkable career was actually very much a product of the inventor's fast-changing era. Edison drew widely from contemporary scientific knowledge and research, and was a crucial figure in the transformation of invention into modern corporate research and collaborative development.
Informed by more than five million pages of archival documents, Paul Israel's ambitious life of Edison brightens the unexamined corners of a singularly influential and triumphant career in science. In these pages, history's most prolific inventor-he received an astounding 1,093 U.S. patents-comes to life as never before. Edison is the only biography to cover the whole of Edison's career in invention, including his early, foundational work in telegraphy. Armed with unprecedented access to Edison's workshop diaries, notebooks, and letters, Israel brings fresh insights into how the inventor's creative mind worked. And for the first time, much attention is devoted to his early family life in Ohio and Michigan-where the young Edison honed his entrepreneurial sense and eye for innovation as a newsstand owner and editor of a weekly newspaper-underscoring the inventor's later successes with new resonance and pathos.
In recognizing the inventor's legacy as a pivotal figure in the second Industrial Revolution, Israel highlights Edison's creation of the industrial research laboratory, driven by intricately structured teams of researchers. The efficient lab forever changed the previously serendipitous art of workshop invention into something regular, predictable, and very attractive to corporate business leaders. Indeed, Edison's collaborative research model became the prototype upon which today's research firms and think tanks are based.
The portrait of Thomas Alva Edison that emerges from this peerless biography is of a man of genius and astounding foresight. It is also a portrait rendered with incredible care, depth, and dimension, rescuing our century's godfather of invention from myth and simplification.
Advance Praise for Edison: A Life of Invention
"Familiar Edison stories come alive with fresh insight . . . Israel's scholarship is impeccable while his deceptively easy grace transforms a challenging story into a page turner. One hundred years of history texts have been right all along. Thomas Edison, a protean actor on the American landscape, requires our attention. Paul Israel has given us a book to satisfy that requirement for a long time to come."- John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., Editor, Technology and Culture
The conventional story is so familiar and reassuring that it has come to read more like American myth than history: With only three months of formal education, a curious and hardworking young man beats the odds and becomes one of the greatest inventors in history. Not only does he invent the phonograph and the first successful electric light bulb, but he also establishes the first electrical power distribution company and lays the technological groundwork for today's movies, telephones, and sound recording industry. Through relentless tinkering, by trial and error, the story goes, Thomas Alva Edison perseveres-and changes the world.
In the revelatory Edison: A Life of Invention, author Paul Israel exposes and enriches this one-dimensional view of the solitary "Wizard of Menlo Park," expertly situating his subject within a thoroughly realized portrait of a burgeoning country on the brink of massive change. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of corporate America, and with it the newly overlapping interests of scientific, technological, and industrial cultures. Working against the common perception of Edison as a symbol of a mythic American past where persistence and individuality yielded hard-earned success, Israel demonstrates how Edison's remarkable career was actually very much a product of the inventor's fast-changing era. Edison drew widely from contemporary scientific knowledge and research, and was a crucial figure in the transformation of invention into modern corporate research and collaborative development.
Informed by more than five million pages of archival documents, Paul Israel's ambitious life of Edison brightens the unexamined corners of a singularly influential and triumphant career in science. In these pages, history's most prolific inventor-he received an astounding 1,093 U.S. patents-comes to life as never before. Edison is the only biography to cover the whole of Edison's career in invention, including his early, foundational work in telegraphy. Armed with unprecedented access to Edison's workshop diaries, notebooks, and letters, Israel brings fresh insights into how the inventor's creative mind worked. And for the first time, much attention is devoted to his early family life in Ohio and Michigan-where the young Edison honed his entrepreneurial sense and eye for innovation as a newsstand owner and editor of a weekly newspaper-underscoring the inventor's later successes with new resonance and pathos.
In recognizing the inventor's legacy as a pivotal figure in the second Industrial Revolution, Israel highlights Edison's creation of the industrial research laboratory, driven by intricately structured teams of researchers. The efficient lab forever changed the previously serendipitous art of workshop invention into something regular, predictable, and very attractive to corporate business leaders. Indeed, Edison's collaborative research model became the prototype upon which today's research firms and think tanks are based.
The portrait of Thomas Alva Edison that emerges from this peerless biography is of a man of genius and astounding foresight. It is also a portrait rendered with incredible care, depth, and dimension, rescuing our century's godfather of invention from myth and simplification.
Advance Praise for Edison: A Life of Invention
"Familiar Edison stories come alive with fresh insight . . . Israel's scholarship is impeccable while his deceptively easy grace transforms a challenging story into a page turner. One hundred years of history texts have been right all along. Thomas Edison, a protean actor on the American landscape, requires our attention. Paul Israel has given us a book to satisfy that requirement for a long time to come."- John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., Editor, Technology and Culture
560 pages, Paperback
First published September 7, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 31, 2010
Avoid this audio book - the narrator kills it.
March 8, 2019
It's like a list and a schedule of his doings - kind of raw material to extract the data from. I skipped chapters and left in the middle, something I do rarely. And then it is biased, obviously favoring the man, apologetic, but never bringing the other side.
And then it feels like much of the background story is missing - what is happening in the rest of the world and in the other labs? Many details are present but not an overall picture of the environment.
And then it feels like much of the background story is missing - what is happening in the rest of the world and in the other labs? Many details are present but not an overall picture of the environment.
October 3, 2015
This is the ultimate volume on Edison. I never knew how much his inventions really mean to us today. It is very technical in regards to his inventions, which can make it a bit hard to get through.
March 15, 2018
Edward Fisher
March 15, 2018
Edison: A Life of Invention: Goodreads Review:
Give a brief synopsis: In Edison: A Life of Invention, the author, Paul Israel, gives a wonderful and captivating biography of Thomas Alva Edison’s life. Throughout this book, Israel describes Edison’s life through the use of essentially, storytelling all of Edison's inventions, of which there were many! Almost all of these inventions are very intricate and have in-depth stories behind their processes. To name a few of the notable inventions that struck me as quite important to our society were the concept of the modern day laboratory, the oh-so-famous incandescent lightbulb, and of course the phonograph. The science laboratory is fairly self-explanatory, as is the incandescent lightbulb, which led to the LED, or, light emitting diode, which is what is now commonly used as a light source. But the phonograph is less self-explanatory, though the prefix ‘phono-’ means sound. The phonograph is also known as a record player, and it can be used to record sounds and play them back. There are countless inventions in this book, and sometimes they can get slightly boring, believe it or not.
Discuss it’s strengths and weaknesses: Although Edison: A Life of Invention is a wonderful and very captivating book for what it is, the book is still essentially a story-told biography, and that means that it can get a bit boring at times. One of these ‘times,’ is the entire first half of the book—it was superrrrrr boring, and didn’t captivate the reader [me] whatsoever. On the other hand, however, having pushed through the first half of the book by brute force, once one gets to the second half of the book, Edison: A Life of Invention becomes quite a bit more captivating, and made me want to keep reading. Israel had a very tough job, of turning a biography into something readable for the everyday person. Israel did a great job of this though, and I personally enjoyed this book quite a bit.
In my personal opinion, I think that Edison: A Life of Invention is a wonderful book, but that it may not be for everyone. I believe that one must go into this reading with the point of view and mindset that the book is a boring biography about Thomas Edison, and be impressed and pleasantly surprised by the use of Paul Israel’s story-telling technique. If one is looking for a book to write a scientific essay about, this could be a viable option. If one is looking to learn about Thomas Edison’s life, but does not want to read through endless accounts and formal scientific essays and wikipedia articles, this is a very viable option. Another reason that I would recommend Edison: A Life of Invention could be if someone wanted a ‘biography’ of Edison, which covered inventions, and not just what went on throughout his life. I enjoyed this book, but I did not read it in one sitting as I do with many ‘good’ books, because this just wasn’t a book that I would have been able to do that with.
March 15, 2018
Edison: A Life of Invention: Goodreads Review:
Give a brief synopsis: In Edison: A Life of Invention, the author, Paul Israel, gives a wonderful and captivating biography of Thomas Alva Edison’s life. Throughout this book, Israel describes Edison’s life through the use of essentially, storytelling all of Edison's inventions, of which there were many! Almost all of these inventions are very intricate and have in-depth stories behind their processes. To name a few of the notable inventions that struck me as quite important to our society were the concept of the modern day laboratory, the oh-so-famous incandescent lightbulb, and of course the phonograph. The science laboratory is fairly self-explanatory, as is the incandescent lightbulb, which led to the LED, or, light emitting diode, which is what is now commonly used as a light source. But the phonograph is less self-explanatory, though the prefix ‘phono-’ means sound. The phonograph is also known as a record player, and it can be used to record sounds and play them back. There are countless inventions in this book, and sometimes they can get slightly boring, believe it or not.
Discuss it’s strengths and weaknesses: Although Edison: A Life of Invention is a wonderful and very captivating book for what it is, the book is still essentially a story-told biography, and that means that it can get a bit boring at times. One of these ‘times,’ is the entire first half of the book—it was superrrrrr boring, and didn’t captivate the reader [me] whatsoever. On the other hand, however, having pushed through the first half of the book by brute force, once one gets to the second half of the book, Edison: A Life of Invention becomes quite a bit more captivating, and made me want to keep reading. Israel had a very tough job, of turning a biography into something readable for the everyday person. Israel did a great job of this though, and I personally enjoyed this book quite a bit.
In my personal opinion, I think that Edison: A Life of Invention is a wonderful book, but that it may not be for everyone. I believe that one must go into this reading with the point of view and mindset that the book is a boring biography about Thomas Edison, and be impressed and pleasantly surprised by the use of Paul Israel’s story-telling technique. If one is looking for a book to write a scientific essay about, this could be a viable option. If one is looking to learn about Thomas Edison’s life, but does not want to read through endless accounts and formal scientific essays and wikipedia articles, this is a very viable option. Another reason that I would recommend Edison: A Life of Invention could be if someone wanted a ‘biography’ of Edison, which covered inventions, and not just what went on throughout his life. I enjoyed this book, but I did not read it in one sitting as I do with many ‘good’ books, because this just wasn’t a book that I would have been able to do that with.
January 4, 2020
This was among the driest books I’ve ever read. It was hard to focus, because Israel never stopped to portray his subject but instead elaborated for excruciatingly long stretches on invention-details.
June 13, 2023
Author is in charge of the Edison papers at Rutgers, so this work is very thorough. Not many details left out. That does cause the book to drag a bit in places, but I'd rather have too many accurate details than too few estimates.
June 23, 2018
The most scholarly and authoritative Edison biography.
December 8, 2020
Excellent and well-informed biography.
October 22, 2022
Lots of great information, but it often went far too deep into technical details. Felt like the book could have been 33% shorter. Nonetheless, I learned a lot about the Wizard of Menlo Park.
December 26, 2015
As a scholarly piece of work it seems a very credible and exhaustively researched biography that cuts through the hyperbole and clearly defines Edison's unique role in inventions and the modern research lab. But that's my problem with the book. The (boring) truth got in the way of the story. I remember reading a book on him in high school that seemed far more interesting and engaging. I was hoping for a little more of that zing.
This book is not a ripping yarn, it's far too serious for that. Isreal writes that Edison and P.T. Barnum (the showman) had a lot in common, but for me, this book could have done with a bit more show and a bit less business.
If you need to write an essay, this is your book. It's fantastic. If you want to be entertained learning about Edison - the 'wizard of menlo park' - the inventor of our modern age, don't be surprised if a look behind the wizard's curtain (reading this biography) is more of a yawn than a yarn.
This book is not a ripping yarn, it's far too serious for that. Isreal writes that Edison and P.T. Barnum (the showman) had a lot in common, but for me, this book could have done with a bit more show and a bit less business.
If you need to write an essay, this is your book. It's fantastic. If you want to be entertained learning about Edison - the 'wizard of menlo park' - the inventor of our modern age, don't be surprised if a look behind the wizard's curtain (reading this biography) is more of a yawn than a yarn.
December 21, 2014
This book was a major chore for me and I'm technically inclined. The first half was like eating a box of saltines it was so dry, however, it did become more reader friendly as it progressed. Israel is extremely detailed technically in this account of the life of Edison, too much so I believe. Unless you are schooled in electrical engineering, you would probably agree with me.
Thomas A. Edison was a model of persistence which resulted in his becoming an American icon respected around the world, but he did have some undesirable traits such as his being self-centered, jealousy of others getting any credit and the poor treatment of his children by his first wife. He was indeed a true capitalist and prolific entrepreneur.
I'm glad I finally finished this one.
Thomas A. Edison was a model of persistence which resulted in his becoming an American icon respected around the world, but he did have some undesirable traits such as his being self-centered, jealousy of others getting any credit and the poor treatment of his children by his first wife. He was indeed a true capitalist and prolific entrepreneur.
I'm glad I finally finished this one.
October 2, 2009
Used for research
April 26, 2012
Had it as audio and it broke in middle of third chapter so I never finished it entirely.
December 7, 2012
Rather dry, however very informative. Before Steve Jobs, there was Edison
February 7, 2016
Didn't finish, got about 1/2 way through. Very detailed account, probably more detail than I really wanted.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews