First: “who.” Edison was far from a lone wolf in his lab. How many others helped him? If the work of others had been used to create Edison’s lamp, was their work his property? Or might another man lay claim to part of Edison’s supposed breakthrough? Moreover, a thousand other laboratories across the United States and Europe had been at work on this very problem—might Edison have used ideas that were first developed elsewhere and published in one of the many popular engineering journals? Theft was theft, whether it was intentional or not. Second: “invented.” Was Edison’s incandescent lamp a
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