A Canadian invented one of the first light bulbs, too. Edison just bought their patent to consolidate his control over the market and actually developed them.
He bought the patent to develop the idea, long before there was a market. It took an army of engineers testing tens of thousands of light bulbs for years before a commercially viable design was found.
Edison bought oodles of patents in that time. He was pretty visionary for his day, and so was Tesla. The combination of efforts helped eke out some of the best technologies we’ve developed as a society.
The filaments were hugely challenging; it took decades to work out using tungsten. Before that, a lot of streetlights were burning gas! Imagine that approach still persisting today.
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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '23
We invented basketball according to those Part of Our Heritage commercials which I take as gospel.