Founders · Oct 10The Biography of Thomas Edison
It paid Edison $40,000 for an invention, but saw no conceivable use for recorded voice because the telegraph monopoly had economic reasons not to. It was also the target of Jay Gould's financial war, in which Edison's patents were used as pawns.
Tips
- Edison learned that patents, even unused ones, work as bargaining pawns for rich backers▶ 42:50Gould gained in a single day 20 or 30 times what he paid the young inventor.
- Edison found that incumbents will not buy inventions that threaten their own business▶ 49:25Dyson found vacuum makers sold hundreds of millions of dollars of bags a year and could not see his product.
