Customer Reviews

Edison, His Life and Inventions

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Edison, His Life and Inventions (mobi)

This book does a good job of explaining Edison's personality, and a great job of explaining his achievements. The book is obviously carefully researched, and demonstrates a deep technical understanding of Edison's inventions. Thomas Edison was a prodigious inventor and a symbol of the American entrepreneurial spirit. His influence on the 20th century through the electric light, the phonograph, and his other inventions truly transformed the American experience. The book is well written, and I enjoyed reading it, and a reader looking for an understanding of Edison's inventions will not be disappointed. The Kindle edition of this book is very good!

This book is fine for what it is, but it consists merely of a reprint of the original text. None of the original figures or illustrations are included, and these are an integral part of the book.

[Originally published in 1910]

Commissioned by Edison himself, as a tool for his self-promotion, this nonetheless very informative and useful biography was written by Dyer (an Edison patent attorney) and Martin (a technical magazine publisher and editor). It was written when Edison was 63 (he lived to 84, dying in 1931). Although the book could rightfully be called a panegyric, with little criticism of Edison, that is not to say that it is without value. Although a biography, it is not an introspective work, and at its conclusion, one is unlikely to feel that he "knows" Edison as a person. Although capably written, the writing isn't likely to blow you away. Also, since it was written relatively early in the "electrification" phase of history, it is not able to put Edison's work and achievements in historical context, as a more modern work would. Finally, there is no mention made of the AC vs. DC controversy, and only the briefest of mentions is made of his significant rivals, such as Westinghouse and Tesla. However, to be fair, this book is subtitled "His Life and Inventions", and that's basically what is is about. One advantage of being written "in the moment" so to speak, is that the book conveys scenes from Edison's life with a vividness and immediateness that a later book could not. There are a lot of stories in the book that are quoted directly to the authors from Edison himself. Given the nature of the authors, I would have expected a little more technical explanation in the book. There is some, and there is a lengthy appendix (about 140 pages) which goes into more detail on each of his major inventions. All in all, I liked this book. It tells you what Edison thought was important about his work, and his life. It is part propaganda, to be sure, but it is also factual, at least to the extent I could verify. I have read some of his patents (you can actually get copies), I have even read some of his patent litigation (court opinions). I personally believe that this book was simply part and parcel of the man's life work - a search for truth. Although he became quite wealthy as a result of his productivity, he wasn't nearly as wealthy as he could have been. For example, any inventions he created in the medical field, he simply gave to the public domain. And for some of his major inventions - for example, the incandescent lightbulb - the cost and time it took to fight off patent infringers severely limited his ability to make any money from it. And he usually plowed back into his laboratory most of any profit he made. He simply wasn't that concerned with money, he was concerned with solving problems.

The invention of the first light bulb inaugurated a new age for man: Electricity. Just as Edison had to create the tools to make the first bulb, he had to create the industry to use it. He did, and in doing so he assembled the first research laboratory and gathered around him a collection of great minds -- a rich assortment of men with varying talents.

Edison's life and inventions tell a truly amazing story. Edison's achievements are explained wonderfully in this book which I found fun to read.

I've just started becoming interested in Edison and have found this ebook to be an awesome biography, worth paying full price for. The chapters are organized around major inventions, rather than chronological stages. And with each invention, the author does a great job recreating the historical context and creative progress which contributed to Edison's breakthroughs. There are other chapters that comment on Edison's personality and/or lifestyle. These are equally as interesting.

There are plenty of insightful quotes from Edison and his colleagues. And, there are even in-depth, minimally-technical descriptions of each invention and its function. The style is formal and elegant and the result is an orderly glimpse into a truly fascinating figure's extraordinary life.

The chapter titled "Edison's Method in Inventing" is particularly insightful and can be appreciated in its own context, apart from the rest of the work. It's at 59% on the kindle.

It is quite a shame, that this facsimile is so badly made. The pictures are really bad reproduced and why is it, that page 117 is not there. Instead page 113 is shown one more time. And in several places the text is distorted from the scanning.

This book was really great. It is very educational book on Thomas Edison's life, and inventions. If you want to know more about his inventions and life I recomend this book.

This book, like a number of books on the Kindle list, are actually 'free' in the sense that if you go over to [...] and search for the title (like this one) you will be able to download the book as a PDF. Its copyright has expired. A number of 'enterprising' (and I use that term loosely) people have taken to downloading those books, republishing them as Kindle books and charging a modest fee for them. (Frankly I find $4.00 outrageous for something that took the guy maybe 3 minutes to do).

While its not illegal to sell out of print books for money, it is not particularly moral. However that is not what gets this book 1 star. It would actually be worth paying a bit of money for it IF the book had been reformatted from the original scans AND IF the "publisher" had put some time and effort into checking for missing pages and material, perhaps re-drawn some illustrations or added additional context. But none of that has been done, this is yet another example of the

1. download to pdf from Google Books
2. upload to kindle publishing account
3. Profit!

Business model.

I thought this was a good overview of his life, but being from Port Huron there are some mistakes in the book. The most glaring mistake is that he was thrown off the train at Mount Clemens. It didn't happen there. He was thrown off the train at SMITH'S CREEK!