{"product_id":"edison-isbn-9780471529422","title":"Edison","description":"From the preeminent Edison scholar . . . The definitive life of the inventor of the modern age\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Advance Praise for Edison: A Life of Invention\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"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 CultureEin Bestseller jetzt neu als Broschurausgabe! Die gebundene Ausgabe erzielte hervorragende Kritiken im Daily Telegraph, New Scientist, The Independent und in der Sunday Times - um nur einige zu nennen. Israel hatte erstmals Zugang zu Werkstatt-Tagebüchern, Briefen und mehr als fünf Millionen Seiten Archivmaterial. Auf der Basis dieser Informationen hat er die erste maßgebende Biographie von Edison verfaßt. Zum ersten Mal wird Edisons Karriere als Erfinder systematisch untersucht und bewertet. Im Detail wird erforscht, wie er u.a. mit der Erfindung des elektrischen Lichts, der Photographie und mehr als tausend anderen Dingen das 20. Jahrhundert prägte. Dies ist auch die erste Biographie, die Edison im Zusammenhang mit dem rapiden industriellen Wandel betrachtet, indem die Auswirkungen dieses Wandels auf seine Erfindungen beschrieben werden. Dieses Buch liefert eine Fülle neuer Informationen über Edison und seine Erfindungen. Eine interessante und spannende Lektüre. (y03\/00) Childhood and Education.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Itinerant Telegrapher.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e From Operator to Inventor.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e A Leading Electromechanician.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Competing Interests.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e From Shop to Laboratory.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e New Directions.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Invention Factory.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Wizard of Menlo Park.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Inventing a System.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e From Research to Development.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Inventing an Industry.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Family Matters.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e A New Laboratory.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Inventing Entertainment.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Industrial Research.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Competition and Consolidation.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Innovation and Enthusiasm.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e A Modern Legend.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Fame in the Family.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Business of Innovation.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Edison Incorporated.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Inventor-Philosopher.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Epilogue.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Notes.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Index. PAUL ISRAEL is the Managing Editor of the multivolume documentary edition of the Thomas Edison Papers at Rutgers University and the coauthor of Edison's Electric Light. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey. From the preeminent Edison scholar . . . The definitive life of the inventor of the modern age\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Advance Praise for Edison: A Life of Invention\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"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","brand":"Wiley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47989104181477,"sku":"NP9780471529422","price":58.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780471529422.jpg?v=1761782811","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/edison-isbn-9780471529422","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}