Chapter 4. Invention Teams
Throughout history, teams of inventors have been formed to produce large numbers of inventions in a short time period.
Consider Thomas Edison (see Figure 4-1), who expanded his own talent as an inventor by creating a team of inventors to work in his Menlo Park research and development laboratory in what is today Edison, New Jersey. Edison's invention team enabled Edison to receive 1,093 patents—the most of any inventor in U.S. history.
Figure 4-1. Thomas Edison, master inventor with 1,093 patents (photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute).
Thomas Edison is the master inventor of many new ideas. Once, Edison told the world that “[My lab will produce] a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so.”
Within six years of the founding of Edison's laboratory (see Figure 4-2), Edison with the help of his team earned more than 400 patents. These inventions included, among others, the phonograph, a carbon telephone transmitter (the microphone in the telephone mouthpiece), the first practical incandescent light bulb, and an electrical generating and transmitting system.
Figure 4-2. The Menlo Park, New Jersey, invention team lab in 1876 (photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute).
Shown here are drawings that Edison probably used when working with Alexander Graham Bell to invent the microphone for Bell's telephone. The following illustration Figure 4-3 shows Bell's concept drawing of the telephone.
Figure 4-3. Sketch of Bell's telephone idea from 1876 (photo courtesy of the Library of Congress, Bell Papers).
