Interesting predictions by Thomas Edison.

[JCitron]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2376808,00.asp

John

 

[Retro00064]

Thanks, John!

Great article.

Regards.

 

[jadebullet]

Great article, but the part about the first diesel electric is wrong. It wasn't B&O in 1935, it was CNJ in 1925, followed immediately by the Reading.

 

[JCitron]

Great article, but the part about the first diesel electric is wrong. It wasn't B&O in 1935, it was CNJ in 1925, followed immediately by the Reading.

I saw that too. Being from techie's and not railroad experts, it's not surprising. I was thinking of emailing them about the inaccuracies.

It's still a neat article though.

John

 

[michael2541]

There's on minor fault in that article: Steam will never die.

 

[wholbr]

Hi Everybody.

There's on minor fault in that article: Steam will never die.

Michael, I am sorry to tell you but it has. We all love the preserved railways with their steam locomotives, but unfortunately that is all they are " preserved"

There was a thread on this forum a few weeks back when a few members were trying to argue that steam power could be brought back to the railways again as the main method of propulsion.

Unfortunately, they were unable to put any weight of evidence behind their argument and the thread quickly ran out of " steam" as you might say.

Great article though
Bill
from the history appreciating side of Somerset

 

[Klinger]

Never really liked Edison after what he did to Tesla....but he was right one a few things at least...

 

[michael2541]

I didn't mean it in that way, just saying that we still have steam around

 

[wholbr]

Hi Michael and Everybody
I realize that Michael, and my return posting was placed more as a joke than anything else. Apologies if it looked like anything else.

But when it comes to steam it doesn't take much to start an argument on this forum, all you have to do is........ " light a fire under it" ha ha ha ha haaaaa

Bill
from the bad jokes side of Somerset

 

[RooRocz]

Radio has no future.

Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.

When the Paris Exhibition closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it.

 

[JCitron]

Radio has no future.

Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.

When the Paris Exhibition closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it.

All kinds of wrong predictions made their way through history before Edison and long after that.

In the mid 18th century, musicians predicted that the new pianoforte, or fortepiano depending upon where you came from in Europe at the time, would never take off. They were convinced that the clavichord and harpsichord were "the thing forever". Well little did they know that by 1800, both of these instruments were well on the extinct list. It wasn't until 1907 that interest came back to those keyboard instruments, and that was done through people such as Arnold Dolmetch, and later William Dowd and Frank Hubbard with their research in historically correct instruments.

Later on companies like Xerox came out with the first laser printers. Xerox figured it was a waste of time and sold their patents to Canon! Oh well, so much for that!

There are other miss-predictions in history, so those coming from Edison aren't unusual.

What are interesting are his takes on the technology, which were based on what he was using during his day. We have to remember too that Edison wasn't just an inventor; he was also an industrialist who looked at technology as a way to make things work better and to profit from. In the early 20th century, he and George Westinghouse had a bit of a tiff going on over AC versus DC power. Edison was all about the power of DC and even went on a "war" against AC by spreading disinformation about AC power.

Westinghouse won out with his AC power, and went on to help the New Haven and Pennsylvania electrify their mainlines in the early 1900s. The New Haven was AC-powered, but albeit at a very low frequency - like 25hz instead of the 60hz we use today. The voltage was something like 12,000 V AC 25hz. I recall seeing some warning signs mentioning this once while riding the train from New Haven to New York City. This was long before the electrication all the way to Boston. In fact this was still an idea that was never completed by the builders of the New Haven electrification because they ran out of money. So in the mid-late 1970s, this was still a pipedream so to speak.

Although imagine what he would be thinking if he was still around today! I'm sure he'd have a field day with computers and the technology we use now.

John

 

[michael2541]

No worries, and haha at the pun xP

 

[Tokkyu40]

IBM developed a little desktop computer as a curiosity and engineering exercise. There was no practical use for it, since industry used mainframe computers and no one could possibly have a use for a computer in their home.
Then Apple brought out their first desktop for companies that couldn't afford to buy a massive central computer.

Claude