Excerpt of 'Innovate Like Edison'
— -- Introduction: Turning on the Light
If we all did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.— Thomas Edison
At one thirty a.m. on October 22, 1879, everything was ready for the astounding experiment that would change the world forever. Thomas Edison, age thirty-two, and his colleagues Charles Batchelor and Francis Jehl, huddled around a series of glass tubes, gauges, and wires suspended on a tall wooden stand in the middle of Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory. Edison focused intently on a prototype, pear-shaped light bulb mounted at the upper edge of the stand, carefully checking the partial vacuum seal at its base. Protruding from the hand blown glass bulb were two razor-thin platinum lead-in wires, connected inside the bulb to a carbonized cotton filament no thicker than a human hair. Eyeing the lamp for a moment, Edison was satisfied that the connections holding the bulb's fragile filament in place were intact. Edison asked Jehl, "Are you ready?"
"Ready," he replied.
Jehl began evacuating oxygen from the glass lamp by pouring mercury into a long tube at the top of the stand. As mercury flowed through the tube, it slowly drew oxygen out of the lamp, creating a vacuum. They watched as large oxygen bubbles percolated through the viscous liquid, gradually giving way to smaller bubbles as the inner atmosphere of the lamp was voided of air. To hasten creation of the vacuum, Edison lit an alcohol burner, drawing the small, steady flame across the exterior of the glass bulb, warming it to remove any moisture within the bulb. Large bubbles suddenly surged into the mercury as heat from the burner drove more air out of the bulb.
Activating a battery sitting on a nearby table, Edison connected a wire running from one pole of the battery to one of the razor-thin platinum lead-in wires, taking a second wire from the battery's other pole and briefly touching it against the second lead-in wire. Current flowed upward, warming the filament, its red glow gradually ridding the carbonized cotton of any gases that could alter the vacuum. Edison repeated this filament-warming process several times until no more bubbles were visible in the mercury.
Pleased, Edison called upon his glass blower, Ludwig Boehm, to fully seal off the bulb at its base, preserving the near-perfect vacuum they had just created- one part per million- a breakthrough achieved by the Menlo Park staff just a few months earlier.
Once the bulb had been fully sealed, Edison placed it in a small stand on the table. He bound one wire running from each pole of the battery to each of the free platinum lead-in wires from the bulb, creating a complete circuit. Current surged upward through the high-resistance, carbonized cotton thread. The room filled with light.
After six hours, Jehl whispered to his compatriots, "It's still burning!" This filament had now outlasted all previous efforts. Consulting his pocket watch for confirmation, Francis Upton smiled, while Batchelor and Edison continued fashioning additional carbonized filaments in case unexpected problems arose.
At three p.m. – 13.5 hours into the experiment – Edison turned up the battery's voltage, making the filament glow even more brightly. At four p.m. Edison and his team watched as the glass lamp cracked, and the last flickers of the filaments incandescent brilliance were spent. The light had shone for 14.5 hours, including a full one-hour stress test. A jubilant Edison declared, "If it will burn that number of hours now, I know I can make it burn a hundred!" The practical incandescent light had been born.
Edison's Menlo Park team would push the technological boundaries of their discovery even further less than one year later, when they began commercially manufacturing the first incandescent light bulb at the Edison Lamp Works. Less than two years later, on September 4, 1882, the world's first central power system would illuminate New York City from Edison's Pearl Street station, near Wall Street. The age of electrical power had begun.
When asked what his rules were for the laboratory and its staff, Edison loved to respond, "Hell, there are no rules here – we're trying to accomplish something." However, as we study his life and work, it becomes clear that he did have powerful rules for innovation. These rules were manifest in his establishment of the world's first Research and Development laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, and the first Industrial Research and Development (R&D) complex at West Orange, New Jersey. They can be translated into five essential competencies of innovation(TM):
1. Solution-centered Mindset
2. Kaleidoscopic Thinking
3. Full-spectrum Engagement
4. Master-mind Collaboration
5. Super-value Creation
Edison was the first person to create such a system. His focus on practical accomplishment set the stage for America's global leadership. Before Thomas Edison, innovation was viewed as the random product of a lone genius. Edison was, of course, an exceptional genius, but the greatest product of his genius was the establishment of a systematic approach to success that he believed anyone could emulate.
Excerpted from Innovate Like Edison by Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott. Copyright © 2007. Excerpted by permission of Dutton & Gotham, a division of Penguin USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.