There are more than two million webpages talking about Thomas Edison.
I do not have to tell you what Edison invented. I do not have to
explain why Edison was a physicist. I am writing this article
because Edison was more than a Physicist.
There are also many photos of Edison. You may
google for Edison's photos. However, have you seen
this photo? Edison's bust is at the entrance of the U.S. Naval
Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, U.S.A. Why is he there.
When George Washington constructed his first cabinet for the new country,
he did not think the minister of foreign affairs was necessary because
his country was separated from the rest of the world by two oceans.
This is the reason why foreign affairs of the United States are steel
handled by the prime minister, known as the secretary of state.
By the time of World War I (1914-19), the Atlantic Ocean became a major
battle field, and the U.S. Navy felt that big ships with heavy guns were
not enough to carry out naval combats. Thomas Edison was called in to
construct a research lab to to equip the Navy with electrical
and electronic weapons. Edison's Naval Research Laboratory made a
decisive contribution to the Navy's control system during World War II.
The Navy's appetite for scientific research did not end with its Research
Laboratory. It started invading universities. During World War II, the
Navy built a cosmic ray research laboratory on the campus of Princeton
University. This lab was built during the World-War-II period, and
it is now used as an elementary particle research laboratory. This
WWII-style building looks quite differently from other structures on
the Princeton campus.
You may click here
for a more detailed story about this building.
Indeed, the Navy's support for this facilitate during WWII was a prelude
to massive government government supports for university research programs.
Funding agencies such as AEC (now DOE), AFOSR, NSF, NASA, etc were created
after 1945. When you feel proposal writing is burdensome, remember that
it is a culture initiated by Edison.
You have seen this trademark. In 1876, America became one hundred years old.
Thomas Edison wanted to start a new history. He opened his own research laboratory
in Menlo Park (New Jersey). By 1890, he expanded his lab into Edison General
Electric Company. In the meantime, Elihu Thomson and Edwin Houston constructed
Thomson-Houston Company to manufacture and market electrical products. In 1892,
these two companies merged into General Electric Company with a financial
backing from J. P. Morgan.
General Electric Company established itself by portaging light bulbs. You
should know who invented the bulb. This is not the only product GE is
producing these days. GE says "Progress is our most important product."
It is not difficult to figure out whose ideology this is.
You do not have to be a communist to appreciate Karl Marx's discovery.
When you pay for your car repair, the statement comes with charges for
materials and labor. Indeed, Marx wrote down the capitalistic formula
where G' and G are the values of bricks and muds respectively,
and W stands for Marx's surplus value. Marx then said this
surplus value comes from manual labor. In this way, Marx established
Labor = Money, as Einstein did for Mass and Energy.
You also know Marx's original formula is outdated. In the 1960s, using Marx's
original formula, Mao Zhedong attempted to convert China's massive labor power
into money by forcing every Chinese family to built a backyard steel mill.
He did not realize that Marx'x original formula had been modified to
This new R&D term was introduced by Edison. I thought
I invented this new formula, but I should give full credit to
Thomas Edison.
Henry Ford was the pioneer of American automobile industry, and his
home base was in Dearborn, Michigan, near Detroit. In the summer of
1964, I was able to stay one afternoon there while I was driving to
Madison, Wisconsin. My original plan was to see the Ford assembly
line. But, I spent the entire afternoon at the Edison Museum. I was
confused. Edison did not live in Michigan. Why is his Lab there?
Henry Ford was keenly interested in what and how Thomas Edison was
doing, and he had enough money to buy Edison's Menlo Park lab in New
Jersey and move it to his home base and to convert it to the Edison
museum. Why did he do that? Ford at that time needed mechanical
engineers, while Edison was developing electrical devices. Ford was
not interested in electrical stuff, but was interested in Edison's
philosophy of making innovations.
Out of my respect for Henry Ford, I always drive Ford cars. My present
car was built in 1999, and thus is ten years old. It is still in an
excellent condition and satisfies fully all my transportation needs.
Thus, there are no reasons for those automobile companies to change
their models every year, but they do. They have to do this in order
to increase Marx's surplus value (profit margin) to their products.
In this case, the surplus value consists of research and development.
Henry Ford got this idea from Thomas Edison.
On his tombstone
at London's Highgate Cemetery, Karl Marx says
The Philosophers have only
interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is
to change it.
Marx did not have high opinions of philosophers, but he indicated some
of their opinions are essential in changing the world. If he thinks he
changed the world by writing down his Labor = Money formula, who was his
philosopher? I do not have enough expertise to go further on this issue.
Thomas Edison certainly changed the world. Who then was his philosopher?
You have seen a movie entitled "Young Thomas Edison" when you were young.
You will recall that Edison becomes creative whenever he has to help others.
In the New Testament, Jesus produces miracles whenever he has to help
others. If you do not take those miracle stories seriously, you should
know what Jesus said when he had to help a young woman about to be stoned.
In order to read what Thomas Edison said about his country at a difficult
time, let us go to
http://www.thomasedison.com/. What he says there sounds like a
sermon you hear on Easter Sunday.
Yes, Edison had a very strong Christian background. Both his mother and
wife were devoted Christians. It appears that Edison's research habit
comes from the Gospel of Matthew Chapter Seven.
How do I know this? I have enough Christian background to interpret things
based on the Bible. Both my mother and grand mother were devoted Christians,
and they used to tell me bed-time Bible stories. Horace Underwood was
the first missionary sent to Korea from the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian
Church of New York in 1885. His brother was one of the pioneers of
American typewriter industry, and the Underwood typewriter used be on
everybody's desktop as Dell computers are these days. Perhaps almost
everybody.
You will be interested to know that my grandfather was one of Horace
Underwood's most trusted Korean friends. I met his grandson in Urbana,
Illinois in 2003, and produced this photo. Thanks to my Christian
background, I am able to manage the psychology of physicists, and able
to get along with my colleagues with different opinions. You may be
interested in my earlier webpage entitled
Herod Complex dealing with this issue.
How do I know this? I have enough Christian background to interpret things
based on the Bible. Both my mother and grand mother were devoted Christians,
and they used to tell me bed-time Bible stories. Horace Underwood was
the first missionary sent to Korea from the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian
Church of New York in 1885. His brother was one of the pioneers of
American typewriter industry, and the Underwood typewriter used be on
everybody's desktop as Dell computers are these days. Perhaps almost
everybody.
