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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 121.210.64.214 (talk) at 08:19, 21 October 2008. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Former good articleThomas Edison was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
December 12, 2005Good article nomineeListed
June 11, 2006Featured article candidateNot promoted
July 9, 2008Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

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This article was featured in FoxTrot on 7 September 2006
This article was written by Peter.

Lightbulb

he did not invent the lightbulb —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.138.216.89 (talk) 22:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With you on that, the incandescent light bulb was invented by someone BRITISH (yay!) - Sir Joseph Swan, 1878. Edison's patent merely involved improving his design. Should be noted. =D Paidgenius (talk) 09:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
He actually bought 3 patents from 6 different people, and improved the design, 1 American, 1 British and 1 Canadian patent
Incandescent lightbulb invented by the Canadian Henry Woodward. He later sold the patent to Edison —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.112.219.43 (talk) 18:36, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Patent stealing?

How come there is no mention of edisons patent trolling? He did 'steal' alot of inventions —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.184.161.230 (talk) 16:41, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How do you define "patent trolling?" There is discussion of priority of invention, prior work by others, and the collaborative nature of work in his lab. Find some reliable sources, read what is already in the article, then feel free to improve the article based on the reliable sources. This is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Edison (talk) 16:51, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is a start but there are dozens of other more reliable sites and scholarly books that talk about this matter in further detail. If anyone really cares about Edison enough I'm sure they would have the motivation to present an article that is historically accurate and truthful, not one that leaves out large pieces of history.

GA Sweeps

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed.

  • The lead needs to be expanded, to better summarise the article.
  • "Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter...". All quotations need to be attributed immediately.
  • "There are many other examples of unattributed quotations: "According to Edison, Hammer was 'a pioneer of incandescent electric lighting' "; "Edison said he wanted the lab to have 'a stock of almost every conceivable material' "; "a judge ruled that Edison's electric light improvement claim for 'a filament of carbon of high resistance' was valid."
  • There are six {{fact}} tags in the article that need to be dealt with.
  • What's the relevance of this sentence "There were 28 men recognized as Edison Pioneers", tagged onto the end of Work relations?
  • Why does footnote #51 repeat the quotation contained in the body of the article?
  • Tributes looks rather like a disguised Trivia section, and I think needs to be re-worked. The subsections are really too short, with many short, one-sentence paragraphs.
  • There are two books by Mark Essig listed in the Bibliography. The ISBN of the first is actually for A Bolt of fate by Tom Tucker.
  • "He was counting on taking the film to US and recapture the huge cost of it by showing it throughout the US when he realized it has already been showing in the US by Edison." Needs rewriting to make sense.
  • "After protracted patent litigation, in 1892 a federal court ruled that Edison—and not Emile Berliner—was the inventor of the carbon microphone. (Josephson, p146)." The article should use a consistent citation format.

I will check back in no less than seven days. If progress is being made and issues are being addressed, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Regards, Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As these issues remain outstanding, this article has now been delisted. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 18:40, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thumperward has tagged the "External links" section as not being in compliance with WP:EL. Many of the external links are fully in compliance with that guideline, which is summed up as "Adding external links to an article can be a service to the reader, but they should be kept to a minimum of those that are meritable, accessible and appropriate to the article." Some of the external links are to authoritative sources, such as the Edison Papers project at Rutgers Univesity, or include reliable sources which provide important information or insights into Edison's life and work, but which are too lengthy to include in this article, or are copyrighted.That said, I propose here that some of the exrternal links be removed for compliance with WP:EL. Having more external links does not necessarily improve an article, and each should be judged individually. Links I propose for removal:

If there is no objection, I will delete these a week from now. The remaining links seem to comply with WP:EL but are certainly also open to discussion, as are the above. Edison (talk) 20:02, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The links to "Historic sites" should go if the sites themselves don't contain sufficient material to warrant inclusion as encyclopedic sources. This isn't a guidebook, and links to physical locations shouldn't be necessary (and indeed are fairly useless to readers outwith the locality). So that's another handful:
We should keep:
  • "Menlo Park Reminiscences, Volume 1," by Francis Jehl, originally published by Edison Institute, Dearborn, Michigan, 1937. Reprinted by Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 1990. ISBN 0-486-26357-6 (evidently an encyclopedia source)
  • Thomas Edison House (considerable encyclopedic material on the website)
  • Edison exhibit and Menlo Park Laboratory at Henry Ford Museum (considerable encyclopedic material on the website)
  • Edison Museum (considerable encyclopedic material on the website)
Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:50, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edison, I agree with removing the ones you think should be removed. Chris, there are two which you think should be kept which I would remove. They are: Thomas Edison House (I looked at this, and I don't think there is that much info on the site); and "Menlo Park Reminiscences, Volume 1," by Francis Jehl, originally published by Edison Institute, Dearborn, Michigan, 1937. Reprinted by Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 1990. ISBN 0-486-26357-6 (it may be encylopedic, but WP is not a bookstore). Also, I would delete additions sites which both of you did not recommend deleting:

Let me know waht you think about these suggestions. If no-one replies, I'll go ahead after a few days or so. Carl.bunderson (talk) 04:39, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well no-one's replied, so I'm going ahead with it. Carl.bunderson (talk) 18:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

True that he never slept?

I read somewhere that he would only fall half-asleep for a while. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ykral (talk • contribs) 06:45, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No he didn't. He just slept about 4-5 hour per night, less than average. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sulik (talk • contribs) 10:16, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

People who never sleep die within a few months. This did not happen to Edison, it is therefore reasonable to conclude he slept like other people. Edison's biography already reads like a love letter, but let's not get silly about it.75.54.85.188 (talk) 11:20, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nonviolence?

The article includes "Nonviolence was key to Edison's moral views, and when asked to serve as a naval consultant for Wold War I, specified he would only work on defensive weapons and later noted, 'I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.' Edison's philosophy of nonviolence extended to animals as well, about which he stated: 'Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.'" [1]" Caldicott may have the view that Thomas Edison opposed violence, even to animals, but this seems POV and flies in the face of his endorsement of the electric chair for executing convicted murderers, and the electrocution experiments conducted on numerous animals to show the effectiveness of electrocution, which clearly caused pain and death to the animals. His research in WW1 included methods of locating enemy submarines, which would result (if effective) in the destruction of the submarines by weapons on U.S. ships. Should this section be removed, or should opposing evidence be added for balance? Edison (talk) 18:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC) The End. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.17.227.72 (talk) 20:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ Cited in Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America's Greatest Inventor by Sarah Miller Caldicott, Michael J. Gelb, page 37, [1]
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