Damme, I've given Carver credit for being a good applied scientist, and having done remarkably well given his horrible beginnings. I've been simply arguing against claims he was a great scientist, 'the chemist's chemist' etc.. Somehow my failure to recognize his seminal place in chemistry shows I'm ignorant of chemistry, and a racist to boot. But have mercy on me, I was trained in a foreign land, where this particular sacred cow is unknown, and had no idea questioning his achievements was so taboo, least of all on FreeRepublic.
FWIW, I dunno how you can say 'considering his background', X could have been Y. That's an impossible calculation to make. But in terms of what Carver actually invented and patented, there's no comparison with Edison. Edison died with 1093 patents. Carver had 3.