[asinclair]

Thomas Alva Edison was a telegrapher for the railroad, entrepreneur, and owner of a private-sector lab facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey. I studied his life while in school, and do not recall a time when he worked for any public sector outfit. He invented the voting board that was installed in the New Jersey house, but did it as a private sector inventor. Indeed, it was one of his first inventions that was turned down by the public sector because it was "too efficient" and downplayed the back of the hall negotiations done during the votes.

Of the others on the list:

• Wright Brothers: bicycle shop
• Jonas Salk: https://www.salk.edu/about/history-of-salk/jonas-salk/ very much involved in medical research at NGOs. Part of his work on the polio vaccine was funded with a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
• Henry Ford: private sector, invented the production line for building cars
• Bill Gates: a chip off the old Edison. He built traffic counters for government, but as a private sector person. Microsoft was definitely not public sector.
• Steve Jobs: also a chip off the old Edison. Garage entrepreneur with Steve Wozniak.

[cgbg]

Thomas Edison was a classic “flood the zone” guy.

He did not overthink whether something would work or not (unlike so many Freepers).

He just tried stuff.

If it didn’t work he tried something else—without skipping a beat.

That was a critical part of his genius.

[jonascord]

Edison got rich by attaching his electric motors to everything he could think of, and then getting patents on each one.

Prior to this, a machine shop would buy a steam engine, and run every machine off of an overhead line shaft driven by the engine, connected by buffalo hide belts. (This is why buffalo hide was so valuable that hundreds of thousands of skins were harvested. This "starve the indians" nonsense was just that.)

Manufacturers could then relocate their power tools for the best work flow. Frank Gilbreth, who studied and perfected time and motion studies, was the guy who really developed work flow. Taking a lump of metal, and cutting off the bits that weren't needed. Edison's self powered machine tools made that possible.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Thanks! I had to look up the National Science Foundation, I assume it was federally funded in Salks time as well but here’s an important distinction: Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine. That seems to be not the case when it comes to companies like Pfizer today who made billions off the Covid vaccine even though we financed it