The Difference:
Edison = inventor of completely new things (and innovator of others inventions like the phone)
Jobs = innovator only, he refined existing technologies but did not invent anything new.
This does not take away from Jobs genius, he was a better business man than Edison in his lifetime, but he was no Edison.
--- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, "Terence Curren" <tcurren@...> wrote:
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> --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, Susan Perla <sueperla@> wrote:
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> << I would liken him to Thomas Edison of the 20th century.>>
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> That's overly generous in my opinion. He changed the interface for the computer by expanding on Xerox' R&D in the arena. Would we have come to that soon anyway? Probably. We already had smart phones and walkmans before we had the iPod and iPhones. They were just improvements on existing concepts.
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> Edison created from scratch the incandescent light bulb (along with various elements of the infrastructure to make it work), the phonograph, and, in relevance to us, invented and patented the motion picture camera. I could go on but he recorded over a thousand patents in his life. (Though many have been contested as being "borrowed" from others)
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> Bottom line is that Edison created entirely new products. Jobs just refined existing products. In 15 years you will still be using Edison's light bulb (except where outlawed) but nothing that Steve Jobs polished.
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> To me, that is a major difference between the two individuals. Not to take away from Jobs, but he won't stand in the same annals of history as Edison.
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