Volume 36, Number 19 · December 7, 1989
Machine Dreams
By David Joravsky
The Papers of Thomas A. Edison Volume 1: The Making of an Inventor, February 1847–June 1873
edited by Reese V. Jenkins. others
Johns Hopkins University Press, 708 pp., $65.00
The Evolution of Technology
by George Basalla
Cambridge University Press, 248 pp., $10.95 (paper)
American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970
by Thomas P. Hughes
Viking, 529 pp., $24.95
Thomas A. Edison invented his life story as he invented electromechanical systems, by imaginative adaptations of previous stories and systems, with essential elements improved at critical points. He was the purely self-made man, without formal education, patronage, or inheritance. His invented life ignored the few years he had in a Michigan school, and the instruction he received at home from his schoolteacher mother. It repeated the Horatio Alger theme of spectacular success with no one's help but what he won with pluck and luck. He even pictures himself saving a baby from the path of a train to win the gratitude of an influential man.
Review, 4438 words
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