“This week’s competition is between two titans of innovation and design: Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and incandescent light bulb inventor (among other things) Thomas Alva Edison,” Emi Kolawole writes for The Washington Post.
“Steve Jobs: What more can we say? He’s no longer CEO of Apple — a company he co-founded and led to success while revolutionizing the way we think about not only personal computing but digital information sharing. From the first Macintosh to the iPad, Jobs has brought many of science fiction fans’ most desired technological traits to life,” Kolawole writes. “And Apple is not the only company where Jobs guided technophiles’ most deeply held dreams into reality. Pixar, the film company that brought us ‘Toy Story’ (one, two and three), ‘Cars’ (one and two), and ‘Up’ has all but obliterated traditional animation as a story-telling medium. While 2-D animation has been happening without hand-drawn characters for some time, the expectation from viewers that animated characters be in 3-D is due in large part to the work done at Pixar.”
Kolawole writes, “The iconic inventor is often mentioned whenever Jobs makes a major announcement about his career path… But Edison is not the only inventor Jobs has been compared with. Others include Alexander Graham Bell and, yes, even Jesus… In addition to the incandescent light bulb, Edison also invented the phonograph and the motion picture camera. He also improved the telegraph and telephone. Nearly all of these inventions and advancements are at the heart of Apple’s most notable creations, and the inventions for which Jobs specifically holds patents. But is Edison the greater inventor for having created the root invention, or is it Jobs for having built substantially on them?”
Cast your vote below the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
FIRST!
I’m calling a tie on this one. Edge MAYBE to Edison.
FIRST as in first grade???
Edison was an inventor (scientist).
Jobs is not.
A more accurate comparison would be RCA’s David Sarnoff.
Edison was a creator, industrialist and showman. Sounds like a good comparison.
On the valuation side, Jobs has to come out ahead. He’s lapped GE and Edison had a century head start!
edison was a copier and an exploiters. Tesla, as mentioned by anon, is the person to compare with.
Bill gates is like Edison. Edison wanted control of everything. He denied tesla the light bulb for the world expo. Tesla said no prblem. In 48 hours he made abetter one. Tesla gave up millions. He could have owned Westinghouse, instead tore up his shares just to save the company.
Edison in good company with the robber barons of old JPM, GS, Rockefeller. Sound familiar? Gates is comfortable among them. Present day Edison friends would be welch, buffett, so on.
Edison, if he was a free mason, did not do the walk. The free masonry was meant to serve and create a better world while not hugging the limelight.
Many of Edison’s “inventions” were the work of others, especially those on his staff.
Westinghouse was the microsoft of the day, using their size and dominance to muscle out more worthy competitors.
Beyond true so sad people don’t do the research…
Edison is a Patent Litigation whore
Jobs credited as “inventor” in more than three hundred patents, so comparison is correct.
Not to say that Edison and Jobs are twins, of course. They are different, but similarities are there, too.
Jobs was credited as “inventor” only because he was representing Apple.
Sarnoff, on the other hand, was a visionary just as Jobs is. When television was just a theory, Sarnoff saw it as a major medium. He also fought over. The similarities between Sarnoff and Jobs is amazing.
Eldridge Johnson also holds many phonograph patents as he was the head of Victor Talking Machine Co, which he actually did initiate. However, most of the original disk phonograph patents were created by Emile Berliner. Johnson was a visionary and great marketer. Like Jobs.
Actually, Jobs was listed as lead inventor on 33 of the 313 patents with his name attached to them. Some while at Apple, others while with NeXT. He was more than a public face. I wouldn’t say that Jobs is as great an inventor as Tesla (Edison’s a tool), but his vision will shape our technological future for decades to come.
Silly as Alien vs Predator.
Two completely different universes.
Yes. To compare Steve with Edison is completely unfair. Steve is great and one of a kind but Edison was all that and the inventor too. Admiration and respect is due here but it does need to be used with common sense.
The comparison is NOT
Steve Jobs vs. Thomas Edison.
It’s Steve Jobs vs. Nikola Tesla.
Thomas Edison was a freemason who stole, exploited and squashed many of Tesla’s ideas.
http://members.chello.nl/e.n.secasiu/Tesla.htm
Do your effing homework to lazy deluded suckers.
No, it’s not.
How bout Steve Jobs vs Godzilla? Or Einstein?
Makes about as much sense to me.
Tesla and Edison were in a completely different world of discovery, not development (initially).
I would more likely say that Jobs did for the development of electronics and marketing what Fred Smith did for shipping and Sam Walton did for distribution. Both of those men were more financially successful than Tesla or Edison.
Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Henry Ford would be others I would compare Jobs to. All titans, and important to America’s success.
Who’s next, Newton? (how ironic…)
titans my blank. Robber barons of the kind cnbc and the WS SHYSTERS love. Why do you think they hate Jobs? He, like Tesla, is the anti-thesis of these carbon elements.
They don’t.
You’re just silly.
Jobs isn’t a ‘robber baron’?
Over-charging for regular products?
Slave labor in China?
Hoarding cash instead of paying workers more?
Monopolizing hardware, limiting sales through ‘approved’ channels?
Yes, I’m playing Devils-advocate to illustrate how nonsense gets into our lexicon.
Business isn’t for the weak-minded.
They lose…..
in the sense of paying workers better, well you win. He definitely is not like Henry Ford. But unlike your titans, he us not grossly overpaid. The lowest paid employee of apple earns more than him. His stake in apple us not even worth 1.5 percent of the company.
With your titans, it was/is 99 for me and 1 for everybody else. I take that back, if they could, your Titans would gave charged for the honor and privilege of being a serf to them
You are right, Jobs is no Henry Ford. But then again, the lowest paid employee earns more than Jobs. His stake in apple is less than 1.5 percent. As to your titans, it is (was) 99 for me 1 for you. As the ivy leaguers woul say – primero yo, segundo yo, tercero yo.
You got one right. Henry ford was not a robber baron and indeed a class all his own. He single-handedly created the American middle class.
Federico
Back away from the mescal.
The worm has already gone to your brain….
Anti-thesis? Antithesis.
Nikola Tesla deserves far more recognition than Thomas Edison. Edison was a liar and a thief who repressed scientific advancement so he could become more well known.
Tesla wins. So does Steve Jobs.
Fanatic pioneers of the future.
Dont know when “freemason” became an insult, but otherwise I totally agree.
Yes ANON is correct.
Edison loved to rip patents off of others and misused his power even harmed elephants to prompt the dangers of Tesla’s AC current. Tesla was pure genius. Niagara Falls still to this day generates power. The world would never be the same without Tesla.
IT IS A RIDICULOUS comparison – similar to STEVE actually guiding ADOBE to BUYING FLASH… indirectly making assumptions. LOL – Like saying the IPAD would have never had happened if not for TESLA. True but it’s a stretch.
I WOULD NOT COMPARE Steve to Tesla either.
In my mind, the similarity of JOBS and EDISON is the WISDOM they both had – to foresee the need for patents to protect Intellectual property.
Edison was perhaps a mean old man. Bitter like Microsoft.
As Steve Jobs once said – he hoped was to put a tiny dent in the UNIVERSE – leaving a mark in time with his name on it. I believe Jobs is also a genius who has changed all of our lives. He learned from his past and he has an amazing ability to harvest great talent to better his company – in addition has set a standard for how all businesses should strive for and work. It is the new model of business. Steve Jobs is part of a team. That team is Apple.
Einstein said intelligence can not be measured.
Please do not compare these great people and their achievements just appreciate what they have done?
We walk on shoulder of the giants who lived before us – building on what exists – improving life for all of us.
As a licensed electrician and licensed electrical contractor for decades, I can say that I’m with you regarding Tesla. He was the man. But you do realize, I’m sure, that we use alternating current which means that we followed Nick’s advice. That’s still not taking anything away from Edison’s accomplishments in so many fields. Steve is great but things have to be kept in perspective when comparing people who improved retail products and their marketing as a visionary and people who really changed the world. There aren’t many.
jeez.
http://badasshistory.com/tesla.html
” if there were one man on this planet who was ever capable of single-handedly destroying the entire planet through his insane scientific discoveries, it was Tesla.”
Single-handley… did TESLA only one have one arm? JOKE.
Einstein and his help to invent of The Atom bomb – is rather similar to that quote.
Without Tesla – I am not sure WIFI would have happened.
Ah, yeah, sure he he was eccentric… but not truly his intentions. He wanted privacy and was secretive.
I do not BELIEVE a CREATOR would wish the world to be destroyed.
Everyone should celebrate Tesla, who had great integrity.
Edison was a monster who electrocuted an elephant to stop Tesla and Westinghouse from having success with DC.
video on WIRED: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104
In 1897, at age 41, Tesla filed the first radio patent (U.S. Patent 645,576). A year later, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the US military, believing that the military would want things such as radio-controlled torpedoes. Tesla claimed to have developed the “Art of Telautomatics”, a form of robotics, as well as the technology of remote control.
Tesla even tore up his royalty checks from Westinghouse to keep them from going bankrupt.
Edison is not who SJ should be compared too…
Ah yes, those acronym things…
Edison wanted DC
Tesla /Westinghouse wanted AC
for supplying homes.
Edison’s aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting “Westinghoused”). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.
Wrong Steve, Woz was the inventor. Jobs was the visionary.
They both are inventors. Jobs is inventor in more than three hundred patents.
1) Tesla
2) Jobs
3) Edison
Closer to Henry Ford.
Not quite. Ford changed the world by letting the working man have achancefor a brighter future.
IMHO, I say Ford, Tesla and then maybe Jobs.
For his technological ingenuity and visionary approach to life, I’d say SJ is a good modern day comparison to Leonardo da Vinci.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci
Edison should be deleted from the textbooks as an great inventor. Only a monster can do that to animals.
This has to be one of the most idiotic articles and threads I’ve seen on MDN, and I’ve seen some real doozies.
At least Jobs didnt steal some of his inventions from others so I give him more than an edge over the lamentable Edison who was more like Bill Gates in his approach to innovation. And no he did not invent the light bulb, he just organised a big marketing campaign to claim he did.
Edison became famous because of the inventions of others. Tesla, in particular. They had a falling out over the merits of direct current (DC) vs alternating current (AC), with AC winning out, vindicating Tesla.
never mind. I see this has already been discussed.
and the better inventor/copier/repurposed/transformer. Without Edison’s phonograph, there would be no IPod, and possibly no Apple as we know it. It was the IPod that saved Apple and started consumers to see it as something other than a computer company. No recorded music = no IPod = no ITunes = no App store
To hear all of you knuckleheads Edison was the inspiration for Adolph Hitler. How about checking out what the man accomplished. You make it sound as if his was an evil, wasted and worthless life. Idiots.
I’m sure they saw it in a Tesla documentary, so naturally they now consider themselves experts on Edison.
Yay! We got to Godwin!
You know who else liked electricity? HITLER
Great thinkers are creating great things all the time.
When they do, they humbly say they are ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ who preceded them.
I don’t want to think Jobs is the top of the peak, but rather just providing the shoulders upon which the next great inventors will stand.
I hope the next generation of great inventors will be working at Apple. And the next and the next.
Claiming Edison as the root inventor, is strange. Inventions are dependent on information from multiple previous ideas, being put together in a new way. This includes Edison, Jobs or anyone else. So, maybe the root is that caveman, that discovered that by rubbing a soft rock against a rock wall, he could illustrate his thoughts. Or, was it the one before him who discovered that the rock left a mark.
All inventions are the result of man combining his ideas with previous knowledge, therefore, none is more important.
you guys are terrible… This comarison is just stupid jobs is a marketer albiet a great one all he did was make people think the need a product. The comparison should be jobs vs Koresh
he resigned due to his health problem. that’s enough not to bother him anymore. he has done great job. don’t do some kind of silly thing like this. we all admit that he is great. that’s all we have to say. if you add, you will ruin everything.
Edison tried over a thousand different filament materials before he realized that they kept burning up because they were exposed to air but I doubt he knew what oxygen was. Finally he tried to keep the air away from it with a glass vacuum bulb. No, he was not very bright as an inventor as others know but he did start the first invention factory by hiring smart people to make his hair brained crap work.
Hm… Edison didn’t invent the incandescent light bulb – Joseph Swan did. Swan had made a working bulb in an evacuated tube and had patented his idea before Edison began working on it. In fact, Edison copied Swan’s patent. Also, Joseph Swan’s home in England was the first house in the world to be lit with electric light.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan
‘Though Swan had beaten him to this goal, Edison obtained patents in America for a fairly direct copy of the Swan light, and started an advertising campaign which claimed that he was the real inventor.’
Finally someone points out that Edison did NOT invent the lightbulb.
=:~)
Liberal commie liar. The lightbulb is an American invention. Just like the automobile, telephone, wireless radio, television, computer, rocket. And certainly apple pie and hamburger.