Talk:Thomas Edison

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Correct the typo: Change "Edison and his colleges had the opportunity to get enormously wealthy..." to "Edison and his colleagues had the opportunity to get enormously wealthy" MathyFolk (talk) 01:20, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done Umby 🌕🐶 (talk) 02:00, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

@Panamitsu: your editing is absolutely brilliant. I did notice this paragraph in which I more or less said the same thing twice. I am thinking to restate this somehow. By 1907, Edison's cement company was a significant entity in domestic industry, but it remained unprofitable due to high competition. Edison tried to cooperate with other cement producers to jointly encourage the use of cement in construction, but the cement business did not become profitable until 1922. Czarking0 (talk) 14:33, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

@Czarking0 Thanks, nice nice. I'm also wondering if that health section I created is no good -- it feels awkwardly short and doesn't cover much of the deafness (as that's in the early life section). I'm also wondering if the text about Edison's family should be moved to a new article called "Edison family" as the text is definitely important enough to be on Wikipedia, but it's not all about Thomas Edison. (See Musk family, Walton family and Rockefeller family). Panamitsu (talk) 22:50, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

My test for what of the family content should be included on this article is "Did this significantly impact Edison directly". If you agree with the test and think it should be but further, then I'd like to apply that test on a case by case basis. I think the health section is reasonable. @Noleander: may have further insight. Czarking0 (talk) 22:54, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

The article is at 8,300 words, which is still below the 9,000 pseudo-limit of WP:SIZERULE, so more material could be added, if warranted. Family info seems, offhand, relatively unimportant for Edison: if there are 700 words available, surely there are other, more significant, things that could be discussed? To decide: apply WP:PROPORTION which says that the material in the article should roughly mirror how much the major sources devote to it. So if the major biographers spend, say, at most 5% on family & early life, then so too should the article. Noleander (talk) 23:52, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Czarking0 I still haven't finished reading the whole article but I've been slowly building up a few notes that I'm working through:

• I believe Edison spilled some chemical in a train as a teenager and caused a train fire. Add that.
• In the telegraphy section there is the text "but on several occasions his tinkering interfered with his work". Give an example of this if possible.
• What caused Edison invent the phonograph? Was he trying to improve the telephone and came up with the idea?
• Add the amount of filament materials tested, or just the number of light bulb prototypes, and maybe add the famous quote "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." (which I'm not sure if Edison even said)
• Give a further explanation of what the "Village of Light" was
• Explain that Edison and his colleagues had to invent an electrical distribution system to spread the light bulb, because electricity distribution wasn't much of a thing back then
• What does "He addressed lighting as a system." mean?
• In the motion picture section write that motion pictures had already been invented before Edison
• In the motion picture section make it clearer that early motion pictures did not have sound
• In the Menlo Park laboratory there is a caption with (left) and (right) which doesn't work on mobile as the images are stacked on top of each other. Not yet sure how to address this.

Panamitsu (talk) 07:46, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

1. Minor incident. It did not cause a delay in the train and he did get kicked out of the train but this just 13 year old boy messing around

2. I had the example above where he nearly caused a train accident. A lot of the tinkering it not really notable just a guy not doing his job while he messes around with wires.

3. I have not seen an answer to this but I can try to dig some more. Better now?

4. There is no exactly tally of these things

5.  Done

6, 7. Your statement in six is somewhat what I mean by seven. Many sources say something close to this. My understanding is that he was uniquely able to think of all the things that would need to happen from investors to dynamos, wires, customer accounting, pipe digging, static construction of buildings to hold the dynamos, the scaling and quality control of the manufacturing process for the brushes on the dynamos. Systems thinking. I can try to communicate this better in the article but I think it is a difficult point to say exactly without being vague as sources to not state exactly what it means. That is why the rest of the paragraph is there.

8.  Done

9. In fact, Edison was aiming for a bigger prize than a motion picture camera: he wanted a kinetophonograph to capture motion picture and record sounds with synchronized playback. Czarking0 (talk) 08:12, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

@Panamitsu and Noleander: Any thoughts on my update here? Czarking0 (talk) 15:08, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Reading the top overview is very jarring compared to other articles. Excerpts like "...but Edison was neglectful. She died at 29 years old."; "...drove his staff extremely hard and constantly worked himself and his associates to exhaustion."; and "Edison and his colleagues had the opportunity to get enormously wealthy..." all read less like Wikipedia's "objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice" and more like an emotionally biased biography. Not to mention, not one of the 5 paragraphs is sourced.

May I propose the entire overview be rewritten using sourced materials or at least edited to conform to Wikipedia's standards with references linked? I would do so myself but I do not have confidence in my ability to write in Wikipedia's style and may only add to the problem if I were to try. ~2026-52956-70 (talk) 06:18, 2 October 2026 (UTC)