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Thomas Edison, paranormalist
Skeptical Inquirer, July-August, 1996 by Martin Gardner
There is evidence that Edison thought he himself had ESP. At any rate, there is no question that his powers of precognition were poor. Here are some of his failed predictions that I found in The Experts Speak (1984), an amusing anthology by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, and elsewhere:
"The talking motion picture will not supplant the regular silent motion picture. . . . There is such a tremendous investment in pantomime pictures that it would be absurd to disturb it." (Munsey's Magazine, March 1913.)
"It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago was thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere." (New York World, November 17, 1895.)
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"The radio craze . . . will die out in time so far as music is concerned. But it may continue for business purposes." (Quoted by Conot in his biography of Edison, page 424.)
"Sammy, they will never try to steal the phonograph. It is not of any commercial value." (Edison to Sam Insull, an assistant, as quoted by Conot, page 245.)
"In fifteen years, more electricity will be sold for electric vehicles than for light." (Quoted in Science Digest, February 1982.)
Edison's worst prediction had to do with what was called the "war of the currents." Nikola Tesla and others believed that alternating currents were the best way to transmit high voltage electricity over long distances. Edison stubbornly insisted that only direct current should be used. "There is no plea which will justify the use of high-tension alternating currents, either in a scientific or a commercial sense. They are employed solely to reduce investment in copper wire and real estate. . . . My personal desire would be to prohibit entirely the use of alternating currents. They are as unnecessary as they are dangerous. . . . (I quote from David Milsted's article "Even Geniuses Make Mistakes," in The New Scientist, August 19, 1995.)
Edison's influence on science fiction is covered in the entry "Edisonade," in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (revised edition, 1995), edited by John Clute and Peter Nichols. The literature starts with the Tom Edison, Jr., sequence of dime novels, by Edward Ellis. Edison is also portrayed as a character in a French novel, Tomorrow's Eve (1886), by Villiers de L'isle Adams, and in Garrett P. Serviss's Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898). For more recent references consult the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
In the introduction to his book, Conot sums up his opinion of Edison this way:
The Edison that I discovered was a lusty, crusty, hard-driving, opportunistic, and occasionally ruthless Midwesterner, whose Bunyanesque ambition for wealth was repeatedly subverted by his passion for invention. He was complex and contradictory, an ingenious electrician, chemist, and promoter, but a bumbling engineer and businessman. The stories of his inventions emerge out of the laboratory records as sagas of audacity, perspicacity, and luck bearing only a general resemblance to the legendary accounts of the past.
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