Leonardo Di Vinci's Impact On The World

The first thing when discussing the greatest inventor is to remember that when we compare these two inventors to each other is that they were living in two totally different times. Not only in the time as we know it; aka years and centuries, but also in different times of thought and knowledge. Thru the paper I will be using just their last names as references as not to take up as much space and also to show how much these two inventors have had an effect on the world as we do not have to say there whole name but just there last (Edison) for Thomas Edison or as in Leonardo di Vinci we can use both (Leonardo) or (Di Vinci) and most people will know who we are speaking about and even give you examples of the impact their inventions on daily

life in 2015.
The first thing we should do is get to know the two inventors. First, we will go over the life and inventions of both and then compare them to today’s daily use.
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio in 1847, he was the last of seven children for his parents Samuel and Nancy Edison. When he reached the age of seven the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan. This would be the only time Edison would be in any time of education that was not self-taught or learned from his mother Nancy. Edison was only in school for 3 months and the teacher of the class called him “slow” and said that he asked too many questions (1). It would be amazing to go back and see what the teacher thought of her “slow” student after he started to complete his inventions and become one of the most important men in American history. After leaving school Edison set up a small laboratory in his parent’s basement and spent most of his time at the library reading science manuals and other scientific papers. To fund his small laboratory Edison at 12 years old went and started a job selling papers on a train. One the stories of how Edison later became deaf started on this paper route. Edison was late and running to catch the train. He made it but just at the back and almost fell until another train worker grabbed him by his ear and pulled him up to safety. Edison quoted as saying” I felt something in my ears crack; right after that I began to get deaf” (TE). Edison’s second job would prove to be more profitable and set him down the track to becoming the inventor that he became. He started his job at Western Union as a telegraph operator, during this time he patented his first invention 7 times. The new invention was for process of having 2 messages travel on the telegraph line at the same time. (1) . When Edison was 21 he moved to New York to start the improvement of the Stock ticker. Over time he sold his new invention to General Marshall Lefferts the executive for Western Union for 40000, 888,888.89 in today’s money (2), with this new small fortune Edison opened up his new workshop in Newark New Jersey. After 5 years of working and improving many new ideas and selling them to the highest bidder Edison’s plant in New Jersey was becoming too small, he built a new plant in Menlo Park. This site was closer to New York City and gave Edison the room to hire more inventors and he named his new building the “invention factory.” Edison preferred stream lined structures more than unnecessarily convoluted ones. Edison relished the rapid exchange and high impact that communication within a small team afforded. He found small teams ideal for making decisions rapidly and nurturing collegiality (3) the way Edison loved team work and installed the production and of new ideas and stream lined them could put him over the top as one of the greatest invention alone by itself. But, then again Edison is well known for one other invention that would put his name into the history books. It wasn’t an invention that came out of Edison’s “invention factory” that made him so famous but the repurposing of an already invented product to something that could be made cheaper and had better quality. The concept of electric lighting was not a new invention, over 40 years of different designs and products by the time Edison took on the development of making the Edison light bulb. But what Edison did was invent and “patent”, the most important word, the procedure and whole institution of the light bulb. Edison and his partners tried many things to get the light bulb to burn longer than a few minutes, platinum, chromium, silicon, nickel and boron just to name a few (1). But it came down to a cotton byproduct that would be the best a carbonized thread (burned cotton). Edison total number of patents were in the 10,000 of thousands. He was one of America’s brightest and hardest working inventors ever.
Before Thomas Edison there was another innovator and all around savant.

The term “Renaissance Man” was coined solely to describe one man for there were no other words in the Latin world to describe what or who Leonard Di Vinci was. Leonardo was born on April 15th 1452 in Vinci a region of Florence. He was sent to an art education studio with the renowned Florence painter Verrocchio. During this time with Verrocchio (1466-1476) (5) Di Vinci was to study the arts and the processes that would make him one of the most famous painters in the history of our time. Leonardo was stated as being a slow learner and even made a very large mistake on a painting he released named “The virgin” where he painted the forearm way off from the torso. Even with this kind of mistake, which it might have been done on purpose as with most writings and paintings of Leonardo there is some secrecy or supposed hidden agenda, he made his way to being a master painter in January 1478. He then worked around Italy from Florence ending in Venice. In Venice is where most of this amazing inventor not just artist started to shine. He was under the service of Cesare Borgia the son of the then Pope Alexander VI when Leonardo could start using the all the drawings that he had in his workbook to be put to good use. Most of the drawings that Leonardo did where of inventions that couldn’t possibly be assembled at the point in time of history. (5) Many of those works you can see come to reality; helicopter, parachute, armored car, 33-Barreled organ (machine gun) Robotic Knight, Self-Propelled Cart, and Scuba gear.(6) To say that he was ahead of this time is a huge understatement. Only thru the productions of mass production of metals and carbon sheeting can any of these inventions exist. For Leonardo to have the forethought on any of these kinds of inventions in the late 1400 and early 1500’s is amazing. Leonardo’s workbook of inventions cannot be numbered for over time they were either destroyed

or just lost due to the lack of understanding what the meanings of the writings and the significance would be to later generations.
When coming to a conclusion on which of these great inventors would be better than the other, would just be as hard as saying which came first, the chicken or the egg. They are both so similar in so many ways, both were considered slow learners at a young age and were mostly self-taught. More on the side of Edison. But, both of them went on to become men that we still talk about in almost everyday life in some way or another. For instance there goes that self-propelled cart (car) without its head lights on. Without either of these two men you couldn’t reference things similar to that. With so many things to consider and not having the knowledge of foresight as we are in history today I as a lonely student claim it to be a tie.