Existing comment:
The Crossroads of Innovation
"The way to do it is to organize a gang of one good experimenter and two or three assistants, appropriate a definite sum yearly to keep it going... have every patent sent to them and let them experiment continuously."
-- Thomas A Edison, letter to Sigmund Bergmann, December 14, 1910
Inventing things required a constant flow of people, material, information, and ideas through the laboratory, and the precision machine shop was often at the crossroads. The elevator lifted supplies and lowered trash. Temporary walls went up and came down as projects changed. There was so much foot traffic that the Chief Engineer had another stairway installed here in 1914.
For any given project, an experimenter might need:
* Drawings from the drafting room
* Compounds from the chemical lab
* Metal alloys from the metallurgical lab
* Electrical equipment from the galvanometer lab
* Parts from the pattern shop, the machine shop, or the blacksmith shop
* Another set of hands, or fresh ideas
What is a galvanometer?
A galvanometer is a sensitive instrument used to detect and measure small electrical currents. Edison's researchers conducted electrical and physics experiments in a separate galvanometer lab, which held not only galvanometers but other testing equipment like ammeters, voltmeters, thermometers, and tachometers.
Some of the motors, meters, switches, and other apparatus built and tested there were used in the prototypes built in this room. |