A lot of our cherished historical myths come from the late- 1800's to early 1900's, a sort of golden age of inventors. I'm going to start with the myth that Tom Edison invented the phonograph. He didn't. If you're in a city where the university is also a patent repository, get out that roll of microfiche and see for yourself that Edison's patent is an improvement patent, meaning that he was improving on an exiting patent.

What he invented was what he told the Patent Office was a talking machine, a player of cylinders--not platters. The actual founder of the phonograph AND the entire recording industry was German immigrant Emile Berliner, and close on his heels was a technician who worked for Alex Bell's laboratory, but all his gizmo would do is play back a platter...but...he told the patent office that his gizmo was a graphophone. Emile Berliner's was the legendary Victrola.

Well, good ole Emile was generous with his licensing agreements while Edison was tight-fisted...not sure about the lab tech with the graphophone because it wasn't exactly Bell's own invention...but you can bet that the big familiar names here were all in hot competition to out-invent the other, and they didn't think twice about borrowing ideas from each other, either.

And so it came to pass that the popularity of the platter out-did that of the cylinder. By early 1900's, 3rd party recording manufacturers had stopped recording cylinders altogether, forcing Edison to go platter...and again, he took the improvement-patent route, claiming that his platters could play 1,000 times without deterioration of recording quality. His platters were a quarter inch thick, too. Patent fight with the other two? Edison saw that coming and what he did was go through the trouble to patent his machine in Britain to avoid challenges to his obvioius knock-off.

Emile Berliner authorized licenses widely, including Europe, causing a typewriter company to become Angel Records--we now know the giant as EMI for which Angel is but one of the labels. Victrola, of course, morphed into the giant Radio Corporation of America, RCA. That Bell tech didn't do so badly either. His graphophone established Columbia Records, and because the term "graphophone" was a trade name, the generic term for such record players became "phonograph."

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Another cherished myth is that Henry Ford invented the automobile. He didn't, but this time you can't go to the Patent Office for confirmation of that, at least as far as the internal combustion engine part of it was concerned. He improved on an engine that was, he claimed, partially functional and because he made it completely functional enough for a horseless carriage, he deserved his own original patent on the thing. He was denied several times, but persistance paid off.

The whole trouble with that, though, is that in England, Daimler already had a functional internal combustion engine and was commissioned by the royals to make the official royal transportation of the day. Ford's actual claim to fame is the invention of assembly line manufacturing, which was seen as an actual threat to British pursuits in this arena, and this sparked the birth of the Bentley company.

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I'm expecting a guest, so I'm bumping this to make it easer to find.

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I never thought Henry Ford invented the automobile. I never felt certain he invented anything. All I know is that he was a successful businessman who did much to advance the mass production of automobiles.

Did anyone here think Henry Ford invented the automobile?

I doubt anyone here thinks that, but I bet a lot of American school kids do.

I assume that because American kids score so bad on things like geography, etc.

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Ahhyup. What Gian55 said has been increasingly the case in recent years.

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term you wish to use.

If you asked them who wrote the declaration of independence, I am sure someone would say its "George Jefferson". They would talk about how he and "Weezie" went to live an Moticello after George opened up enough dry cleaners.

Of course I could rip off the joke from "Tommie Boy" where the character confused John Hancock with Herbie Hancock.

Still, I do not think a discussion of the faulty product coming out of our schools was the original intention of the thread.

The intent of this thread is to address historical myths regardless of the reason for them. It is true that there are more of them floating around these days because of the decline in quality of textbooks and the fact that paying quality pay for quality teachers just isn't a priority with a lot of communities that have the ability to pay such teachers/retain them....and the debate on the whys of that are indeed worthy of a whole different thread.

This thread just addresses the myths themselves. We all got our historical myths from somewhere, even when schools were better (that one about Thomas Edison, for example, goes 'way 'way back).

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That and U.S. history taught outside the college level is propaganda.

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Oh, I don't think it's all conspiratorial radical as all that, Gian55. What it is, is large corporate textbook printers interested in printing less and less on the same amount of pages and calling each reduction if information "New Edition" so that schools will be compelled to keep up with the latest textbooks.

It ain't propaganda--it's a sell-less-for-more-money racket.

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