Edison on Innovation: 102 Lessons in Creativity for Business and Beyond

10.3. Lesson 92: To Innovate, Imitate

Edison obtained his first patent—U.S. Patent 90,646—on June 1, 1869, for an automatic vote recorder. This was an electrochemical device intended to record votes in such organizations as federal, state, and local legislatures. The machine consisted of the names of each legislator in metal type alongside two columns, one for "no," the other for "yes." As the legislator voted by moving a switch to the yes or no position, a recording clerk would place a sheet of chemically treated paper over the type with his name, run a metal roller over the paper, and the current would decompose the chemicals, recording the vote in the yes or no column. The process was repeated for each vote cast, and the totals were automatically ...