Inspiration and Perspiration

November 1996 / Inbox / Inspiration and Perspiration

Let me be the one-millionth customer to point out that Thomas A. Edison did not exactly work "on his own" in his lab ("The Elements of Design," August). He may have in the early days, before he set up his lab, but not later. He had lots of assistants with whom he interacted a nd to whom he assigned "polishing up" tasks. Many historians feel that those people received nowhere near the recognition they deserved.
K. Steven Knudsen, Ph.D.
Resolute Research Ltd.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

You're not quite the millionth customer to point this out. However, you're the first to realize that I was talking about his early days. I certainly did not intend to rewrite history. It might have made good closure to the article to point out that Edis on adopted this administrative model for his research work. The same model is used today, but on a larger scale. -- Tom Thompson, senior technical editor

Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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