Where would be the most important source for innovation in the world? London, Paris, New York? Birmingham, Cambridge, Los Angeles? Silicon Valley?
Well, historically, none of the above. The answer is New
Jersey. Surprising?
Not if one considers the extraordinary stream of
life-changing inventions that have flowed from that state.
From Thomas Edison and his teams at Menlo Park came not only
the two-way telegraph, the phonograph, electric lighting (not just the light
bulb, but all the rest of the necessary paraphernalia), the movie camera, the
microphone, batteries for electrically-driven vehicles, but also the first
innovation teams, the systematic notion that Big Ideas had to be followed up with rigorous
development work, the ability to fund and market breakthrough products
successfully and the establishment of celebrity status for inventors.
Also based in New Jersey (after his move from Washington DC)
was the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, and his successors at
Bell Laboratories, who between them are credited with the invention of radio
astronomy, the transistor, the laser and several programming languages and
operating systems. Together they have won seven Nobel prizes.
Then there’s the Italian inventor of wireless telegraphy and
the radio, Guglielmo Marconi, who established one of his pioneering radio stations
at New Brunswick NJ.
But perhaps the earliest important innovator to work in the
state was Alfred Vail, who, with Samuel Morse, is credited with the development
and commercialisation of the telegraph in the late 1830s.
Posts
