Edison The Man – Heera J

I really did enjoy the movie Edison the Man. I didn’t think i was going to enjoy it because it was an old black and white movie. But nonetheless it was enjoyable.The movie portrayed Edison as a family man who loved and spent time with his wife and kids, when in reality he was a terrible father and husband. Even though he married his wife, his true love forever would be inventing things.They also added humor Edison’s dialogues which i thought was weird because i thought Edison was a very serious man.The movie was kind of like CSI in the fact that they showed his spontaneous inventions done in days or months were as it actually to years to complete it.Plus they also showed that most of Edison’s inventions were from mistakes that he came at during the experiments when in reality he had plans and ideas about it and processed it carefully.The movie did show Edison as a man who cared for his fellow scientists like his own family. This is something that’s actually true because during the war between the currents Edison tested on dogs to prove that Westinghouse was wrong. During this entire time, his fellow scientist helped without saying or advising him against it because Edison was someone who saved them and now it kind of like they were showing their gratefulness by being loyal to him.

Edison the Man – Jhonny E.

In the film Edison the Man, Edison was portrayed a man who worked as a loving man who loved his family and would spend time with them and his wife, even though it was not true in real life. But he was portrayed a man who did love to invent and worked on his lab most of the time. He would start off as a man with a couple coins in his pocket and build a whole house and lab with the inventions he had.

In the film it shows that Edison invented his inventions in a matter of no time, when in reality it tooks years for him to complete his inventions. Edison was portrayed in the fim as if he came upon his inventions by accident. When in the film, the janitor i think messes up one of the inventions and Edison uses it to invent the phonograph and again when he was looking for a filament and would humorously use the one of the workers beards. But Edison would actually work on his experiments through his knowledge and theories.

Edison The Man – Robert S

In the movie Edison The Man, Edison is portrayed as a man who loves inventing and solving problems, which generally described how acted Edison was in real life. However, in the movie, time seemed to go far faster than in Jonnes’ book; that is, what happened in between two scenes in the move might have taken weeks or months in reality.

Additionally in the movie, Edison’s discoveries are shown as a series of successes and inventions. This wasn’t the case in reality; instead many weeks or months would go by involving planning and testing before there was a breakthrough.

With the above being said, the movie was still interesting and enjoyable, and provided a decent, though not fully accurate, portrayal of Edison.

Edison the man ~ Desire Bounds

Edison the man was a very entertaining movie. I didn’t think that I was going to like it at first but it was a very good and has some very funny parts. They portrayed Edison very well except for the fact that they tried to say that Edison was a family man which he wasn’t. they showed how he would always rest at home and would play with his kids. When in real life Edison never spent time at home and he was a horrible father to his kids. I think they were very accurate in explaining his creative side and showing how he would think outside the box to accomplish his goals. They showed how he would work well with his employers and how he would really care for them. It showed how he always had people watching his back. All in all I thought this was a very good movie and I really enjoyed it, I hope the next movie was as good as that one.

Edison the Man – Michael B

Edison the Man was an entertaining look at the popular image of Edison, that of the rustic inventor.  The movie gives a very different depiction of him when compared to the Jill Jonnes book.  In the book Edison comes across as a vaguely unscrupulous business man.  One of the major differences between the book and movie portrayals of Edison was his invention process.  In the movie his invention process was depicted as haphazard and really quite random.  Example, he decides, out of the blue, to use someones beard hair as filament.  The book portrayed him as being slightly more methodical.  All in all, despite its inaccuracies, it did accomplish what it set out to do, which was acting as an idealised humorous version of Edison’s life.

Edison The Man – Jonathan A

In this video, Edison was portrayed as a very comical figure that had a passion for inventing. This movie was much better then i thought it would be. It showed how Edison was on the verge of being shut down because he could not invent an invention that would make enough money to pay off his bills. The movie shows Edison’s crew as a very nice and lively group that would do anything for Edison. This movie also showed how hard working Edison was and how persistent he was, aka the “warrior” side of Edison.

The movie itself was exceptionally well and made me laugh several times. I do not think it was completely historically accurate as far as meeting his wife and trying to be a part of his family. According to other readings we have done and what i have seen on Edison, he was a horrible father and husband. This movie seemed to portray his life in a more Hollywood way then what actually happened.

Edison the Man – Chris Cook

In the film Edison could best be described as the perfect man.  His personality contains most of the popular traits including, but not limited to humorous, intelligent, hardworking, polite, adventurous, and even a bit handsome.  He is portrayed as a decent father and great friend, a far cry from Jill Jonnes presentation of him as an obsessive inventor with nothing more on his mind than creating new contraptions.  Professionally the presentations more or less matched, showing him to be quite dedicated to his work and very lucky all around.  Luck plays mostly in creating the inventions, where the film showed that his creation of the phonograph was based off of a random ecounter with a faulty product and the use of a vaccuum in the light bulb was thought of through a random conversation with his wife.  I may be wrong, but Edison’s line of discovery appeared slightly more scientific in the book, where he had a general idea of resistance involved in the filament versus the movie’s random testing of metals that were strong enough to survive.

Edison, The Man – Ivan B.

According to the movie Edison was a pretty remarkable man. Around the beginning Edison of the movie Edison figured out that he needed a laboratory to be able to make new inventions and get farther in his older ones. He had a friendly group of scientists, mathematicians, and physicists that he was friends with. With a backbone of some money and their help, they raised a laboratory at Menlo Park. The laboratory was set up on two floors with lots of tables to work on and shelves to store their experiments, but it had no chairs so the people would be working the whole time. The only chairs that were in the laboratory were for the accountant and the organ player. After the lab had existed for a couple of years Edison and his team started running out of money. He was almost forced to work for a guy, that would give him way more than enough money but he would direct him what to do. Edison did not wish to do this so he tried to find another way, and he eventually did. The lab was the highlight of the town and the towns people would talk about what inventions the team were up to then. This grabbed Edison’s attention and he would play with the press attracted by the town, making up farfetch stories.

Edison was a hard working man that always made it possible for the people working for him to have a job. He would rather close down the laboratory before he didn’t pay for their work. He was a very well respected man in the laboratory, but he was not so much respected at home. He would stay at the lab much more than he did at home. He neglected his wife and kids for the improvement of the world. At such a high cost, who knows if it was worth it.

In the end Edison was able to prove him self, his team and his inventions by setting up electricity in a New York shoppe. Although there were challanges along the way he never gave up and pushed through. After setting up the electricity in the shop, he was able to further set up electricity and lights elsewhere and became more famous.

Edison The Man -David G

In the movie we see Edison as a man who is very good at getting what he wants. He has the self determination to strive to accomplish newer inventions. More than once during the movie he was nearly shut down, because of the lack of inventions he currently had being finished, so he would just work harder until he got something that could save him. In the beginning of the movie he sells a upgraded telegraph to a large business firm, and this shows how he knew that he needed to make money. I think this started him on the road to thinking that he could make a very large sum of money, by creating something new and/or better than something that already exists. As an inventor he was all four of the hats.

He was the explorer hat as he was able to come up with new idea’s and a basic way to do them. He would then take this knowledge and start to apply it to his work. He would always think through a problem before starting to test it so that he was always sure that it would work the first time.

He was an artist when he would take these initial results and think about what they meant. With the phonograph he was an artist when he saw the possibility for a type of machine that worked off of vibrations from a piece of foil.

He was a judge when he tried again and again to make the light bulb work. Although he said at one point that he had tried over 9000 different things and none of them worked. One of his helpers said that they had learned nothing in response to this. Edison replied that they had learned of 9000 things that didn’t work.

He was a warrior when he discovered the filament that did finially work. He was not as excited as one would expect, but kept working to make sure that he had found the right solution.

Edison The Man. Andrew G.

Edison was a new kind of inventor in the way that he worked and communicated with others.  He is seen as a person that many people trust and will put faith into.  He knows that he wants to be an inventor and is determined to do so.  When offered a job to work fixing a stock ticker he turns it down because he only wants to invent.  I think that his determination is the same in the movie and in the book.  I’m not as sure if he was as friendly and open to the people he knew. The people he new and worked with were both his friends and employees.  I do believe that he was very accustomed to them and made sure that they were taken care of.  This helped him to be an amazing employer and a good friend. I think he knew how to control the media better then he did in the movie.  His wife and family played a bigger part of his life in the movie then it does in Empires of Light.  

His invention style in the movie was all last minute and just happened to come along.  This is not the way he normally worked.  Everything he did was thought out for a long time and he had ideas.  When he was trying to figure out the light bulb in the movie it seemed like something he would do in real life, unlike the phonograph.  I think this was an attempt to make him look better and it worked out well. I would have enjoyed to know the Edison from the movie.