Ted Leinhart
speaker
251 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 3 Aug
Ted Leinhart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
this is in some sort to be regretted especially from the point of view of the circles which if he were otherwise minded would be open to him for he is really a brilliant conversationalist but while society loses a lion the world gains a genius he has often been heard continued mr johnson in his courteous answers to my questions
to express contempt for an inventor who having produced a single invention makes a tour of society to receive its plaudits and finding the life so agreeable pursues it permanently to the destruction of his further ambition
mr johnson deplores this hiding of edison's delightful personality under the bushel of reserve and wishes that he might be gently and tactfully lured into the social world which when once he had confidence in his command of its technicalities he could not but greatly enjoy but perhaps it is well to remember that the fearful and wonderful thing we call society was made neither by nor for geniuses and he is only a genius
no clearly the world is ready enough to grant him hero worship but it is rather as we see him at noon taking his workmanlike lunch-basket on his knees or as we hear of his being refused admittance to his own laboratory by a new porter
who sees nothing in him but a suspicious-looking person in a slouch hat that is a candidate for initiation into the sartorial and other mysteries of the beau monde as well as these may be in their way they are utterly foreign to the most picturesque and lovable aspects of edison
the inventor is a business man it is told that in the halcyon days of mr edison's earlier manufactories he absolutely refused to have any system of book-keeping and even kept no record at all of notes to be paid when these fell due he would drop everything and scurry around to raise the necessary funds
this on the principle as he put it that the notary's fee on the protested note was cheaper than keeping books he has learned much since then in the stern regime of the business world but it is still the unqualified opinion of many true friends that both the world and mr edison would have been gainers if he had left the conduct of the purely business side of his affairs to associates of special commercial training and instincts
for the inventor has an intolerance of forms in business as in society he undertook an active part in the management of the industries he had created in consequence of his disappointment at the slow development of the electric lighting venture
mr johnson gives him credit for fertility of resource and brilliancy of conception in his business management but easily shows how little these avail in the exacting world of commerce when not backed by the patient pursuit of an established order this natural disregard for the forms and minutiae of business affairs has led to anything but a path of roses for mr edison in his financial operations
a sensitive nature he is frank and open to a degree said mr johnson and despite many a sad experience as well as oft-repeated expressions of cynicism under the sense of injustice he is always ready with sympathy and an open hand when he feels himself injured he is bitter for a time but this passes away unless fed by the active hostility of an opponent
he is extremely sensitive to criticism of his motives and is even too apt to interpret a light remark to mean a great disparagement when he is robbed of money he will easily forget it but if attainted in any moral sense he becomes relentless
edison's place among the world's scientists it might seem an infelicitous place for such a heading in the midst of a discussion of his business relations but his achievements cannot be separated from commerce he is an inventor
not a discoverer of underlying laws and mathematical formulas the keynote of his work is commercial utility he is willing to make mathematics pure science his servant but as an end in itself he has no taste for it he sees in every idea that ever taxed his brain a direct immediate worth to the people about him
though it may not be within the limits of human imagination to comprehend the extent of that worth the masses of his fellows and their needs are regarded in every test in every experiment in the most daring new conception and in the most homely improvement alike he asks himself when a new idea is suggested will this be valuable from the industrial point of view
Will it do some important thing better than existing methods?
And then, if the answer is clearly affirmative, can I carry it out?
He is not so much a seeker after truth as he is a mighty engine for the application of scientific truths through unexpected and marvelous channels to the fight we are making in the patient modern way.
He is an inventor purely, and the greatest of his race.
One might call him the democrat of science.
a wizard at work it is a sign not to be passed over without thought that the first chamber the visitor entered on invading mr edison's workshop at orange is a library with voluminous and closely packed shelves it is the sumptuous room of the establishment and with a further store of volumes at his home
Showing 161–180 of 251 · page 9 of 13
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