Millions from the Mind

Illustrations

Ford's Fuel Injection and Thomas Alva Edison's Light Bulb

Henry Ford's fuel injector patent. "Fuel injection" itself was not new of course, the Diesel engine which was already developed used it but with mechanical differences from Henry's. Henry was always looking for a simpler way and he may have thought that fuel injection might get around the nuisance of finicky carburetors. This certainly was an improvement over pouring gasoline from an oil can into the minimal carburetor of his 1896 Quadricycle during its early tests. His "spark plug" and "timing" system on the Quadricycle was a marvel of simplicity too. A wire in an insulating material jammed into each cylinder of the two cylinder engine in such a way that the bare wire came in contact with the piston top thus making and breaking the sparking circuit. ...

Edison's light bulb patent

The reality, of course, is that Thomas Edison neither invented nor patented the light bulb. It wasn't his idea. What his patent claims show, and what was (after a 10 year court battle) covered by the claims was "a filament of carbon of high resistance." Thomas Edison had patents prior to this one in which his drawings show other inventors' light bulbs. Thomas' light bulb was successfully commercializable because the filament lasted 40-150 hours. The tungsten filament light bulbs of today weren't invented until 1906. And what does Thomas Edison have to do with Henry Ford? Did one encourage the other? Did one work for the other? Inquiring minds will read the book to find out!

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