Innovation: Thomas Edison and his electric lighting system: The inventor's notebooks reveal that he was actually a skilled practitioner of systems engineering, not the tinkerer of legend

Over the past century no one has better exemplified the image of the heroic inventor than Thomas Alva Edison. What was popularly understood as his “cut and try” approach to invention gave rise to the most prolific inventive career in American history, earned for him the title “the Wizard of Menlo Park” and a place in American folklore. Such imagery, however, is the unfortunate result of much misinformation and conjecture; it has only served to obscure our understanding of a pivotal figure in the history of American technology.