biography about who?

chesterqw

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eh.... i need a biography for my english holiday hmwk

i need to write: 2 high point & 2 low points of his life.
one strength and one weakness that person have.
What i learnt from that person


anyone know of anyone who do anything with batterys or leds or anything to do with flashlights!!!

thank you :)
 

Jumpmaster

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PhotonWrangler said:
Thomas Edison. Lots of high points there, many involving lighting! You'll have to dig for the low points. I know there were some.

Wasn't there some big issue between Edison and Westinghouse about DC and AC and which would be used for the electric chair (among other issues)?

JM-99
 
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Hookd_On_Photons

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Jumpmaster: I believe the dispute involved Edison (DC proponent) vs. Nikola Tesla (AC). Edison tried to employ negative advertising/campaigning to convince the public that AC was dangerous. Edison built an electric chair, in order to "Westinghouse" criminals and cast AC in an unfavorable light. IIRC, he also arranged some public demonstrations in which he electrocuted dogs with AC current, for the same purpose.

Nikola Tesla... now there was an interesting guy...
 

ABTOMAT

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Electrocuted everything, including an elephant. They had footage of that on a PBS special a while ago. The first Edison electric chair experiment didn't go so well--the criminal took quite a few zaps until well-done.

Tesla would sure make an interesting report. Brilliant inventor until he lost his mind and became a paranoid, disturbed, mad scientist.
 

paulr

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Edison and Tesla have been done a million times already. I vote for Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the blue LED. He left Nichia after a big dispute over royalty payments and is now a professor at the University of California.

Or heck, how about a CPF'er like Craig Johnson, proprietor of the LED Museum? He'd probably be easier to talk to, and I'm sure his personal story is interesting.
 
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chmsam

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There's an interesting book, Empire of the Air, that covers the early days of radio. It gives the background of Lee de Forrest, Edwin Armstrong, and David Sarnoff. There were legal battles between the first two over patents over the parts they invented (basically, de Forrest made commercial broadcasting feasible, and Armstrong made FM radio into what it is now). Sarnoff turned radio broadcasting into an industry (and television runs the same way today). Interesting book book to read, lots of other biographical books on all three, and Ken Burns did a film for PBS on the book. Any one or all of these men would be a good subject.
 

cheapo

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Hookd_On_Photons said:
Jumpmaster: I believe the dispute involved Edison (DC proponent) vs. Nikola Tesla (AC). Edison tried to employ negative advertising/campaigning to convince the public that AC was dangerous. Edison built an electric chair, in order to "Westinghouse" criminals and cast AC in an unfavorable light. IIRC, he also arranged some public demonstrations in which he electrocuted dogs with AC current, for the same purpose.

Nikola Tesla... now there was an interesting guy...

I read that he used chickens.

-David
 

PhotonWrangler

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Another interesting guy (although not as colorful as Tesla) was Philo T. Farnsworth. He's credited with inventing the idea of television after gazing at a cornfield and imagining a process where a picture could be broken down into individual scan lines (corn rows) and reassembled at the other end.

He was a brilliant guy, reportedly did battle with David Sarnoff, lost and died a penniless alcoholic.
 

cratz2

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PhotonWrangler said:
Another interesting guy (although not as colorful as Tesla) was Philo T. Farnsworth. He's credited with inventing the idea of television after gazing at a cornfield and imagining a process where a picture could be broken down into individual scan lines (corn rows) and reassembled at the other end.

My second year physics teacher spoke highly of him and basically considered him one of the most important people who's name most don't know.
 

chesterqw

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i choose Shuji Nakamura :)

he is the inventor of blue led!!! and he also help in making white led by making blue led :p

edit: dang,i decided that flashlight come before led and so ...Joshua Lionel Cowen !!!!
 
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