If we think about creative persons in history, we will find that there are many creative persons who worked in different areas. They are scientists, politician, artists, philosopher etc. Studying about their biography, behavior and thinking process help us to understand creativity and improve our creative skill. The creative person analyzed in this essay is accepted as the man who lights the world up (Beals, 1997). Obviously, his name is Thomas Edison. Many things that he invented have influenced the world until now. Learning and analyzing his achievement, biography and characteristic will help us understand why people honor him as a creative inventor.
In Edison’s life, there are more than 1,000 inventions that he invents. However, most people think that his famous and influential invention is the incandescent light bulb, although he did not invent. Actually, the thing that he made and significantly influences the world is a complete central power station in Brockton, Massachusetts, USA in 1883. This is the first power plant that safely generates and distributes electricity that effected developing of other technology like a chain reaction (Beals, 1997). Moreover, in 1890, his interesting focused on inventing the first Vitascope. This would go ahead to the first silent motion picture. Furthermore, During the World War I, he has been working for the U. S. government in order to inventing the defensive system for submarines and ships. Also, there are other inventions that are prototypes of the present products such as telephone, phonograph, generator, motor etc. Consequently, “The father of the electricity age” and “The greatest inventor who ever lived” were the designation that he was honor. (Beals, 1997)Since being a child, Edison has had character of creative person. First of all, we can notice from physiology. Balzac (2006) discussed about neurobiology of creativity in his article that requirement of creativity is coactivation and communication between brain network. He concluded that creative people are different from general people in three things; a high level of knowledge, processing of the frontal lobe (a part of the brain) to generate the divergent thinking and adjustability of neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine in their frontal lobe. Actually, there is nobody to try to check his knowledge or to experiment with his brain. However, Edison has the unusually broad forehead and the head that is larger than average (Beals, 1997). These means his frontal lobe is larger than usual people, which implies that he is more intelligent than others.
In addition, According to his biography, we can notice his creative traits: playfulness, positivity, passion and, especially, persistence. After Edison had learnt to talk already, he always asked everybody when he wanted to clarify the working of something. If they answered “I do not know”, he would ask “why?” Moreover, the quote that shows his persistence and passion obviously is “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a ‘genius’ is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.”(Beals, 1997). Furthermore, we can extremely accept that Edison is a positive thinking person. The one of evidence for this, also persistence, is he had done more than 3,000 experiments before he found the good condition for building the light bulb, and he always said there had been no any results that failed (Beals, 1997).
Nevertheless, from the theory of Csikszentmihalyi (1988), we can not define the creativity by separating persons and their invention from social system, because creativity is the result of three factors; 1.Field, or social organization of domain 2.Domain, or people who will evaluate the new idea, and 3. Individual, who create new ideas. If we consider Edison’s greatest achievement (electricity power plant) through this theory, we will find the relation between them.
First, Edison is an individual who designed and created the 2-wire system of electricity power plant (this system is imperfect, because of using too much copper wire for distributing the electricity). The power plant is as a field or a set of social institution. And, finally, this kind of power plant was judged by society or people who use his service. No doubt for answers of people, who used electricity from his power plants, it was certain that people got benefit and comfortable from using electricity.
Nonetheless, Dr. Joseph Hopkinson, a British scientist, said that he found out new fundamental theory that was better than the old system to generate and distribute electricity. Hopkin created 3-wire concept and insisted that this would reduce more than 60% of the copper wire that was used in transformer. This means it could decrease capital when running the power plant. Consequently, finally, Edison decided to invite Hopkin to join with him in order to developing and creating the perfect central power station by 3-wire technology (Beals, 1997). We can consider this situation like a loop of creativity from the individual (Edison) to the field (2-wire electricity system) to the domain (customer of 2-wire power plant) to the individual (Hopkin and Edison) to the field (3-wire electricity system) and, finally, to the domain again (customer of 3-wire power plant).
From Edison’s achievement and his trait, we could absolutely accept that he is the greatest inventor in 19th century and, certainly, the one in the list of creative persons honor. He is more diligent, persistent and positive than other people. His invention breaks through the field of power supply in the world. Thus, although we would use any creativity theories to consider him, the result still appears that Edison is creative person obviously.
Reference
- Balzac, F. (2006). Exploring the Brain's Role in Creativity. NeuroPsychiatry Reviews 7 (5): 1, 19-20.
- Beals, G. (1999, Jun) Edison’s biography. Retrieved 29th October, 2006, from World Wide Web
http://www.thomasedison.com/biog.htm - Beals, G. (1999, Jun) Edison’s greatest achievements. Retrieved 29th October, 2006, from World Wide Web
http://www.thomasedison.com/brockton.htm - Csikzentmihalyi, M. (1988) Culture and Person: A Systems’ view of creativity, pp. 325-339 in R.J. Sternberg (ed.) The Nature of Creativity. Cambridge: CUP.
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