Sunday, February 9, 2025

The Spirit Of Edison

amanda huber
Amanda Huber,
Peanut Grower Editor

Although Thomas A. Edison is often thought of as the inventor of the modern incandescent lightbulb, the truth is that many inventors worked for nearly a century to finally reach a large-scale test of lighting 25 buildings in New York City’s financial district in 1882.

Beginning with the invention of electric arc lighting in 1809, which was safer than gas lamps but too bright for use in a small area, the race was on for a better option. Prior to Edison’s first commercially viable incandescent light bulb patented in 1880, more than 23 different light bulbs were developed.

It was Warren De la Rue who designed the first incandescent light in 1820, but his design used a platinum filament, far too expensive for any practical application. Over half a century of experimentation focused primarily on finding an inexpensive filament that could produce electric light for any useful length of time.

Even Edison had a lab full of associates, called “Muckers,” who conducted thousands of experiments to develop the electric light bulb. To make it functional, each step required the invention of a new component and built on what was known until a final product was achieved.

“The electric light has caused me the greatest amount of study and has required the most elaborate experiments,” Edison later wrote. “I was never myself discouraged or inclined to be hopeless of success. I cannot say the same for all my associates.”

This kind of mentality is needed for the peanut industry’s search for a way to reduce or mitigate aflatoxin. From the University of Georgia’s Nino Brown to HudsonAlpha’s Josh Clevenger to multiple researchers at the National Peanut Research Laboratory in Dawson, Georgia, and many other scientists across the peanut belt, all of these researchers are working in different, although sometimes related, ways to find resistance or a different solution to aflatoxin in peanuts. What they are doing builds on what researchers have learned over the past few decades, such as UGA plant pathologist Tim Brenneman, who says he has worked for 25 years to develop a seed treatment to control Aspergillus in peanuts.

If these teams of researchers can keep up the spirit of Edison, who never got discouraged or lost hope, eventually a breakthrough will happen to solve this problem, bringing with it economic prosperity and safeguarded human health.

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