If you plot the origins of the greatest inventions in history, you start to notice a pattern: The light bulb, the phonograph, the airplane, air conditioning, the zipper, the microwave, lasers, transistors, the personal computer, the internet, GPS, the smartphone … No country on Earth has as rich a history of modern invention as this one.

But my question is, why is that? Well, the answer may start with a guy from Ohio: Thomas Edison, who we know as the inventor of the light bulb.

"Kind of," notes Hal Wallace, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. "What we like to say is, Thomas Edison invented a commercially practical light bulb."

Wallace says the light bulb was just one component of Edison's achievement: "He was inventing new dynamoes, cables, switches, s

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