Talk:List of Edison patents

Total number of patents
The lede as written — "Thomas Edison was an inventor who accumulated 512 patents worldwide for his inventions" — suggests to me that it is inclusive of his US patents. As a reader, I'm confused about a number of "patents worldwide" that doesn't include his 1,093 US patents? Should it be phrased differently, like "world patents." (I defer to someone more familiar with the terminology but found this misleading. 512 is the number that comes up in a big Google infobox when I ask how many patents Edison had.) StaceyEOB (talk) 17:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Numbering and Titles
There are the subsection titles "second hundred patents" and "201-300" which are surely the same thing but different patents are listed under the two titles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.13.177.222 (talk) 22:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The first hundred is Edison's   1 to 100
 * The second hundred is Edison's 101 to 200
 * The third hundred is Edison's 201 to 300
 * I modified the section heading to make this clearer. Greensburger (talk) 00:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

All links broken
None of the external links on this page work, they all list to a page on http://patft.uspto.gov stating that no patent can be found by that name. Not sure what can be done about this, it looks like a pretty big job to update all the links. R-T-C 22:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The problem is caused by the USPTO site now requiring 7 digits in the patent number (adding leading zeros to pad it if less than seven). Since patent 1,000,000 occurred in 1911, relatively few searches will have the problem, except for us history buffs.  --Blainster 05:56, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Either add a 0 to the template OR add a 0 too the 6-digit number (ex: "333333" -> "0333333"). 204.56.7.1 16:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC) (PS, my preference is for the latter.)

BTW, design patents are only 6-digits. 204.56.7.1

They are fixed now. 134.193.168.245 18:58, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Why do they the external links go to google patents (GP) when GP simply is copying the info from the USPTO? Seems odd for an encyclopedia to do. Its like referencing something that is merely a copy of the orignal, when the original is available to reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.99.65.63 (talk) 18:03, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Because US patents prior to January 12, 1971 (patent 3,555,362) are available from the USPTO web site only as page images (not as text) for which each user must download a TIF image reader. The TIF reader is also required to view drawings, even recent drawings. The Google site does not require a TIFF reader. Greensburger (talk) 18:24, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Injected information on Edison employees
I rm'ed these "employee tidbits?" here to talk because it is either trivia or implies these people are some kind of co-inventor. If it is the latter then there should be some referenced description as to what they worked on/contributed to or some other referenced significance. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:14, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

This information should not have been removed. It is relevant contextual historical information, not "injected" nor "trivial". Haven't gotten back to the article since i initially composed it [lot'ta patents] ... but this information should be restored. After finishing doing some other work, primarily on the history of mathematical notation ... i'll come back here to improve this article again. --J. D. Redding 02:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The material was removed because it was unverified and made inferences that one engineer or another had something to do with the patents listed. Needs to be specifically verified to be re-added. We also seem to have a little WP:UNDUE going on (there were allot of engineers working for Edison so its unclear why we are citing only a few) and wording such as "esteemed electrical engineer" is un-encyclopedic. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 13:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)