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Was Thomas Edison a dick? According to a popular web comic he was a giant dick, and not much of an inventor, either. He was a money-hungry motherfucker who profited from the labors of others. Historians tend to disagree with at least some of the comic, but there is one example of him plotting with Germans against the interest of the Allies in World War I. Because money.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 15, 1915--
It’s called the “Great Phenol Plot.” Technically, it wasn’t against the law, but there was a coverup, so it would seem Thomas Edison felt guilty about what he was engaged in. At the beginning of the war, most of the phenol in the U.S. was imported from Britain. The chemical has a number of uses, including for making acetylsalicylic acid, AKA Aspirin, as well as for making explodey things that create an Earth-shattering kaboom and can blow German soldiers into gooey bits raining down upon the western front.
What’s Edison’s role? He used a phenol-based plastic as the coating for the manufacturing of his phonograph records. But by 1915, the British were all, “Sorry, old chums, but we’re afraid we can’t be sending you any more phenol. Need it for sending those nasty krauts off to German Hell. Cheerio!” And Edison was all, “Fuck. Records make me money, and I like money.”
So, he began manufacturing the stuff himself. He made 12 tons of it a day.
The U.S. was neutral in the war at the time, although it was Ally-leaning, sending them lots of supplies, especially after a German U-boat sank the Lusitania. There were German agents in the U.S. tasked with undermining American industry. One of those agents was a former Bayer Pharmaceuticals employee named Hugo Schweitzer.
Bayer invented Aspirin. Bayer needed phenol. Bayer is a German company. Britain sure as shit wasn’t going to sell it to them, what with them being busy trying to kill the shit out of each other on the fields of France. So, Hugo set up a front company to funnel money from Germany and buy up a bunch of Edison’s phenol—about three tons of the stuff a day.
Again, not illegal, but doing it in a secret and underhanded manner didn’t look good. And when the U.S. Secret Service found a German agent’s briefcase on a train containing details of the plot, they leaked the story to the press, which became front-page news on August 15, 1915. Both Bayer and Edison were humiliated, and public pressure ended the deal.
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Ah, the good old days, when Elons could be brought to heel by public pressure.
(Elon == way too rich, way too powerful, privileged well beyond their contributions, if any, to society)
I did not know that. Today, Edison woulda fit right in to the Trump “never met a profit I didn’t like” gang.