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Not all of Thomas Edison's ideas were successful

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 9:16 am Thu, Dec 23, 2010

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Just in time for Christmas, the Atlantic has a story all about Thomas Edison's failed experiment with selling creepy robot baby dolls.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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  • nanuq

    Thomas Edison Senior still had better luck as an inventor than his poor son, Thomas Junior, did.

    http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2010/11/the-edison-curse.html

    http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2010/11/the-edison-curse-part-2.html

  • millrick

    oh crap
    - i ain’t gonna be sleeping well for the next few nights

  • knoxblox

    Some people are creeped out by clowns.

    I’m creeped out by dolls, and this is why.

  • irksome

    Why get a robot-baby when a real one is so much fun to make?

  • The Hamster King

    The world was not yet ready for Chatty Cathy.