alt Hacker News> When I was a kid I was amazed that people like Edison and Tesla had labs not filled with gear from some lab manufacturer, but stuff they built themselves from first principles.
Edison did not build his stuff himself. Edison had people building stuff for him. More people as his career progressed. His lead machinist was John Kreusi.[1] Kruesi personally built the first Edison light bulb and the first phonograph.
Kruesi started as a locksmith (which meant actually making locks in those days) and ended his career as the chief engineer at General Electric in Schenectady, the world's leading electrical works at the time. If you go to Greenfield Village in Detroit, you can see Edison's lab, moved from New Jersey and rebuilt. Ask which was Kruesi's bench.