Thomas Edison

Edison’s views on war and violence were often contradictory. Having once proclaimed, “I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.“, Edison also proposed the establishment of a military laboratory.

“One of the imperative needs of the navy, in my judgment, is machinery and facilities for utilizing the natural inventive genius of Americans to meet the new conditions of warfare as shown abroad, and it is my intention if a practical way can be worked out… to establish at the earliest moment a department, to which all ideas and suggestions, either from the service or from civilian inventors, can be.”

Soon after submitting his proposal, Edison was named to head the Naval Consulting Board and helped to choose its members. Ironically, Edison was obviously against war and violence.

“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”

“There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.” (From many years before the advent of nuclear or biological weapons.)

I think it is likely that Edison was in the precarious position of being patriotic and wanting to serve his country, while at the same time abhorring war and violence. Edison seemed to believe that superior technology would do more to prevent wars than to end them. During World War I, this concept may have had merit. But if he had been alive during World War II or subsequent wars, he would have witnessed the creation of military labs whose sole purpose was to use technology to create weapons of mass destruction. Thomas Edison was famous for inventing and developing technologies that improved our lives. What would he think of our military use of technology today?