Chapter 29 Edison's Failed Inventions (1)

In the past, there was a great inventor in the United States named Edison.Please see his picture, this is Edison.Among the things he invented, besides the electric light, the most famous is the phonograph.We see this is him and his original gramophone.I have one of these phonographs, which was produced on November 17, 1903, which is the one I ordered now, exactly one hundred years ago.This thing has been handed down to me not because it has been around for a hundred years, but because it can still produce sound after a hundred years.When this antique came into my hands, before I did it, he told me: "Mr. Li, I just ask you to guarantee that one day this machine will continue to make its sound when it is separated from you. Come." In other words, he said that the machine is still usable, which is a moral standard for our collection of antiques.I agreed.So, today I will play it for everyone to listen to the sound of this gramophone, the voice of a person a hundred years ago.

First of all, this machine is cranked by hand, and now I start to crank it by hand.Okay, now I'm going to put it up, everyone pay attention.Why should I take it down?Because I want everyone to see the strange structure of this machine.As you can see, it is a cylinder rotating here. Today we use small CDs to listen to music. We have seen vinyl disks before, but why is this gramophone a cylinder?Let me tell you that when Edison invented the phonograph, it was made of a rotary drum. After it was invented, he rejected another modified form, which was a disc.He said the drum was good.But (after) market competition, it proved that the disk (vinyl disk) is better than his drum.In 1929, two years before Edison's death, I saw this machine (this cylindrical one) that Edison invented, and it was eliminated.

What does this story tell us?Tell us, although you are a pioneer, although you are an inventor, in the follow-up actions, in the follow-up judgment, if you make mistakes, you will see with your own eyes, how about your own mistakes (because of) was driven over by others.In other words, although you succeed the first time, you will see your failure the second time. What am I talking about?I want to cite a story, that is, we think we are great, we think we are prophets, we think we are pioneers, we think we are pioneers, we think we are inventors, we think we are revolutionaries, and we know many problems in the world. We are winners, but the second time you are wrong in judgment, you will see for yourself how your mistakes prove you are a laggard.

This machine, have you seen it? It is still turning. After the turning is over, I will tell you its mechanism. After pulling it apart, this is the roller.Have you seen it? When Edison invented the drum, it could be washed out and re-recorded. Therefore, the so-called turntables at that time were drum-shaped like this, and all of our turntables are now disc-shaped. .There was still a box for the drum type at that time. As you can see, this is Edison's tape. Edison's story proves a truth, which is what I just said. Who doesn't know this truth?Let me tell you, Mao Zedong didn't know.You can see that Mao Zedong made a speech on January 30, 1962. He said: If someone says that there is any comrade, such as any comrade in the Central Committee, such as myself, the law of the Chinese revolution is completely clear from the beginning. Got it, that's bragging, don't believe it, there's no such thing.In the past, especially in the beginning period, we only wanted to make revolution with one single energy. As for how to reform the law, what to reform, which ones to reform first, which ones to reform later, and which ones to be reformed in the next period, within a fairly long period of time, we all had no choice. Not clear, or not fully clear.Therefore, we still lack experience in building socialism.Therefore, Mao Zedong made it very clear. He said: For us, the socialist economy still has many unrecognized inevitable kingdoms. Take me as an example, many problems in the work of economic construction are still unknown. I don't know much, I know a little about agriculture.This tells us that Mao Zedong said that he was very good at revolution, but he was not good at economics.

Now, let's look at Deng Xiaoping's criticism of Mao Zedong. In the third volume of "Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping", Deng Xiaoping said: Comrade Mao Zedong was a great leader, and the Chinese revolution was successful under his leadership. However, he had a major shortcoming, that is, he neglected to develop social productive forces.The basic principle of Marxism is to develop productive forces, but Mao Zedong neglected to develop social productive forces. Therefore, Deng Xiaoping said that the first stage of communism is socialism, and socialism is to develop productive forces. Mao Zedong ignored the development of productive forces and became Mao Zedong. a major mistake.

Fortunately, for Mao Zedong himself, he said in "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" in 1949 that we are being forced to do things we are not familiar with. Watching aside, waiting for our defeat.Mao Zedong said this in 1949. Unfortunately, the imperialists saw what he said. In Mao Zedong’s era, although the revolution was successful, it suffered economic failure during the process of building the country.According to Deng Xiaoping, from the "Great Leap Forward" to the "Cultural Revolution", a total of 20 years of failure.Prove what?It proves Edison's theory, Edison's story: Although you are an inventor, you are a pioneer, you are an avant-garde, you are a revolutionist, you are a revolutionary success, but when you judge your follow-up actions Get it wrong and you'll see for yourself that you become a laggard.

So the story of the phonograph being eliminated in 1929, Edison died in 1931, and he saw with his own eyes two years before his death that he invented such a lovely and meritorious human invention. In the end, he personally encountered A painful experience of being wrong and failing. In the anthology of Mao Zedong, we just saw this paragraph, he said that the imperialists calculated that we could not handle the economy well, and they watched it from the sidelines. see.