No Soot Blowers Without Edison

Today is the 164th birthday of Thomas Alva Edison. His achievements as one of the world's greatest ever inventors have been celebrated in a veritable flood of media coverage - newspaper articles, science magazine editorial, radio and tv shows ... even Google created a special Edison Google Doodle in his honour.

So what has this got to do with soot blowers? Well, I was reading about Edison's life and his philosophies in particular and two things he once said made me stop and think ... and connect his work to soot blowers.

The first thing was that he once said his inventions often came about through simply "starting where the last person left off." The concept of electric power generation and distribution was originated by Edison. In 1882 he switched on his own generating station's electrical power distribution system (Pearl Street, Manhattan Island, New York), supplying 110 volts direct current to just 59 customers. The same year he even travelled to England to switch on the first steam generating power station in London (Holborn Viaduct). Since those early days, the generation of power has evolved to become one of the most important industrial processes in the world and, going back to his quote, there has been a succession of inventors and engineers over the years who have refined the operation and performance of power generation plants. Each one effectively "starting where the last person left off" ... up to and including of course those who invented soot blowers, now an established essential for maintaining power plant performance.

The second thing Edison once said that caught my eye was "I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it." This made me think of how sonic soot blowers must have been developed. Essentially, somebody looked at a basic, steam soot blower and thought about how they could improve it. If you read a comparison of sonic soot blowers to steam soot blowers this demonstrates the point.

So not only should we remember Edison for his brilliant scientific work but for his inate wisdom of how the human mind can best be applied to solving problems. Happy birthday Thomas.