Also, I would have to include Al Kaline. Sorry.

Edison, Bell, Tesla only added to the culture. They did not define it in any way comparable to Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, or any of the other framers.

Their house was a Sears kit purchased by my great grandmother as a wedding gift and one of the first in the area with indoor plumbing.

Edison had more than an impact on our culture, he managed to define it.

But such things as recorded music (which needed no electricity on a mechanical device using wax cylinders) and his several other inventions define our culture today. And not just American culture but world culture.

Also, Frankin did not discover electricity. He suspected that lightning was electricity and proved it allowing him to invent the lightning rod which saved many from fire but hasn’t really defined our culture as Edison’s inventions have.

Italian physician Girolamo Cardano returned to the subject of electricity in De Subtilitate (1550)[1], distinguishing, perhaps for the first time, between electrical and magnetic forces. In 1600 the English scientist William Gilbert, in De Magnete, expanded on Cardano’s work and coined the modern Latin word electricus from ηλεκτρον (elektron), the Greek word for “amber”, which soon gave rise to the English words electric and electricity.

He was followed in 1660 by Otto von Guericke, who invented an early electrostatic generator. Hiraga Gennai developed the elekiter in Japan in the mid 18th century. Other pioneers were Robert Boyle, who in 1675 stated that electric attraction and repulsion can act across a vacuum; Stephen Gray, who in 1729 classified materials as conductors and insulators; and C. F. Du Fay, who first identified the two types of electricity that would later be called positive and negative.

The Leyden jar, a type of capacitor for electrical energy in large quantities, was invented at Leiden University by Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1745. William Watson, experimenting with the Leyden jar, discovered in 1747 that a discharge of static electricity was equivalent to an electric current.

In June, 1752, Benjamin Franklin promoted his investigations of electricity and theories through the famous, though extremely dangerous, experiment of flying a kite during a thunderstorm. Following these experiments he invented a lightning rod and established the link between lightning and electricity.

Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Paine lit the fire that changed the world we live in. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats lit the fire that changed the literature we read.

I am not convinced on Luther. Anyone who has ever read his writing knows his logic leaves a lot to be desired. Besides, could he have ever posted his protest if Henry VIII had not broken with the Catholic Church?

All this goes to say that no single person is influential alone. Would Jesus have had any influence if not for His apostles? Everyone plays on another, as all ideas build on other ideas. In this regard, I highly recommend Harold Bloom’s book The Anxiety of Influence, which illustrates how great writers can only respond to other great writers.

For example, Virgil could only respond to Homer. Dante could only respond to the writers of the Bible–he envisioned his Divine Comedy as the third book of the Bible, after the Old and New Testaments. And the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight could only respond to Dante and Chretien de Troyes, although this is little recognized. Milton could only respond to Dante, and Blake could only respond to Milton.

Brainster wonders why I place so much importance on great writers. The answer is very simple–literature shapes culture. Or as Blake writes, “Empire follows Art, and Not Vice-Versa.” Anyone who questions the influence of Shakespeare (Edward de Vere) has no understanding of how the language we speak influences the way we think. No one has had more influence on the growth and development of the English language than Shakespeare, and thus no one has had more influence on the way we think–constantly adding and inventing new words, and thus new ideas, new usages and new inventions. Nothing else more defines the 1st world.