Thomas Edison may have changed science the most with his invention of the method of invention. Unlike others of his time who stumble on to a great invention by accident, Thomas Edison actually thought and sketched his ideas out first. Also once he thought he had a workable idea, he would set to work researching about his idea, using whatever books or other sketches that might be about or close to to the idea he was working on. One of his employees, Edward H. Johnson once said something about his vigorus research," There were numerous theoretical solutions in French books, but none of them enabled him to exceed the rate of 200 words a minute....I came in one night and there sat Edison with a pile of chemical books that were five feet high when laid one upon another. He had ordered them from New York, London, and Paris. He studied them night and day. He ate at his desk and slept in a chair. In six weeks he had gone through the books, written a volume of abstracts, made two thousand experiments... and produced a solution, the only one that could do anything he wanted." Once Edison was done experimenting and researching, he would move on to the developmental stage were his workers and himself would make the product, each one making his own product following Edison's design ot try and find any flaws in it. Also Edison would use this developmental process to almost mass produce all of his inventions. This process today is known as research and development. This method obviously worked for him considering the fact that he had 1093 patents, just in the United States not even counting the international ones.