It’s not exactly proof of character but it’s pretty easy to verify that Edison’s patent of DC Electricity was NOT novel or new as a concept but did allow him to create a monopoly and massively enrich himself while also increasing costs on the average person of his time.

This is lended to by the fact that in children’s books and schools in the USA Edison was portrayed as some magical fictional character who tied a key to a kite to invent electricity. Clearly there is a campaign made to make him look like the hero he isn’t. Nah that was Franklin.

But it doesn’t stop there, Edison had many patents that almost all built on the works of others going back decades, although I do think that he did more work than he stole on audio recording and transmitting, but he also patented the Telegraph like a hundred times even though the Cook and Wheatstone Electric Telegraph existed over 50 years earlier: a time before Edison was even born.

He was an OK inventor but he was a cutthroat businessman.