(CNN) -- The death of Steve Jobs has renewed comparisons to another great innovator who died 80 years ago this month -- Thomas Edison. But there are important differences between the two men. 

In the 80 years between their deaths, consumers came to dominate the economy, a transformation that was only beginning during the later years of Edison's life. Steve Jobs was a master at understanding how to create transformative consumer technologies. 

Although Edison was a key innovator in two consumer technologies -- sound recording and motion pictures -- he struggled to understand the consumer markets he helped to create. His most important technological innovation was the electrical system, which made possible the personal computers, music players and smartphones innovated by Jobs. Edison was also more involved in the day-to-day work of invention than Jobs, and his other great innovation was the industrial research and development laboratory 

While the differences between Edison and Jobs are important, so, are their similarities. These offer lessons for other innovators. Jobs and Edison succeeded because they were good at envisioning how long-term developments in scientific and technical knowledge could be transformed into new technologies. 

At the start of his electric light research Edison described his vision for an entire electric light and power system and then used the knowledge of decades of research on incandescent lamps and generators to create the first viable incandescent lamp and the entire electric light and power system that made it commercially viable. 

Similarly, before developing the Macintosh computer, Jobs envisioned how two decades of work on graphical user interfaces and the computer mouse could transform the way people used computers, and also how the development of touchscreens and miniaturization could be transformed into the smartphone. 
What were they?
sound recording and motion pictures