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The author mentions Carrier, Babbage, and Edison to emphasize that the inventors' original intentions were not related to the unexpected societal impacts their inventions had:
Carrier created air-conditioning for industrial use, but it triggered a mass migration to cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Babbage's invention of a programmable loom and Edison’s phonograph were originally intended for specific purposes (textile weaving and dictation, respectively). Still, they led to far-reaching technological developments in computing and music industries.
Therefore, we can infer that the inventors did not anticipate the full consequences of their inventions.
Option a: The secondary effects are shown as surprising or leading to unforeseen societal changes, rather than leading to more inventions.
Option b: The passage doesn't claim that the unintended consequences were largely beneficial. While some consequences may have been beneficial (like the telescope and microscope from the printing press), others (like climate change ) have been harmful.
Option d: This is close, but it's not the main point. The intended purpose of the inventions may have been different from their actual use, but the author’s primary argument is about how the inventors could not have predicted the full societal impacts of their inventions, rather than focusing on how inventions end up being used for different purposes.
Hence, option c is the correct answer.