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Edison's handwriting is unusually legible even by the standards of that period. You can look at many other historical artefacts to see what the average looked like.

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I looked up letters written by other 20th century scientists, the average looks pretty good: Marie Curie: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7722951 Tesla: https://www.benjamindecasseres.com/nikola-teslas-letter-to-b...

They all seem to have this really "flowy" style

>...They all seem to have this really "flowy" style.

I guess, the flow was needed to literally maintain the flow of ink off the pen.

This is what cursive was designed for - removing and replacing the pen could result in a splotch so it was reduced as much as possible.

The average looks pretty similar to what's taught in schools today (in places that still teach handwriting).

I agree. I would say handwriting has actually improved in legibility through history if anything. Most historic handwriting tended to be closer to what today we would call shorthand or stenography. Even in formal texts, it is common to find missing vowels or worse (and if you go even farther back in time, it is common to find the same word spelled in different ways even within the same page).

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