biography for thomas edison

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Early years

• The phonograph
• The electric light
• The Edison laboratory

How did Thomas Edison become famous?

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Thomas Edison

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• Library of Congress - Digital Collections - Life of Thomas Alva Edison
• Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation - Thomas Edison's Inventive Life
• National Park Service - Biography of Thomas Edison
• National Academy of Sciences - Biographical Memoirs - "Thomas Alva Edison"
• Energy.gov - Top 8 Things You Didn’t Know About Thomas Alva Edison
• The Franklin Institute - Case Files: Thomas A. Edison
• Official Site of Edison Innovation Foundation
• The National Museum of American History - Lighting A Revolution - Lamp Inventors 1880-1940: Carbon Filament Incandescent
• American Chemical Society - Biography of Thomas Edison
• Thomas Edison - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Thomas Edison - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

When was Thomas Edison born?

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan , Ohio , on February 11, 1847.

When did Thomas Edison die?

Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, in West Orange , New Jersey .

Thomas Edison unveiled the phonograph —which reproduced sounds by means of the vibration of a stylus following a groove on a rotating disc—in December 1877. The public’s amazement surrounding this invention was quickly followed by universal acclaim. Edison was projected into worldwide prominence and was dubbed the Wizard of Menlo Park.

How did Thomas Edison change the world?

Thomas Edison played a significant part in introducing the modern age of electricity . His inventions included the phonograph, the carbon-button transmitter for the telephone speaker and microphone , the incandescent lamp , the first commercial electric light and power system, an experimental electric railroad , and key elements of motion-picture equipment.

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Thomas Edison (born February 11, 1847, Milan , Ohio , U.S.—died October 18, 1931, West Orange , New Jersey) was an American inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world-record 1,093 patents . In addition, he created the world’s first industrial research laboratory .

Edison was the quintessential American inventor in the era of Yankee ingenuity. He began his career in 1863, in the adolescence of the telegraph industry, when virtually the only source of electricity was primitive batteries putting out a low-voltage current . Before he died, in 1931, he had played a critical role in introducing the modern age of electricity . From his laboratories and workshops emanated the phonograph , the carbon-button transmitter for the telephone speaker and microphone , the incandescent lamp , a revolutionary generator of unprecedented efficiency , the first commercial electric light and power system, an experimental electric railroad , and key elements of motion-picture apparatus , as well as a host of other inventions.

Edison was the seventh and last child—the fourth surviving—of Samuel Edison, Jr., and Nancy Elliot Edison. At an early age he developed hearing problems, which have been variously attributed but were most likely due to a familial tendency to mastoiditis . Whatever the cause, Edison’s deafness strongly influenced his behaviour and career, providing the motivation for many of his inventions.

In 1854 Samuel Edison became the lighthouse keeper and carpenter on the Fort Gratiot military post near Port Huron , Michigan , where the family lived in a substantial home. Alva, as the inventor was known until his second marriage, entered school there and attended sporadically for five years. He was imaginative and inquisitive, but, because much instruction was by rote and he had difficulty hearing, he was bored and was labeled a misfit. To compensate, he became an avid and omnivorous reader. Edison’s lack of formal schooling was not unusual. At the time of the Civil War the average American had attended school a total of 434 days—little more than two years’ schooling by today’s standards.

In 1859 Edison quit school and began working as a trainboy on the railroad between Detroit and Port Huron. Four years earlier, the Michigan Central had initiated the commercial application of the telegraph by using it to control the movement of its trains, and the Civil War brought a vast expansion of transportation and communication . Edison took advantage of the opportunity to learn telegraphy and in 1863 became an apprentice telegrapher.

Messages received on the initial Morse telegraph were inscribed as a series of dots and dashes on a strip of paper that was decoded and read, so Edison’s partial deafness was no handicap. Receivers were increasingly being equipped with a sounding key, however, enabling telegraphers to “read” messages by the clicks. The transformation of telegraphy to an auditory art left Edison more and more disadvantaged during his six-year career as an itinerant telegrapher in the Midwest, the South, Canada , and New England . Amply supplied with ingenuity and insight, he devoted much of his energy toward improving the inchoate equipment and inventing devices to facilitate some of the tasks that his physical limitations made difficult. By January 1869 he had made enough progress with a duplex telegraph (a device capable of transmitting two messages simultaneously on one wire) and a printer , which converted electrical signals to letters, that he abandoned telegraphy for full-time invention and entrepreneurship.

Edison moved to New York City , where he initially went into partnership with Frank L. Pope, a noted electrical expert, to produce the Edison Universal Stock Printer and other printing telegraphs. Between 1870 and 1875 he worked out of Newark , New Jersey , and was involved in a variety of partnerships and complex transactions in the fiercely competitive and convoluted telegraph industry, which was dominated by the Western Union Telegraph Company . As an independent entrepreneur he was available to the highest bidder and played both sides against the middle. During this period he worked on improving an automatic telegraph system for Western Union’s rivals. The automatic telegraph, which recorded messages by means of a chemical reaction engendered by the electrical transmissions, proved of limited commercial success, but the work advanced Edison’s knowledge of chemistry and laid the basis for his development of the electric pen and mimeograph , both important devices in the early office machine industry, and indirectly led to the discovery of the phonograph . Under the aegis of Western Union he devised the quadruplex, capable of transmitting four messages simultaneously over one wire, but railroad baron and Wall Street financier Jay Gould , Western Union’s bitter rival, snatched the quadruplex from the telegraph company’s grasp in December 1874 by paying Edison more than $100,000 in cash, bonds, and stock, one of the larger payments for any invention up to that time. Years of litigation followed.

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Thomas Edison

By: History.com Editors

Updated: October 17, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor and savvy businessman who acquired a record number of 1,093 patents (singly or jointly) and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb, the alkaline battery and one of the earliest motion picture cameras. He also created the world’s first industrial research laboratory. Known as the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” for the New Jersey town where he did some of his best-known work, Edison had become one of the most famous men in the world by the time he was in his 30s. In addition to his talent for invention, Edison was also a successful manufacturer who was highly skilled at marketing his inventions—and himself—to the public.

Thomas Edison’s Early Life

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the seventh and last child born to Samuel Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott Edison, and would be one of four to survive to adulthood. At age 12, he developed hearing loss—he was reportedly deaf in one ear, and nearly deaf in the other—which was variously attributed to scarlet fever, mastoiditis or a blow to the head.

Thomas Edison received little formal education, and left school in 1859 to begin working on the railroad between Detroit and Port Huron, Michigan, where his family then lived. By selling food and newspapers to train passengers, he was able to net about $50 profit each week, a substantial income at the time—especially for a 13-year-old.

Did you know? By the time he died at age 84 on October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison had amassed a record 1,093 patents: 389 for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph, 150 for the telegraph, 141 for storage batteries and 34 for the telephone.

During the Civil War , Edison learned the emerging technology of telegraphy, and traveled around the country working as a telegrapher. But with the development of auditory signals for the telegraph, he was soon at a disadvantage as a telegrapher.

To address this problem, Edison began to work on inventing devices that would help make things possible for him despite his deafness (including a printer that would convert electrical telegraph signals to letters). In early 1869, he quit telegraphy to pursue invention full time.

Edison in Menlo Park

From 1870 to 1875, Edison worked out of Newark, New Jersey, where he developed telegraph-related products for both Western Union Telegraph Company (then the industry leader) and its rivals. Edison’s mother died in 1871, and that same year he married 16-year-old Mary Stillwell.

Despite his prolific telegraph work, Edison encountered financial difficulties by late 1875, but one year later—with the help of his father—Edison was able to build a laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey, 12 miles south of Newark.

With the success of his Menlo Park “invention factory,” some historians credit Edison as the inventor of the research and development (R&D) lab, a collaborative, team-based model later copied by AT&T at Bell Labs , the DuPont Experimental Station , the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and other R&D centers.

In 1877, Edison developed the carbon transmitter, a device that improved the audibility of the telephone by making it possible to transmit voices at higher volume and with more clarity.

That same year, his work with the telegraph and telephone led him to invent the phonograph, which recorded sound as indentations on a sheet of paraffin-coated paper; when the paper was moved beneath a stylus, the sounds were reproduced. The device made an immediate splash, though it took years before it could be produced and sold commercially.

Edison and the Light Bulb

In 1878, Edison focused on inventing a safe, inexpensive electric light to replace the gaslight—a challenge that scientists had been grappling with for the last 50 years. With the help of prominent financial backers like J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family, Edison set up the Edison Electric Light Company and began research and development.

He made a breakthrough in October 1879 with a bulb that used a platinum filament, and in the summer of 1880 hit on carbonized bamboo as a viable alternative for the filament, which proved to be the key to a long-lasting and affordable light bulb. In 1881, he set up an electric light company in Newark, and the following year moved his family (which by now included three children) to New York.

Though Edison’s early incandescent lighting systems had their problems, they were used in such acclaimed events as the Paris Lighting Exhibition in 1881 and the Crystal Palace in London in 1882.

Competitors soon emerged, notably Nikola Tesla, a proponent of alternating or AC current (as opposed to Edison’s direct or DC current). By 1889, AC current would come to dominate the field, and the Edison General Electric Co. merged with another company in 1892 to become General Electric .

Later Years and Inventions

Edison’s wife, Mary, died in August 1884, and in February 1886 he remarried Mirna Miller; they would have three children together. He built a large estate called Glenmont and a research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, with facilities including a machine shop, a library and buildings for metallurgy, chemistry and woodworking.

Spurred on by others’ work on improving the phonograph, he began working toward producing a commercial model. He also had the idea of linking the phonograph to a zoetrope, a device that strung together a series of photographs in such a way that the images appeared to be moving. Working with William K.L. Dickson, Edison succeeded in constructing a working motion picture camera, the Kinetograph, and a viewing instrument, the Kinetoscope, which he patented in 1891.

After years of heated legal battles with his competitors in the fledgling motion-picture industry, Edison had stopped working with moving film by 1918. In the interim, he had had success developing an alkaline storage battery, which he originally worked on as a power source for the phonograph but later supplied for submarines and electric vehicles.

In 1912, automaker Henry Ford asked Edison to design a battery for the self-starter, which would be introduced on the iconic Model T . The collaboration began a continuing relationship between the two great American entrepreneurs.

Despite the relatively limited success of his later inventions (including his long struggle to perfect a magnetic ore-separator), Edison continued working into his 80s. His rise from poor, uneducated railroad worker to one of the most famous men in the world made him a folk hero.

More than any other individual, he was credited with building the framework for modern technology and society in the age of electricity. His Glenmont estate—where he died in 1931—and West Orange laboratory are now open to the public as the Thomas Edison National Historical Park .

Thomas Edison’s Greatest Invention. The Atlantic . Life of Thomas Alva Edison. Library of Congress . 7 Epic Fails Brought to You by the Genius Mind of Thomas Edison. Smithsonian Magazine .

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Collection Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

Life of thomas alva edison.

One of the most famous and prolific inventors of all time, Thomas Alva Edison exerted a tremendous influence on modern life, contributing inventions such as the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera, as well as improving the telegraph and telephone. In his 84 years, he acquired an astounding 1,093 patents. Aside from being an inventor, Edison also managed to become a successful manufacturer and businessman, marketing his inventions to the public. A myriad of business liaisons, partnerships, and corporations filled Edison's life, and legal battles over various patents and corporations were continuous. The following is only a brief sketch of an enormously active and complex life full of projects often occurring simultaneously. Several excellent biographies are readily available in local libraries to those who wish to learn more about the particulars of his life and many business ventures.

Edison's Early Years

Thomas A. Edison's forebears lived in New Jersey until their loyalty to the British crown during the American Revolution drove them to Nova Scotia, Canada. From there, later generations relocated to Ontario and fought the Americans in the War of 1812. Edison's mother, Nancy Elliott, was originally from New York until her family moved to Vienna, Canada, where she met Sam Edison, Jr., whom she later married. When Sam became involved in an unsuccessful insurrection in Ontario in the 1830s, he was forced to flee to the United States and in 1839 they made their home in Milan, Ohio.

Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. Known as "Al" in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Edison tended to be in poor health when young.

To seek a better fortune, Sam Edison moved the family to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where he worked in the lumber business.

Edison was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison "addled," his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint." 1 At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and for chemical experiments.

In 1859, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the Grand Trunk Herald , the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board.

Around the age of twelve, Edison lost almost all his hearing. There are several theories as to what caused his hearing loss. Some attribute it to the aftereffects of scarlet fever which he had as a child. Others blame it on a conductor boxing his ears after Edison caused a fire in the baggage car, an incident which Edison claimed never happened. Edison himself blamed it on an incident in which he was grabbed by his ears and lifted to a train. He did not let his disability discourage him, however, and often treated it as an asset, since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. Undoubtedly, though, his deafness made him more solitary and shy in dealings with others.

Telegraph Work

In 1862, Edison rescued a three-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward. That winter, he took a job as a telegraph operator in Port Huron. In the meantime, he continued his scientific experiments on the side. Between 1863 and 1867, Edison migrated from city to city in the United States taking available telegraph jobs.

In 1868 Edison moved to Boston where he worked in the Western Union office and worked even more on his inventions. In January 1869 Edison resigned his job, intending to devote himself fulltime to inventing things. His first invention to receive a patent was the electric vote recorder, in June 1869. Daunted by politicians' reluctance to use the machine, he decided that in the future he would not waste time inventing things that no one wanted.

Edison moved to New York City in the middle of 1869. A friend, Franklin L. Pope, allowed Edison to sleep in a room at Samuel Laws' Gold Indicator Company where he was employed. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to manage and improve the printer machines.

During the next period of his life, Edison became involved in multiple projects and partnerships dealing with the telegraph. In October 1869, Edison formed with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley the organization Pope, Edison and Co. They advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. The partnership merged with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. in 1870. Edison also established the Newark Telegraph Works in Newark, NJ, with William Unger to manufacture stock printers. He formed the American Telegraph Works to work on developing an automatic telegraph later in the year. In 1874 he began to work on a multiplex telegraphic system for Western Union, ultimately developing a quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in both directions. When Edison sold his patent rights to the quadruplex to the rival Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co., a series of court battles followed in which Western Union won. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in 1875.

His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edison's mother died in 1871, and later that year, he married a former employee, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day. While Edison clearly loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues. Nevertheless, their first child, Marion, was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., born on January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two "Dot" and "Dash," referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie was born in October 1878.

Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, in 1876. This site later become known as an "invention factory," since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there. Edison would conduct numerous experiments to find answers to problems. He said, "I never quit until I get what I'm after. Negative results are just what I'm after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results." 2 Edison liked to work long hours and expected much from his employees.

In 1877, Edison worked on a telephone transmitter that greatly improved on Alexander Graham Bell's work with the telephone. His transmitter made it possible for voices to be transmitted at higer volume and with greater clarity over standard telephone lines.

Edison's experiments with the telephone and the telegraph led to his invention of the phonograph in 1877. It occurred to him that sound could be recorded as indentations on a rapidly-moving piece of paper. He eventually formulated a machine with a tinfoil-coated cylinder and a diaphragm and needle. When Edison spoke the words "Mary had a little lamb" into the mouthpiece, to his amazement the machine played the phrase back to him. The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was established early in 1878 to market the machine, but the initial novelty value of the phonograph wore off, and Edison turned his attention elsewhere.

Edison focused on the electric light system in 1878, setting aside the phonograph for almost a decade. With the backing of financiers, The Edison Electric Light Co. was formed on November 15 to carry out experiments with electric lights and to control any patents resulting from them. In return for handing over his patents to the company, Edison received a large share of stock. Work continued into 1879, as the lab attempted not only to devise an incandescent bulb, but an entire electrical lighting system that could be supported in a city. A filament of carbonized thread proved to be the key to a long-lasting light bulb. Lamps were put in the laboratory, and many journeyed out to Menlo Park to see the new discovery. A special public exhibition at the lab was given for a multitude of amazed visitors on New Year's Eve.

Edison set up an electric light factory in East Newark in 1881, and then the following year moved his family and himself to New York and set up a laboratory there.

In order to prove its viability, the first commercial electric light system was installed on Pearl Street in the financial district of Lower Manhattan in 1882, bordering City Hall and two newspapers. Initially, only four hundred lamps were lit; a year later, there were 513 customers using 10,300 lamps. 3 Edison formed several companies to manufacture and operate the apparatus needed for the electrical lighting system: the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, the Edison Machine Works, the Edison Electric Tube Company, and the Edison Lamp Works. This lighting system was also taken abroad to the Paris Lighting Exposition in 1881, the Crystal Palace in London in 1882, the coronation of the czar in Moscow, and led to the establishment of companies in several European countries.

The success of Edison's lighting system could not deter his competitors from developing their own, different methods. One result was a battle between the proponents of DC current, led by Edison, and AC current, led by George Westinghouse . Both sides attacked the limitations of each system. Edison, in particular, pointed to the use of AC current for electrocution as proof of its danger. DC current could not travel over as long a system as AC, but the AC generators were not as efficient as the ones for DC. By 1889, the invention of a device that combined an AC induction motor with a DC dynamo offered the best performance of all, and AC current became dominant. The Edison General Electric Co. merged with Thomson-Houston in 1892 to become General Electric Co., effectively removing Edison further from the electrical field of business.

An Improved Phonograph

Edison's wife, Mary, died on August 9, 1884, possibly from a brain tumor. Edison remarried to Mina Miller on February 24, 1886, and, with his wife, moved into a large mansion named Glenmont in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison's children from his first marriage were distanced from their father's new life, as Edison and Mina had their own family: Madeleine, born on 1888; Charles on 1890; and Theodore on 1898. Unlike Mary, who was sickly and often remained at home, and was also deferential to her husband's wishes, Mina was an active woman, devoting much time to community groups, social functions, and charities, as well as trying to improve her husband's often careless personal habits.

In 1887, Edison had built a new, larger laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. The facility included a machine shop, phonograph and photograph departments, a library, and ancillary buildings for metallurgy, chemistry, woodworking, and galvanometer testings.

While Edison had neglected further work on the phonograph , others had moved forward to improve it. In particular, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter developed an improved machine that used a wax cylinder and a floating stylus, which they called a graphophone. They sent representatives to Edison to discuss a possible partnership on the machine, but Edison refused to collaborate with them, feeling that the phonograph was his invention alone. With this competition, Edison was stirred into action and resumed his work on the phonograph in 1887. Edison eventually adopted methods similar to Bell and Tainter's in his own phonograph.

The phonograph was initially marketed as a business dictation machine. Entrepreneur Jesse H. Lippincott acquired control of most of the phonograph companies, including Edison's, and set up the North American Phonograph Co. in 1888. The business did not prove profitable, and when Lippincott fell ill, Edison took over the management. In 1894, the North American Phonograph Co. went into bankruptcy, a move which allowed Edison to buy back the rights to his invention. In 1896, Edison started the National Phonograph Co. with the intent of making phonographs for home amusement. Over the years, Edison made improvements to the phonograph and to the cylinders which were played on them, the early ones being made of wax. Edison introduced an unbreakable cylinder record, named the Blue Amberol, at roughly the same time he entered the disc phonograph market in 1912. The introduction of an Edison disc was in reaction to the overwhelming popularity of discs on the market in contrast to cylinders. Touted as being superior to the competition's records, the Edison discs were designed to be played only on Edison phonographs, and were cut laterally as opposed to vertically. The success of the Edison phonograph business, though, was always hampered by the company's reputation of choosing lower-quality recording acts. In the 1920s, competition from radio caused business to sour, and the Edison disc business ceased production in 1929.

Other Ventures: Ore-milling and Cement

Another Edison interest was an ore-milling process that would extract various metals from ore. In 1881, he formed the Edison Ore-Milling Co., but the venture proved fruitless as there was no market for it. In 1887, he returned to the project, thinking that his process could help the mostly depleted Eastern mines compete with the Western ones. In 1889, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works was formed, and Edison became absorbed by its operations and began to spend much time away from home at the mines in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Although he invested much money and time into this project, it proved unsuccessful when the market went down and additional sources of ore in the Midwest were found.

Edison also became involved in promoting the use of cement and formed the Edison Portland Cement Co. in 1899. He tried to promote widespread use of cement for the construction of low-cost homes and envisioned alternative uses for concrete in the manufacture of phonographs, furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. Unfortunately, Edison was ahead of his time with these ideas, as widespread use of concrete proved economically unfeasible at that time.

Motion Pictures

In 1888, Edison met Eadweard Muybridge at West Orange and viewed Muybridge's zoopraxiscope. This machine used a circular disc with still photographs of the successive phases of movement around the circumference to recreate the illusion of movement. Edison declined to work with Muybridge on the device and decided to work on his own motion picture camera at his laboratory. As Edison put it in a caveat written the same year, "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear." 4

The task of inventing the machine fell to Edison's associate William K. L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device for recording images, before turning to a celluloid strip. In October of 1889, Dickson greeted Edison's return from Paris with a new device that projected pictures and contained sound. After more work, patent applications were made in 1891 for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion picture peephole viewer.

Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York and soon spread to other major cities during 1894. In 1893, a motion picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (the slang name for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled), was opened at the West Orange complex. Short films were produced using variety acts of the day. Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers.

When Dickson aided competitors on developing another peephole motion picture device and the eidoloscope projection system, later to develop into the Mutoscope, he was fired. Dickson went on to form the American Mutoscope Co. along with Harry Marvin, Herman Casler, and Elias Koopman. Edison subsequently adopted a projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and re-named it the Vitascope and marketed it under his name. The Vitascope premiered on April 23, 1896, to great acclaim.

Competition from other motion picture companies soon created heated legal battles between them and Edison over patents. Edison sued many companies for infringement. In 1909, the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Co. brought a degree of cooperation to the various companies who were given licenses in 1909, but in 1915, the courts found the company to be an unfair monopoly.

In 1913, Edison experimented with synchronizing sound to film. A Kinetophone was developed by his laboratory which synchronized sound on a phonograph cylinder to the picture on a screen. Although this initially brought interest, the system was far from perfect and disappeared by 1915. By 1918, Edison ended his involvement in the motion picture field.

Edison's Later Years

In 1911, Edison's companies were re-organized into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. As the organization became more diversified and structured, Edison became less involved in the day-to-day operations, although he still had some decision-making authority. The goals of the organization became more to maintain market viability than to produce new inventions frequently.

A fire broke out at the West Orange laboratory in 1914, destroying 13 buildings. Although the loss was great, Edison spearheaded the rebuilding of the lot.

When Europe became involved in World War I, Edison advised preparedness, and felt that technology would be the future of war. He was named head of the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, an attempt by the government to bring science into its defense program. Although mainly an advisory board, it was instrumental in the formation of a laboratory for the Navy which opened in 1923, although several of Edison's suggestions on the matter were disregarded. During the war, Edison spent much of his time doing naval research, in particular working on submarine detection, but he felt that the navy was not receptive to many of his inventions and suggestions.

In the 1920s, Edison's health became worse, and he began to spend more time at home with his wife. His relationship with his children was distant, although Charles was president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. While Edison continued to experiment at home, he could not perform some experiments that he wanted to at his West Orange laboratory because the board would not approve them. One project that held his fascination during this period was the search for an alternative to rubber.

Henry Ford, an admirer and friend of Edison's, reconstructed Edison's invention factory as a museum at Greenfield Village, Michigan, which opened during the 50th anniversary of Edison's electric light in 1929. The main celebration for Light's Golden Jubilee, co-hosted by Ford and General Electric, took place in Dearborn along with a huge celebratory dinner in Edison's honor attended by notables such as President Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George Eastman, Marie Curie, and Orville Wright. Edison's health, however, had declined to the point that he could not stay for the entire ceremony.

For his last two years, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma on October 14, 1931. He died on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey.

• Martin V. Melosi, Thomas A. Edison and the Modernization of America , (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education, 1990) p. 8. [ Return to text ]
• Poster for Thomas A. Edison 150th Anniversary, 1847-1997, United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site, West Orange, New Jersey. [ Return to text ]
• Melosi, p. 73. [ Return to text ]
• Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography , (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1959) p. 386. [ Return to text ]

Biography of Thomas Edison, American Inventor

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Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847–October 18, 1931) was an American inventor who transformed the world with inventions including the lightbulb and the phonograph. He was considered the face of technology and progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Fast Facts: Thomas Edison

• Known For : Inventor of groundbreaking technology, including the lightbulb and the phonograph
• Born : February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio
• Parents : Sam Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott Edison
• Died : October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey
• Education : Three months of formal education, homeschooled until age 12
• Published Works : Quadruplex telegraph, phonograph, unbreakable cylinder record called the "Blue Ambersol," electric pen, a version of the incandescent lightbulb and an integrated system to run it, motion picture camera called a kinetograph
• Spouse(s) : Mary Stilwell, Mina Miller
• Children : Marion Estelle, Thomas Jr., William Leslie by Mary Stilwell; and Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore Miller by Mina Miller

Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, the son of a Canadian refugee and his schoolteacher wife. Edison's mother Nancy Elliott was originally from New York until her family moved to Vienna, Canada, where she met Sam Edison, Jr., whom she later married. Sam was the descendant of British loyalists who fled to Canada at the end of the American Revolution, but when he became involved in an unsuccessful revolt in Ontario in the 1830s he was forced to flee to the United States. They made their home in Ohio in 1839. The family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where Sam worked in the lumber business.

Education and First Job

Known as "Al" in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood, and all of them were in their teens when Edison was born. Edison tended to be in poor health when he was young and was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison "addled," or slow, his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint." At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and chemical experiments.

In 1859 at the age of 12, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. He started two businesses in Port Huron, a newsstand and a fresh produce stand, and finagled free or very low-cost trade and transport in the train. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the "Grand Trunk Herald," the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board.

Loss of Hearing

Around the age of 12, Edison lost almost all of his hearing. There are several theories as to what caused this. Some attribute it to the aftereffects of scarlet fever, which he had as a child. Others blame it on a train conductor boxing his ears after Edison caused a fire in the baggage car, an incident Edison claimed never happened. Edison himself blamed it on an incident in which he was grabbed by his ears and lifted to a train. He did not let his disability discourage him, however, and often treated it as an asset since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. Undoubtedly, though, his deafness made him more solitary and shy in dealing with others.

Telegraph Operator

In 1862, Edison rescued a 3-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward. That winter, he took a job as a telegraph operator in Port Huron. In the meantime, he continued his scientific experiments on the side. Between 1863 and 1867, Edison migrated from city to city in the United States, taking available telegraph jobs.

Love of Invention

In 1868, Edison moved to Boston where he worked in the Western Union office and worked even more on inventing things. In January 1869 Edison resigned from his job, intending to devote himself full time to inventing things. His first invention to receive a patent was the electric vote recorder, in June 1869. Daunted by politicians' reluctance to use the machine, he decided that in the future he would not waste time inventing things that no one wanted.

Edison moved to New York City in the middle of 1869. A friend, Franklin L. Pope, allowed Edison to sleep in a room where he worked, Samuel Laws' Gold Indicator Company. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to maintain and improve the printer machines.

During the next period of his life, Edison became involved in multiple projects and partnerships dealing with the telegraph. In October 1869, Edison joined with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley to form the organization Pope, Edison and Co. They advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. The partnership merged with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. in 1870.

American Telegraph Works

Edison also established the Newark Telegraph Works in Newark, New Jersey, with William Unger to manufacture stock printers. He formed the American Telegraph Works to work on developing an automatic telegraph later in the year.

In 1874 he began to work on a multiplex telegraphic system for Western Union, ultimately developing a quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in both directions. When Edison sold his patent rights to the quadruplex to the rival Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co. , a series of court battles followed—which Western Union won. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in 1875.

Marriage and Family

His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edison's mother died in 1871, and he married his former employee Mary Stilwell on Christmas Day that same year. While Edison loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues.

Nevertheless, their first child Marion was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., in January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two "Dot" and "Dash," referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie, was born in October 1878.

Mary died in 1884, perhaps of cancer or the morphine prescribed to her to treat it. Edison married again: his second wife was Mina Miller, the daughter of Ohio industrialist Lewis Miller, who founded the Chautauqua Foundation. They married on February 24, 1886, and had three children, Madeleine (born 1888), Charles (1890), and Theodore Miller Edison (1898).

Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park , New Jersey, in 1876. This site later become known as an "invention factory," since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there. Edison would conduct numerous experiments to find answers to problems. He said, "I never quit until I get what I'm after. Negative results are just what I'm after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results." Edison liked to work long hours and expected much from his employees .

In 1879, after considerable experimentation and based on 70 years work of several other inventors, Edison invented a carbon filament that would burn for 40 hours—the first practical incandescent lightbulb .

While Edison had neglected further work on the phonograph, others had moved forward to improve it. In particular, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter developed an improved machine that used a wax cylinder and a floating stylus, which they called a graphophone . They sent representatives to Edison to discuss a possible partnership on the machine, but Edison refused to collaborate with them, feeling that the phonograph was his invention alone. With this competition, Edison was stirred into action and resumed his work on the phonograph in 1887. Edison eventually adopted methods similar to Bell and Tainter's in his phonograph.

Phonograph Companies

The phonograph was initially marketed as a business dictation machine. Entrepreneur Jesse H. Lippincott acquired control of most of the phonograph companies, including Edison's, and set up the North American Phonograph Co. in 1888. The business did not prove profitable, and when Lippincott fell ill, Edison took over the management.

In 1894, the North American Phonograph Co. went into bankruptcy, a move which allowed Edison to buy back the rights to his invention. In 1896, Edison started the National Phonograph Co. with the intent of making phonographs for home amusement. Over the years, Edison made improvements to the phonograph and to the cylinders which were played on them, the early ones being made of wax. Edison introduced an unbreakable cylinder record, named the Blue Amberol, at roughly the same time he entered the disc phonograph market in 1912.

The introduction of an Edison disc was in reaction to the overwhelming popularity of discs on the market in contrast to cylinders. Touted as being superior to the competition's records, the Edison discs were designed to be played only on Edison phonographs and were cut laterally as opposed to vertically. The success of the Edison phonograph business, though, was always hampered by the company's reputation of choosing lower-quality recording acts. In the 1920s, competition from radio caused the business to sour, and the Edison disc business ceased production in 1929.

Ore-Milling and Cement

Another Edison interest was an ore milling process that would extract various metals from ore. In 1881, he formed the Edison Ore-Milling Co., but the venture proved fruitless as there was no market for it. He returned to the project in 1887, thinking that his process could help the mostly depleted Eastern mines compete with the Western ones. In 1889, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works was formed, and Edison became absorbed by its operations and began to spend much time away from home at the mines in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Although he invested much money and time into this project, it proved unsuccessful when the market went down, and additional sources of ore in the Midwest were found.

Edison also became involved in promoting the use of cement and formed the Edison Portland Cement Co. in 1899. He tried to promote the widespread use of cement for the construction of low-cost homes and envisioned alternative uses for concrete in the manufacture of phonographs, furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. Unfortunately, Edison was ahead of his time with these ideas, as the widespread use of concrete proved economically unfeasible at that time.

Motion Pictures

In 1888, Edison met Eadweard Muybridge at West Orange and viewed Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope. This machine used a circular disc with still photographs of the successive phases of movement around the circumference to recreate the illusion of movement. Edison declined to work with Muybridge on the device and decided to work on his motion picture camera at his laboratory. As Edison put it in a caveat written the same year, "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear."

The task of inventing the machine fell to Edison's associate William K. L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device for recording images, before turning to a celluloid strip. In October 1889, Dickson greeted Edison's return from Paris with a new device that projected pictures and contained sound. After more work, patent applications were made in 1891 for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion picture peephole viewer.

Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York and soon spread to other major cities during 1894. In 1893, a motion picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (the slang name for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled), was opened at the West Orange complex. Short films were produced using a variety of acts of the day. Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers.

When Dickson assisted competitors on developing another peephole motion picture device and the eidoscope projection system, later to develop into the Mutoscope, he was fired. Dickson went on to form the American Mutoscope Co. along with Harry Marvin, Herman Casler, and Elias Koopman. Edison subsequently adopted a projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and renamed it the Vitascope and marketed it under his name. The Vitascope premiered on April 23, 1896, to great acclaim.

Patent Battles

Competition from other motion picture companies soon created heated legal battles between them and Edison over patents. Edison sued many companies for infringement. In 1909, the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Co. brought a degree of cooperation to the various companies who were given licenses in 1909, but in 1915, the courts found the company to be an unfair monopoly.

In 1913, Edison experimented with synchronizing sound to film. A Kinetophone was developed by his laboratory and synchronized sound on a phonograph cylinder to the picture on a screen. Although this initially brought interest, the system was far from perfect and disappeared by 1915. By 1918, Edison ended his involvement in the motion picture field.

In 1911, Edison's companies were re-organized into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. As the organization became more diversified and structured, Edison became less involved in the day-to-day operations, although he still had some decision-making authority. The goals of the organization became more to maintain market viability than to produce new inventions frequently.

A fire broke out at the West Orange laboratory in 1914, destroying 13 buildings. Although the loss was great, Edison spearheaded the rebuilding of the lot.

World War I

When Europe became involved in World War I, Edison advised preparedness and felt that technology would be the future of war. He was named the head of the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, an attempt by the government to bring science into its defense program. Although mainly an advisory board, it was instrumental in the formation of a laboratory for the Navy that opened in 1923. During the war, Edison spent much of his time doing naval research, particularly on submarine detection, but he felt the Navy was not receptive to many of his inventions and suggestions.

Health Issues

In the 1920s, Edison's health became worse and he began to spend more time at home with his wife. His relationship with his children was distant, although Charles was president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. While Edison continued to experiment at home, he could not perform some experiments that he wanted to at his West Orange laboratory because the board would not approve them. One project that held his fascination during this period was the search for an alternative to rubber.

Death and Legacy

Henry Ford , an admirer and a friend of Edison's, reconstructed Edison's invention factory as a museum at Greenfield Village, Michigan, which opened during the 50th anniversary of Edison's electric light in 1929. The main celebration of Light's Golden Jubilee, co-hosted by Ford and General Electric, took place in Dearborn along with a huge celebratory dinner in Edison's honor attended by notables such as President Hoover , John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George Eastman , Marie Curie , and Orville Wright . Edison's health, however, had declined to the point that he could not stay for the entire ceremony.

During the last two years of his life, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma on October 14, 1931. He died on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey.

• Israel, Paul. "Edison: A Life of Invention." New York, Wiley, 2000.
• Josephson, Matthew. "Edison: A Biography." New York, Wiley, 1992.
• Stross, Randall E. "The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World." New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007.
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Thomas Edison

SCIENTISTS (1847–1931); MILAN, OHIO

Thomas Alva Edison was an inventor unlike any throughout history—and his impact can still be felt in your everyday life. Born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, Edison's inventions, which included perfecting the light bulb and phonograph, radically transformed modern civilization and helped make the 20th century one of the most technologically progressive eras ever.

1. Thomas Edison's list of inventions includes more than just the light bulb.

While Thomas Edison's most enduring contribution to modern life will forever remain the incandescent light bulb, he took out a total of 1093 patents that both he and his staff brought to life. Some of Thomas Edison's inventions included:

• The phonograph, the very first machine that could capture and play back sound.
• The stencil-pen, a writing instrument powered by electricity and that is thought to be the predecessor to the tattoo gun.
• The carbon transmitter, which improved the volume and clarity of voices on the telephone.
• He also helped improve existing inventions, such as the stock ticker and the automatic telegraph.

2. Thomas Edison's six children had a lot to live up to, and Thomas Alva Edison Jr. had a lot to live down.

Across two marriages , the first to Mary Stilwell from 1871 to her death in 1884 and the second to Mina Miller in 1886, Edison had six children:

• Marion Estelle Edison (with Stilwell)
• Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (with Stilwell)
• William Leslie Edison (with Stilwell)
• Madeleine Edison (with Miller)
• Charles Edison (with Miller)
• Theodore Miller Edison (with Miller)

Edison attempted to instill a love of knowledge in each of his children, though his methods were not always kind. Admonishing daughter Madeline to answer homework questions at breakfast, Edison would touch her with a hot spoon on her hand if she answered too slowly or incorrectly.

This environment was apparently too hostile for one of his sons, Thomas Alva Edison Jr. , who dropped out of prep school at age 17 and was later chastised by the press for marketing dubious inventions like the Vitalizer, a piece of headgear that promised to make the wearer think faster. In 1904, the post office charged the Vitalizer's distributor with postal fraud. In order to prevent his son from further besmirching the family name, Edison began giving his son an allowance to keep him out of the spotlight.

3. Thomas Edison has a controversial association with an elephant named Topsy.

In the 1890s, Edison's direct current (DC) electrical power was vying for supremacy with Nikola Tesla's alternating current (AC) power. During this time, Edison and his supporters argued that AC was dangerous and tried to prove it by electrocuting animals. Of course, DC could kill just as easily. In 1903, electricity was famously used to kill Topsy, a circus elephant who had been marked for execution after she had killed a spectator. Though Edison is often mentioned in conjunction with the animal's execution, a 2017 Smithsonian article claims he did not witness it and may not have even heard of the story. However, a company working under the Edison Manufacturing banner was on hand to film the sad display, and people erroneously assumed the inventor had something to do with it. But by that point, the Tesla vs. Edison war was long over, and the more versatile AC power had won out.

4. Thomas Edison's Menlo Park property was a site of both triumph and tragedy.

When Edison was 28, he purchased a housing development in Raritan Township, New Jersey, and used the property as the site for his house and laboratory. It was there that, over the course of a decade, Edison and his staff invented more than 400 items. But the site was also home to tragedy. Edison's first wife, Mary, died of a morphine overdose in 1884 while trying to manage pain following the birth of their third child. Edison distanced himself from the area after that, destroying his house and facilities. The township was renamed Edison, New Jersey, in 1954. Today, it's the site of the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, where visitors can get a glimpse of Edison's many inventions.

5. Some of Thomas Edison's siblings suffered unfortunate fates.

Thomas Edison had six siblings:

• William Pitt
• Harriet Ann ("Tannie")

When Edison was born in Milan, Ohio in 1847, he was the seventh and last child of parents Samuel Edison and Nancy Elliott Edison. Unfortunately, Edison didn't get a chance to know all of his siblings. Of his parents' seven children (Marion, William Pitt, Harriet Ann, Carlile, Samuel, Eliza, and Thomas) only four survived . Carlile, Samuel, and Eliza all died in childhood.

6. The Civil War inspired Thomas Edison's interest in invention.

When Thomas Edison was 7 years old, his family relocated to Port Huron, Michigan. Edison, who went by "Al," short for his middle name of Alva, was a disinterested school student and was eventually taught at home by his mother. At 15, he decided to travel across the country, sending and receiving messages over the telegraph for trains and the Union Army during the Civil War. The experience inspired his lifelong passion for invention.

7. Thomas Edison credited a longtime physical ailment as a key factor in his success.

Beginning in childhood, Edison suffered from profound hearing loss. No one is exactly sure what caused it, though Edison himself blamed it on a train conductor who once picked him up by the ears, causing damage. More likely, ear infections affected his ability to hear. However it happened, Edison said his hearing loss led to his incredible ability to concentrate and to deeply focus on whatever task was at hand.

8. Thomas Edison's final breaths before death became a museum piece.

During his career, Edison became friends with automobile pioneer Henry Ford. As Edison's health began to deteriorate and he was eventually relegated to a wheelchair, Ford bought one for himself so that they could race. When, in 1931, it seemed as if Edison's final days were numbered, some believe that Ford asked Edison's son Charles to try and capture his father's last breath in a test tube. While Charles did not do that, Edison's room did contain test tubes during his final moments that were close to his bed. Charles asked that they be sealed with paraffin and he gave one to Ford. Labeled "Edison's Last Breath?" it's currently located at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Most Notable Thomas Edison Inventions:

• Incandescent light bulb
• Electric vote recorder
• Carbon telephone transmitter
• Alkaline battery
• Electric pen

Famous Thomas Edison Quotes:

• "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
• "The value of an idea lies in the using of it."
• "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Biography Online

Thomas Edison Biography

Thomas Edison (1847 – 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed and made commercially available – many key inventions of modern life. His Edison Electric company was a pioneering company for delivering DC electricity directly into people’s homes. He filed over 1,000 patents for a variety of different inventions. Crucially, he used mass-produced techniques to make his inventions available at low cost to households across America. His most important inventions include the electric light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture camera, an electric car and the electric power station.

“None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”

– Thomas Edison, interview 1929

Short Biography Thomas Edison

As a youngster, he tried various odd jobs to earn a living. This including selling candy, vegetables and newspapers. He had a talent for business, and he successfully printed the Grand Trunk Herald along with his other newspapers. This included selling photos of his hero, Abraham Lincoln . He was able to spend his extra income on a growing chemistry set.

Unfortunately, from an early age, Edison developed a severe deafness, which ultimately left him almost 90% deaf. He would later refuse any medical treatment, saying it would be too difficult to retrain his thinking process. He seemed to take his deafness in his stride, and never saw it as a disability.

From childhood, Edison loved to experiment, especially with chemicals. However, these experiments often got Edison into difficulties. A chemistry experiment once exploded on a train, and when working on a night shift at Western Union, his lead-acid battery leaked sulphuric acid through the floor onto his boss’ desk. Edison was fired the next day.

However Edison was undimmed and, despite scrapping by in impoverished conditions for the next few years, he was able to spend most of his time working on inventions. He received his first patent on June 1, 1869, for the stock ticker. This would later earn him a considerable sum.

In the 1870s, he sold the rights to the quadruplex telegraph to Western Union for $10,000. This gave him the financial backing to establish a proper research laboratory and extend his experiments and innovations. Edison once described his invention methods as involving a lot of hard work and repeated trial and error until a method was successful.

“During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. … I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.”

– “Talks with Edison” by G.P Lathrop in Harper’s magazine, Vol. 80 (Feb. 1890), p. 425

By 1877, he had developed the phonograph (an early form of the gramophone player) This received widespread interest, and people were astonished at one of the first audio recording devices. This unique invention earned Edison the nickname ‘The Wizard of Menlo Park ‘ Edison’s device would later be improved upon by others, but he made a big step in creating the first recording device.

With William Joseph Hammer, Edison started producing the electric light bulb, and it was a great commercial success. Edison’s great advance was to use a carbonised bamboo filament that could last over 1,000 hours. In 1878, he formed the Edison Electric light Company to profit from this invention. Edison successfully predicted that he could make electric light so cheap, it would soon come universal. To capitalise on the success of the electric light bulb, he also worked on electricity distribution. His first power station was able to distribute DC current to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.

Edison’s studios now took up two blocks, and it was able to stock a huge range of natural resources, meaning that almost anything and everything could be used in trying to improve designs. This was a big factor in enabling Edison to be so successful in this era of innovation.

During the fledgeling years of electricity generation, Edison became involved in a battle between his DC current system and the AC (alternative current) system favoured by George Westinghouse (and developed by Nikola Tesla , who worked for Edison for two years before leaving in a pay dispute.)

This became known as the ‘current war’ and both sides were desperate to show the superiority of their system. The Edison company even, on occasion, electrocuted animals to show how dangerous the rival AC current was.

During World War One, Edison was asked to serve as a naval consultant, but Edison only wanted to work on defensive weapons. He was proud that he made no invention that could be used to kill. He maintained a strong belief in non-violence.

“Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”

Edison was also a great admirer of the Enlightenment thinker Thomas Paine . He wrote a book praising Paine in 1925; he also shared similar religious beliefs to Thomas Paine – no particular religion, but belief in a Supreme Being.

Edison made many important inventions and development in media. These included the Kinetoscope (or peephole view), the first motion pictures and improved photographic paper.

After the death of his first wife, Mary Stilwell in 1884, Edison left Menlo Park and moved to West Orange, New Jersey. In 1886, he remarried Mina Miller. In West Orange, he became friends with the industrial magnate, Henry Ford and was an active participant in the Civitan club – which involved doing things for the local community. His pace of invention slowed down in these final years, but he still kept busy, such as trying to find a domestic source of natural rubber. He was also involved in the first electric train to depart from Hoboken in 1930.

Throughout his life, he took an active interest in finding the optimal diet and believed a good diet could play a large role in improving health. In 1903, he was quoted as saying:

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

He had six children, three from each marriage. Edison died of diabetes on October 18, 1931.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Thomas Edison” , Oxford, UK – www.biographyonline.net   Published 17th July 2013. Last updated 5 March 2018.

Quotes by Thomas Edison

“Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off. … All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.”

As quoted in Makers of the Modern World: The Lives of Ninety-two Writers, Artists, Scientists, Statesmen, Inventors, Philosophers, Composers, and Other Creators who Formed the Pattern of Our Century (1955) by Louis Untermeyer, p. 227

“We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.”

As quoted in Golden Book (April 1931), according to Stevenson’s Book of Quotations (Cassell 3rd edition 1938) by Burton Egbert Stevenson

“If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

As quoted in Motivating Humans: Goals, Emotions, and Personal Agency Beliefs (1992) by Martin E. Ford, p. 17

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

As quoted in Behavior-Based Robotics (1998) by Ronald C. Arkin. p. 8

“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

“Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don’t know how to steal!”

As quoted in Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer (1999) by Daniel Blair Stewart, p. 411

“I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles.”

The Philosophy of Paine (1925)

“In ‘Common Sense’ Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again..”

The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

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Thomas edison biography: 1847-1882:  birth to pearl street.

Thomas Edison Biography: 1847-1882:  Birth to Pearl Street 

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847, and moved to Port Huron, Michigan when he was seven.  He attended school only briefly and was taught reading and math by his mother.  Edison began working at the age of twelve on the local railroad.  During this time he learned how to work a telegraph, which allowed Edison to leave home and travel the United States as a telegraph operator.  The telegraph was what led Edison to become an inventor.  His early inventions were all improvements to the telegraph, or based on telegraph technology.  Edison was working in New York City in 1870 when he invented an improved stock ticker, which continuously printed stock price updates.  This first successful invention gave him the money necessary to set up a laboratory in Newark, New Jersey. 

In 1876 Edison moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey.  Here he achieved international fame with the invention of the first machine that could record and play back sound in 1877—the phonograph.  Two years later Edison invented the first practical incandescent light.  Over the next three year, Edison developed all the equipment necessary to create a complete, practical, electric power system.  This electric lighting and power system was first used to electrify a portion of New York City in 1882, thus beginning the age of electricity. 

Thomas Edison National Historical Park

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Last updated: May 21, 2021

World History Edu

• U.S. History

Thomas Edison – History, Facts, Inventions & Major Achievements

by World History Edu · January 13, 2022

A prominent pioneer of the mass usage of and distribution of electricity, Thomas Edison was one of the most prolific inventors of the modern era, who developed commercially available electric light bulbs. In addition to coming out with devices in electric power generation, Edison also ventured into devices in media and mass communication, including sound recording and motion pictures.

What jobs did Thomas Edison hold? And what were his major inventions?

WHE presents the life, famous works, and major accomplishments of Thomas Edison (1847-1931), one of the most influential figures in the history of the United States.

Famed for coming out with commercial electric bulbs, Thomas Edison, founder of Edison Electric Company, was a pioneer in the electricity distribution industry of America, which transformed the lives of many people in the country.

The youngest of seven siblings

Thomas Edison was born in a small village called Milan in the U.S. state of Ohio. He was the youngest of eight children of middle class parents – Nancy Matthews Elliot and Samuel Ogden Edison Jr.

He lived in Milan, Ohio until around the age of 7, when he and his family relocated to Port Huron, a city on the southern end of Lake Huron in Michigan. The move was as result of dwindling business for the Edisons.

What was Edison’s childhood like?

Milan, Ohio is famous for being the birthplace of American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison. As a result it has been nicknamed Edison. His birth home, a small hillside brick house, is now a museum in honor of the inventor’s amazing inventions and achievements. Image: Birthplace of Thomas Edison

His mother, who used to work as a school teacher, provided the bulk of his early childhood education, teaching how to read and write. Right from his early years, he had always had a curious mindset. It’s been stated that much of the things he learned came via being an avid reader. He was also very interested in gadgets and conducting experiments here and there.

How was Edison educated?

Image: Edison as a boy, 1861

Thomas Edison was enrolled at a school in Port Huron, Michigan. Due to his slightly obnoxious behavior, he came to be disliked by his teachers. The young Edison was said to be awful at following instructions in school. His mind was always full of questions. As a result, his interest in school waned.

With just about three months of formal schooling, Edison made up for his that by being an avid reader, self-educating himself along the way. He would go to the library in his neighborhood and read every book on the shelf. He had a particular liking for English scientist Sir Isaac Newton ’s famous work – Principia Mathematica.

Grand Trunk Railway Depot and the small scale confection business

Currently part of the Port Huron Museum, the Grand Trunk Railway depot is where the growing Thomas Edison used to travel on. His unrelenting desire for doing business even at that young age is what made him approach and successfully convince the railroad company to allow him sell newspapers and sweets on their premises. Steadily he was able to grow his petty confectionery business to include two newsboys. The profits he made from that petty trading and newspaper business were used to buy chemicals, electrical and other lab equipment.

He also worked as a telegraph operator for the Grand Trunk Railway at Stratford Junction, Ontario.

Did you know : In his early teens, Thomas Edison made about $50 in weekly profit selling candy and newspapers on trains that run from Port Huron to Detroit, Michigan?

The Grand Trunk Herald

Thomas Edison’s newspaper – Grand Trunk Herald

Having excelled very well in buying and selling candy and newspapers on his daily runs from Port Huron to Detroit, Thomas Edison ventured in the printing business, where he attained considerable success printing the Grand Trunk Herald , the first newspaper published on a train.

Thomas Edison’s inspiration to venture into engineering fields

As time went by, he became a bored of the complex mathematical theories. He preferred the application aspect of science. Therefore he set out to truly understand how science could be applied to everyday problems. Right from an early age, he loved conducting experiments. Sometimes his experiments did not go as planned. One time chemical tool kit that he was carrying malfunctioned while traveling on a train.

Time at Western Union, Louisville, Kentucky

Having shunned formal schooling and going into business right from his early teens, Edison trained as a telegraphy operator. At the age of 19, he moved from Michigan to Louisville, Kentucky, where he started working as a telegraphy operator for the famous multinational financial service Western Union.

Although a diligent worker at Western Union, Edison got booted out after one of his experiments went bad. The sulphuric acid from his lead-acid battery had accidentally poured in his manager’s cubicle. While in Louisville, he also worked for the Associated Press bureau in the news wire section.

He lost his job at Western Union in 1867 after a private chemical experiment went wrong at his workplace. | Photograph of Edison with his phonograph (2nd model), taken in Mathew Brady’s Washington, D.C. studio in April 1878

Major Accomplishments of Thomas Edison

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Here are five major achievements of American inventor Thomas Edison:

The Menlo Park Laboratory

Edison’s industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey was the first of its kind in the United States. Image: Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory, reconstructed at Greenfield Village at Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan

Established in 1876 in Middlesex County, New Jersey, the Menlo Park Laboratory was an industrial research laboratory Edison used to produce many of his inventions. Prior to Edison’s Menlo lab, there was no lab set up specifically for technological inventions and development. The inventor therefore holds the record of being the first to accomplish the feat.

With a well-equipped and well-resourced lab, Edison and his qualified group of scientists embarked on numerous experiments and research. Among those workers of his was the Pennsylvania-born electrical engineer William Joseph Hammer (1858-1934), who later went on to lead an organization called Edison Pioneers.

Edison and his team of scientists carried out research in several areas, including phonography, electric railway, electric lighting, telephone, and among others.

Following the commercial success of the incandescent bulbs, Edison expanded the laboratory in not just size but also scope. Edison wanted to experiment on every subject.

Established the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878

After raking in quite a significant amount of profit from the sale of his very successful electric light bulbs, Edison channeled some of those monies into the establishing of the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City. Formed in 1878, the company’s goal was to explore ways of making electric light very cheap as well as universal. His company received financial backing from very powerful individuals and financiers, including J.P. Morgan and Spencer Trask.

Edison made his first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879. The first commercial application of Edison’s incandescent light bulb was on the Columbia, a steamer owned by the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company. The bulbs were fixed in May 1880.

Founder of General Electric

In 1889, the Edison Electric Light Company, merged with other companies established by Edison, including Edison Lamp Company in East Newark, New Jersey, to form Edison General Electric Company. The merger was carried out by J.P. Morgan’s company Drexel, Morgan & Co. That same year, the company acquired Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company.

In 1892, General Electric was born from the merger of Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, and the Edison General Electric Company.

Today, after more than 120 years, GE is a massive multinational conglomerate which is headquartered in the U.S. state of New York. In addition to electricity, GE has its tentacles in a number of industries, including aviation, healthcare, digital industry, locomotives, and weapons manufacturing. It consistently makes it into Fortune 500 , a list of the largest 500 corporations (in terms of total revenue) in the United States.

Edison was the head of the Naval Consulting Board during World War I

In 1915, the federal government tasked Edison to provide scientific advice to the U.S. military. As a naval consultant, he worked on defensive weapons. Edison would later state the immense pride he felt because his work never came out with a weapon that could be used to kill. For example, he chose not to sell the industrial chemicals like phenol that he produced at the Silver Lake facility to the military. The inventor, like his rival Tesla, was a big admirer of non-violence.

A big admirer of non-violence, Thomas Edison was very proud that none of his inventions were weaponized to kill during World War I.

Thomas Edison was a leading pioneer in electricity distribution

Having captured the electric bulb market, Thomas Edison and his business associates needed to make electricity available across the nation in order to make the gains against gas and oil-based lighting more permanent. To achieve this objective, he set up the Edison Illuminating Company in 1880. In the years that followed, he and his team of engineers worked on building a robust electricity supply network that would deliver power to the homes of Americans. In 1882, an electric power plant – the Pearl Street Station – was established in Manhattan, New York City. With about 110 volts direct current generated, the plant was able to deliver electricity to almost 60 customers in lower Manhattan.

His well-equipped and resourced large studio played a role in helping him become the successful inventor that he was. It was in the studios that he worked diligently to improve many of his designs, particularly those in electricity distribution.

Companies that Thomas Edison was involved with or its founding

• the Edison Illuminating Company (later Consolidated Edison)
• Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon
• Consolidated Edison
• Edison Ore-Milling Company
• The Edison Portland Cement Company

Thomas Edison’s battle with Nikola Tesla – DC versus AC

With the help of Nikola Tesla, American entrepreneur and engineer George Westinghouse came out with a rival AC-based power distribution network in 1886. Edison and Tesla wrestled for dominance, with both trying very hard to convince investors and the American public of the superiority of their systems. Lasting for about half a decade, the DC-AC battle came to be known as the ‘current war’. In the end, AC came out top as it was relatively cheaper and could deliver electricity over longer distances.

Popularly dubbed as the battle of the titans in the electricity power generation and distribution – DC (direct current) versus AC (alternating current) – Thomas Edison locked horns with fellow inventor and brilliant engineer Nikola Tesla. Edison championed his DC system, while Tesla promoted AC system. By the early 1880s, AC had started gaining popularity due to its susceptibility to be transferred over long distances. Thomas Edison’s DC system struggled to supply electricity to customers more than a mile from the electric power plant.

Additionally, compared to Edison’s DC, AC system required relatively thinner and cheaper wires. This meant that AC was the preferred choice, especially for lighting up streets and other domestic purposes. As a result, the famous electric manufacturing company the Westinghouse Electric Corporation preferred AC.

Prior to the AC-DC rivalry, there was bad blood between Edison and Tesla. Tesla had worked with Edison for about two years; however, the two men parted ways because of a dispute over remuneration.

Following AC trumping DC in the War of Currents (1886-1892), Thomas Edison’s Edison General Electric began losing out on the market. As a result, his financiers forced him out of the company. Edison General Electric merged with Thomson-Houston to form General Electric.

Did you know : Edison some took the drastic measure of electrocuting animals in order dampen the trust people had for AC current, as he maintained that AC’s high voltages were extremely dangerous?

People who worked for Edison

In addition to Nikola Tesla, some famous people who worked for Edison include Edward Goodrich Acheson, John I begs, Henry Ford, Miller Reese Hutchinson (inventor of hearing aid), and the physicist Francis Robbins Upton. From 1881 to 1899, Henry Ford worked as an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Michigan.

Thomas Edison and Henry Ford

Left to right: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone in Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929

While in West Orange, New Jersey, he maintained a close friendship with automaker and industrial magnate Henry Ford . The two businessmen lived in the same neighborhood in Fort Myers in Florida. Edison collaborated with industrialists Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone to establish a botanical laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida.

Thomas Edison was also a member of the Civitan club – an organization that was involved in a number of philanthropic initiatives.

Did Thomas Edison invent the light bulb?

Contrary to the popularly held belief, Thomas Edison was in fact not the inventor of the light bulb. That honor goes to a British scientist called Warren de la Rue.

The first light bulb was invented in 1840 by Rue using a coiled platinum filament. High production cost due to the cost of the platinum used made it difficult for the British scientist to commercialize the light bulb.

Following in Rue’s footsteps, a number of famous scientists and engineers, including Italian physicist and inventor of the electric bulb Alessandro Volta, worked on making incandescent lamps function better as well as reducing the production cost. However, it was not until Thomas Edison and his team of scientists had a breakthrough with the production.

Thomas Edison also went a step further by making the bulbs last longer, securing about 1,000 hours of use. After several trials, he came to a conclusion that bamboo was the best filament that would allow him to make the light bulb a commercially viable product. Barring a long litigation proceeding over the validity of Edison’s patent for the bulb technology, which he ultimately won, Edison’s bulb was very popular not only in America but in many European countries as well.

Other notable accomplishments of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison held a staggering 1093 patents in the United States. He also held patents in other countries. | Image: American inventor Thomas Edison commemorative stamp, issued on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1947

The following are some other important achievements of Edison:

• Edison’s works in electrical engineering had a huge impact on the industrialization efforts of America.
• His industrial laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey is considered the first industrial research laboratory. The facility was were many of the inventor’s works were produced.
• In 1893, Edison established the world’s first film production studio. Called Black Maria, the film studio was set up on the premises of Edison’s laboratories at West Orange, New Jersey. The studio helped him advance his kinetoscope technology.
• Thomas Edison held a staggering 1093 patents in the United States. He also held patents in other countries.
• From humble beginnings in business, Edison went on to be involved in the establishment of more than a dozen companies, most famous among them was General Electric, the global multinational company headquartered in Boston.

How did Thomas Edison excel at so many inventions?

His early encounter with telegraph operations proved to be a huge inspiration to further his experiments. | Image: Thomas Edison statue at Port Huron

Thomas Edison once stated that he had no hidden secret to his success. Rather it was simply a combination of a lot of hard work, dedication and repeated trial and error. There were times that he would set himself on a path only for him to hit barriers after barriers. However, he would go back to the drawing board and make changes here and there until what he secured a breakthrough.

Take the example of his invention of the electric light bulb. Thomas Edison once stated that he worked on the light bulb several times, producing in the region of 3,000 different theories. Although all of those experimental takes seemed plausible, only two times could he get a sound and workable result.

Edison also adopted sound principles of organized science and teamwork. He implemented an innovative process to govern his invention. He also employed enthusiastic and well-skilled researchers and assistants to help him realize many of his goals.

Thomas Edison quote

Spouses and children

He married his first wife Mary Stilwell in 1871. The marriage, which produced three children – Marion, Thomas, and William – lasted until the death of Mary on August 9, 1884. Edison then married Mina Miller in 1886.

Thomas Edison had a total of six children from his two marriages. Image: Thomas Edison’s second wife, Mina Miller Edison in 1906

On February 24, 1886, he married his second wife Mina Miller, the daughter of American inventor and philanthropist Lewis Miller. Following their wedding, he purchased a home in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, New Jersey as a gift for Mina. Together with Mina he gave birth to three children – Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore.

Edison also maintained a winter home – Seminole Lodge – in Fort Myers, Florida.

Thomas Edison’s hearing and possibly ADHD issues

Thomas Edison began to have hearing problems right from an early age, probably beginning at the age of 12. By his old age he had lost about 90% of his hearing ability. He consistently refused seeking medical assistance as he believed that medicine might interfere with his ability to be creative. Edison never regarded his hearing loss as a disability.

Historians and experts today claim that his hearing loss was triggered by a severe scarlet fever he suffered when he was young. He also suffered an ear infection which was left untreated for a while. It has also been suggested that the brilliant inventor likely suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

“Talks with Edison” by G.P Lathrop in Harper’s magazine, Vol. 80 (Feb. 1890), p. 425

Later years and death

As he aged, so did his number of inventions produced decline. However, he still kept working in his lab and stacking up more and more patents.

Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931 aged 84. The cause of death was diabetes. He was laid to rest at his “Glenmont” home in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey. Edison was survived by his second wife Mina and his six children.

Thomas Edison’s greatest heroes

One of Thomas Edison’s greatest heroes was 16 th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln . Having been born about a decade before the breakout of the American Civil War in 1861, Thomas Edison must have grown to appreciate the selfless work put in by President Lincoln and his administration to keep the Union together. Edison even took to selling portraits of Abe at the Grand Trunk Railway depot.

Another very important influence on Thomas Edison was Thomas Paine – the famous Enlightenment philosopher and author whose works symbolized the spirit of the American Revolution. In 1925, Edison wrote a book – The Philosophy of Paine – showering immense praise on Paine. The inventor had similar beliefs to Paine’s, which bordered on scientific deism. As a matter of fact Thomas Paine’s The age of Reason was one of his most favorite reads.

“In ‘Common Sense’ Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again.”

Edison was also influenced by 18 th century English portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). Edison frequently displayed the English painter’s quote in his lab.

Read More:  Life and Major Achievements of Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th President

Thomas Edison’s last breath

On the instructions of his friend Henry Ford, Thomas Edison’s last breath captured in a test tube, which can be found at The Henry Ford Museum close to Detroit, Michigan.

Other Interesting facts about Thomas Edison

Milan, Ohio is famous for being the birthplace of American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison. As a result it has been nicknamed Edison. His birth home, a small hillside brick house, is now a museum in honor of the inventor’s amazing inventions and achievements.

Port Huron in the U.S. state of Michigan is home to a number of important museums, including the Thomas Edison Depot Museum, the Carnegie Center (Port Huron Museum), among others. In 1977, Thomas Edison Depot Museum received a call up to the National Register of Historic Places.

He once saved the life of young boy by the name of Jimmie MacKenzie from being hit by a runaway train. The boy’s father J.U. MacKenzie, a station agent, was so thankful to Edison that he decided to sponsor Edison’s training as a telegraph operator.

Thomas Edison took a short chemistry course at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Edison was a huge supporter of women’s rights and their right to vote. About the suffrage movement, he said, “Every woman in this country is going to have the vote.”

Edison was never in favor of the gold standard that America used. Rather than a debt-based money, he supported having a commodity-backed currency. He once told the  New York Times  that gold was the relic of the Roman Empire.

On February 11, 1983, the U.S. Congress made his birthday – February 11 – the National Inventor’s Day. In 2008, he was posthumously inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Edison quote to the New York Times about the gold standard and interests charged by the banks

Top 6 quotes by Thomas Edison

• “Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery.  I start where the last man left off.  … All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.”
• “We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.”
• “If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
• “Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don’t know how to steal!”
• “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”
• “Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me—the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love—He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us—nature did it all—not the gods of the religions.”

Fast Facts about Thomas Edison

Born : Thomas Alva Edison

Birthday : February 11, 1847

Place of birth : Milan, Ohio, United States

Died: October 18, 1931

Place of death : West Orange, New Jersey, United States

Father : Samuel Ogden Edison Jr.

Mother: Nancy Mathews Elliot

Siblings : Seven

Education: Self-educated

Spouses:  Mary Stilwell (1871-1884); Minal Miller (married in 1886)

Children : six children, including Charles, Madeleine, and Theodore

Nicknames : The Wizard of Menlo Park

Major awards and honors : Chevalier in the Legion (1879), Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (elected in 1887), John Scott Medal (1889), Franklin Medal (1915), Navy Distinguished Service Medal (1920), Edison Medal (1923), Congressional Gold Medal (1928).

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GALLERIES > Science > Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

History of Thomas Edison

Born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, Thomas Edison was a notable inventor and businessman. As a child, Edison received minimal education, but his curiosity and determination to learn about the fields of science and technology ultimately led him to become one of America’s most notable inventors. Thomas Edison’s commitment to communication and technology is one of the reasons we are able to enjoy modern technology.

Edison’s ambitious journey began in 1876 when he established his first laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. This facility became the birthplace of several groundbreaking inventions, most notably, the phonograph, which was patented in 1878. This invention revolutionized the music industry by enabling sound recording and playback.

In 1879, Edison invented the practical electric lightbulb, which changed the course of the future and transformed the way we live. His steadfast efforts to develop a reliable and commercially viable incandescent lightbulb led to the establishment of the Edison Electric Light Company. Edison’s innovation laid the groundwork for the modern electric utility industry, as his electric light company extended to the development of an electrical distribution system, including power plants and electrical grids.

Thomas Edison’s innovations extended beyond light and sound technology. Edison held over 1,000 patents in various fields, including telegraphy, motion pictures, and storage batteries. The invention of the motion picture device known as the Kinetoscope was a pivotal moment for the film industry, as it allowed for the projection of moving images.

Aside from his technical achievements, Edison also had remarkable business acumen. He established the Edison General Electric Company (now known as General Electric) in 1889, merging his various businesses to create a powerful corporation. Edison’s ability to develop and commercialize his inventions made him a high-profile figure in the industrial landscape of his time.

DID YOU KNOW?

Edison held over 1,000 patents in various fields, including telegraphy, motion pictures, and storage batteries.

Thomas Edison’s passion for innovation and knowledge led to his numerous contributions, earning him international recognition. Edison was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, most notably, the French Legion of Honor in 1881 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1928. His lasting legacy of creativity and modernization remains an influence on inventors worldwide.

Thomas Edison’s noteworthy history displays his exceptional capabilities as an inventor. His entrepreneurial spirit has an indelible impact on the world. Edison’s inventions are a foundation for the growing world of technology we know today. Edison’s relentless quest for innovation serves as a reminder of the power of curiosity, perseverance, and dedication to shaping the course of history.

Fun Facts About Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison’s family called him Al, which is an abbreviation of his middle name, Alva.

Thomas Edison’s first two children were nicknamed Dot and Dash, inspired by the telegraph.

Thomas Edison conducted his first experiments as a child in his parent’s home.

Thomas Edison experienced partial deafness.

Thomas Edison’s first invention was an electric vote recorder.

Thomas Edison had 1,093 patents, which is one of the highest numbers of patents held on record.

The first record of Thomas Edison’s voice on the phonograph is his recitation of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Thomas Edison built a laboratory on a train in his adolescence.

One of Thomas Edison’s developments was a talking doll said to have been unsettling.

Early Life of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison is an iconic figure in American history. He was an inventor and entrepreneur who achieved significant success. Edison’s work laid the foundation for modern technology and raised the bar for other scientists and inventors.

From a young age, Thomas Edison had a demanding need for knowledge, and his natural curiosity led him into the fields of science and technology. His monumental success can be attributed to his need to learn, as it was his motivation behind the numerous experiments and inventions he completed in his lifetime. Around the age of 10, Thomas Edison built a small lab in his parent’s basement, where he would conduct his experiments and tinker, developing his understanding of electricity.

By the age of 12, Thomas Edison held a job as a newsboy on a train. This role sharpened his skills in entrepreneurship, and he began publishing his own newspaper called the Grand Trunk Herald. Edison set up shop on the train with a printing press and began selling his newspaper to passengers. His success as a newsboy and publisher initiated his lifelong career as an inventor and businessman.

Edison’s quest for knowledge continued as he read books to educate himself on an array of subjects, including engineering, mathematics, and science. He did not receive a formal education, which made it necessary for Edison to study independently and conduct hands-on experiments for a well-rounded expertise.

At the age of 27, Thomas Edison invented and patented the quadruplex telegraph, an enhancement of existing telegraph technology that produced a significant advancement in the way people communicate. The quadruplex telegraph was created in 1874 and had a system that enabled multiple messages to be transmitted simultaneously over a single wire. Edison later sold the rights to this device to Western Union, sealing his reputation as a master inventor and businessman.

Thomas Edison did not receive a formal education, which made it necessary for him to study independently...

Two years after Thomas Edison invented the quadruplex telegraph, he founded his first true laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. Edison often referred to his lab as the “Invention Factory,” as it was at the heart of his innovation and experimentation. In 1877, the phonograph was invented in the Invention Factory. This device could record and play back sound and became a defining moment in the audio technology industry.

It was in his early years that Thomas Edison developed the device that would make him a household name. Edison spent several years researching and conducting experiments to develop an incandescent lightbulb. The electric lightbulb was invented in 1879 and transformed lives all over the world with a safe, reliable, and efficient source of light.

Thomas Edison was a pioneer in the technology industry, and his revolutionary contributions to science left a lasting legacy. He became one of the most prominent figures in history, as his inventions paved the path for further advancement in modern technology.

Inventions and Accomplishments of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison submitted his first patent application in 1868 for a device called the electric vote recorder.

Thomas Edison’s 1874 invention of the quadruplex telegraph, with the ability to simultaneously transmit messages for four individuals over a single wire, was a momentous breakthrough in telegraphic communications.

Thomas Edison began work on the carbon telephone transmitter in 1876. Upon completion, this device became an integral part of telegraphic communications. The carbon telephone transmitter was a microphone that enhanced the clarity and quality of sounds.

The phonograph was invented in 1877 and paved the way for the advancement of audio technology. The phonograph was crucial for the development of recording and playing back audio.

Thomas Edison became a household name in 1879 after applying for a patent for the commercial incandescent lightbulb.

Thomas Edison demonstrated the capabilities of the electric power distribution system by powering a square block of commercial and industrial businesses, as well as some private residences, in Manhattan in 1882.

Thomas Edison first publicly presented the Kinetoscope and Kinetograph, which became revolutionary for the motion picture (film) industry, in 1893.

In addition to his contributions to the realm of electricity, Thomas Edison invented the Kinetograph, one of the early motion picture cameras, thanks to which we can enjoy the visual entertainment of the 21st century.

Thomas Edison worked extensively and significantly contributed to early developments in X-ray technology.

One of Thomas Edison’s most significant contributions was his work improving the rechargeable battery.

Late in Life

Thomas Edison passed away on October 18, 1931, at the age of 84. Edison was a renowned inventor and businessman who left a lasting legacy of significant achievements in the fields of science and technology. Many of his inventions have influenced the technology that we enjoy today.

Edison created an astonishing number of inventions in his lifetime. Thomas Edison began conducting his experiments around the age of 10, and by the age of 22, he completed his first invention, the electric vote recorder. His steadfast quest for knowledge and innovation established Edison as one of the greatest inventors of all time, even earning him the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”

When people think of Thomas Edison, they think of the lightbulb. Edison spent several years developing the incandescent lightbulb, an invention that changed the future of illumination. The lightbulb soon replaced the use of gas and oil lamps, which also improved fire safety. Edison’s invention of the lightbulb also led to electrical lighting systems.

Edison further advanced the electrical power industry by developing a system for electrical power distribution. The first instance of electric power distribution was built in Manhattan and successfully supplied electricity to dozens of businesses, residences, streetlights, theaters, and other entertainment venues. This advancement was a revolutionary invention and led to the development of all homes receiving power through an electrical grid system.

Throughout his lifetime, Thomas Edison continued to gift the world with revolutionary inventions. Other than the lightbulb, one of his most notable inventions was the phonograph, which allowed the recording and playback of sound. Edison also invented the Kinetograph, which was a device for recording motion pictures. These two inventions are responsible for the creation and success of today’s entertainment industry.

Other than the lightbulb, two of Edison's most notable inventions were the phonograph and Kinetograph.

Thomas Edison’s inventions significantly impacted the world. Edison faced many setbacks and failed experiments but continued on, demonstrating determination and resilience. His gift for entrepreneurialism aided in monetizing his inventions and later establishing the Edison General Electric Company, now known as General Electric. Edison’s advancements in the electric utility industry are a direct result of his innovation and business acumen.

By the time of his death, Thomas Edison had transformed the world and received several honors and awards for his revolutionary contributions. From his dedication and innovation to his advancements for the modern world, Edison’s legacy continues to influence inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs.

When was Thomas Edison born?

Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847.

When did Thomas Edison die?

Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931.

How did Thomas Edison become famous?

Thomas Edison became famous through his innovative inventions that would later transform the way the world uses electricity. He is best known for his incandescent lightbulb, the phonograph, and for advancing electrical power distribution.

How did Thomas Edison change the world?

Thomas Edison’s influence on the world cannot be overstated. A majority of everyday things are possible because of Thomas Edison’s inventions and contributions to science. Some of his inventions that you would easily recognize include electrical lighting, sound recording, and motion pictures.

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Thomas Edison Inventions

Thomas Edison's record  1,093 patented inventions have greatly improved the world we know today. In fact, Edison is recognized as one of the greatest inventors of all time. His key inventions include the light bulb and electric utility system, recorded sound, motion pictures, R&D labs, and the alkaline family of storage batteries. His 4,000 invention notebooks chronicle the invention challenges of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, telling a vivid story of man's progress to a technological society.

Thomas Edison’s Light Bulb

Thomas Edison is most well known for his invention of the light bulb. Contrary to popular belief, Edison did not invent the light bulb; it had been around for a number of years. The electric lights at the time, however, were unreliable, expensive, and short-lived. Over twenty distinct efforts by other inventors the world over were already underway when Edison entered the light bulb invention race.

By creating a vacuum inside the bulb, finding the right filament to use, and running lower voltage through the bulb, Edison was able to achieve a light bulb that lasted for many hours. This was a substantial improvement, and one that led with more improvements, to making the light bulb practical and economical.

Of course, Edison also later invented the entire electric utility system so he could power all those light bulbs, motors and other appliances that soon followed.

Thomas Edison’s Phonograph

Considered to be the first great Thomas Edison invention, and his life-long favorite, the phonograph would record the spoken voice and play it back.

When speaking into the receiver, the sound vibration of the voice would cause a needle to create indentations on a drum wrapped with tin foil. Later Edison would adopt cylinders and discs to permanently record music.

The first recorded message was of Thomas Edison speaking “Mary had a little lamb”, which greatly delighted and surprised Edison and his staff when they first heard it played back to them.

Thomas Edison’s Motion Picture

Edison’s initial work in motion pictures (1888-89) was inspired byMuybridge’s analysis of motion. The first Edison device resembled his phonograph, with a spiral arrangement of 1/16 inch photographs made on a cylinder. Viewed with a microscope, these first motion pictures were rather crude, and hard to focus. Working with W. K. L. Dickson, Edison then developed the Strip Kinetograph, using George Eastman’s improved 35 mm celluloid film. Cut into continuous strips and perforated along the edges, the film was moved by sprockets in a stop-and-go motion behind the shutter.

In Edison’s movie studio, technically known as a Kinetographic Theater, but nicknamed “The Black Maria” (1893), Edison and his staff filmed short movies for later viewing with his peep hole Kinetoscopes (1894). One-person at a time could view the movies via the Kinetoscope. Each Kinetoscope was about 4 feet tall, 20 inches square, and had a peep hole magnifier that allowed the patron to view 50 feet of film in about 20 seconds. A battery-operated lamp allowed the film to be illuminated.

Thomas Edison’s Electrographic Vote Recorder

Edison was 22 years old and working as a telegrapher when he filed his first patent for the Electrographic Vote Recorder.

The device was made with the goal of helping legislators in the US Congress record their votes in a quicker fashion than the voice vote system.

To work, a voting device was connected to a clerk’s desk where the names of the legislators were embedded. The legislators would move a switch to either yes or no, sending electric current to the device at the clerks desk. Yes and No wheels kept track of the votes and tabulated the final results.

Thomas Edison’s Magnetic Iron Ore Separator

Thomas Edison experimented during the 1880′s and 1890′s with using magnets to separate iron ore from low grade, unusable ores. His giant mine project in northwestern NJ consumed huge amounts of money as experimentation plodded forward.

Engineering problems and a decline in the price of iron ore [the discovery of the Mesabi iron rich ore deposits near the Great Lakes] all lead this invention to be abandoned.

But later, Edison used what he learned with rock grinding to make his own robust version of Portland Cement, Edison Portland Cement, a very good product that built Yankee Stadium. Along the way, Edison totally revolutionized the cement kiln industry.

Thomas Edison’s Electric Pen

In 1876, Thomas Edison invented the first electric copy machine to create copies of his notes. Using a small motor, the pen makes a tiny needle go up and down that produce a series of holes (50 per second) that are later gone over with a roller to press ink through the holes to create many copies of the document. Edison claimed that over 5000 copies could be made at once. This lesser known invention would not only be a precursor to the copy machine, but the tattoo pen as well.

Thomas Edison’s Carbon Transmitter

Thomas Edison improved Alexander Graham Bell's system with his carbon transmitter, by elongating how far apart phones could be. This invention used a battery and carbon to vary the resistance and control the strength of the current on the phone line. His design used a transmitter with lampblack carbon behind the diaphragm in the phone so that when sound waves moved it, they would also change the pressure on the carbon. He later improved by using granules made from coal instead and this basic design was commonly used until the 1980s.

Thomas Edison’s Automatic Telegraph

Thomas Edison worked on automatic telegraphs between 1870 and 1874. The invention embossed special indents into a rotating cardboard disc with a needle powered by an electromagnet. It would then would form a recorded message that could be transmitted without an operator. 

Edison later invented the Quadruplex Telegraph to send two messages at the same time on the same wire and a Wireless Telegraph for radio communications between ships that worked using a vibrator magnet instead of a electromagnetic waves, 

Discover the  all of Thomas Edison's Patents

While Edison was famous for a few inventions above, he also holds the record for creating 1096 U.S. Patents throughout his life. However, it is important to note that not all of these patents were for inventions that he personally created. Edison had a large team of researchers and inventors who helped him in his lab, and many of his patents were for improvements or refinements to existing technologies rather than entirely new inventions.

		Thomas Alva Edison
		Biography
Document     Of The Age: Electricity and Man" And TIME MAGAZINE MILLENNIAL Surprisingly, little "Al Edison," who was the last of seven children in his family, did not learn to communicate very well until he was three and a half years of age. Soon thereafter, he suddenly began pleading with every adult he met to explain the workings of just about everything he encountered. If they said they didn't know, he would look them straight in the eyes, with deeply set and vibrant blue-green eyes and ask them "Why?" Please Scroll Down For The Story Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison was not born into poverty in a backwater mid-western "hicktown." Actually, he was born - on Feb. 11, 1847 - to middle-class parents in the bustling port of Milan, Ohio, a vital community that - next to Odessa, Russia - was the largest wheat shipping center in the world. In 1854, his family moved to the vibrant city of Port Huron, Michigan, which ultimately surpassed the commercial preeminence of both Milan and Odessa.... If modern psychology had existed back then, Tom might have been deemed a victim of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and proscribed a dose of the "miracle drug" Ritalin. Instead, when his beloved mother - whom he often recalled "was the making of me (because) she was so true and so sure of me...and  always made me feel I had someone to live for - and whom I must never disappoint - became aware of this situation, she eventually withdrew him from school and tried to home-teach" him. she believed her son's slightly unusual physical appearance and demeanor were merely outward signs of his above-average intelligence. Its also noteworthy to add here that the contents of a note that Tom's teacher sent home to his mother at this time, informing her that "the child is as dense as a stump and virtually unteachable," was never revealed to him until many years after her death. in any case, "quietly ignoring the its existence and essence, she and her husband utterly dedicated themselves to educating their beloved child by themselves.              A proud descendant of the distinguished old Elliot family of New England, New York born Nancy Edison was the devout and charming daughter of a highly respected Presbyterian minister, as well as an accomplished educator in her own right. After the above incident, she commenced teaching her favorite son the "Three R's" and the Bible. Meanwhile, his rather "worldly and roguish" father, Samuel, encouraged him to focus on the great classics, giving him a ten cents reward for each one he completed.   It wasn't long thereafter that the serious minded youngster developed a deep interest in world history and English literature. Interestingly, many years later, Tom's abiding fondness for Shakespeare's plays lead him to briefly consider becoming an actor. But, because of his high-pitched voice and extreme shyness before every audience - "except those he was trying to influence into helping him finance ever more inventions" - he soon gave up the idea.  At age 11, Tom's parents tried to appease his voracious appetite for knowledge by teaching him how to use the resources of the local library. This skill became the foundation of many factors that gradually caused  him to prefer learning via independent self instruction.   Starting with the last book on the bottom shelf, Tom now set out to systematically read every book in the stacks.  Wisely, however, his parents promptly guided him towards being ever more selective in what he read. So, by age 12, Tom had not only completed Gibbon's Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Sears' History Of The World, and Burton's Anatomy Of Melancholy, he had devoured The World Dictionary of Science and a number of works on Practical Arithmetic and Chemistry. But, in spite of their noble efforts, Tom's dedicated parents soon found themselves incapable of addressing his increasing interest in the Sciences and mathematics. For example, when he began to question them about concepts dealing with Physics and such "overly high-tone" language and mathematics.  things to himself through his own method of objective examination and experimentation." Tom's response to the Principia  enhanced his propensity towards gleaning insights from the writings and activities of great men and women of wisdom, never forgetting that "even might be entrenched in preconceived dogma and mired down in error...." All the while, he was cultivating a strong sense of perseverence, readily expending whatever amount of time and perspiration that was needed to overcome any challenge. Which was a characteristic that he later noted was contrary to the way most people respond to stress and strain on their body. The key upshot of this attribute was that his unique mental and physical, stamina stood him in very good stead when he later took on the incredible rigors of a being a successful inventor in the mid-to-late 19th Century. a positive way, was his poor hearing. Even though this condition - and the fact that he had only three months of formal schooling - prevented him from taking advantage of the benefits of a secondary education in contemporary mathematics, physics, and engineering etc., he never let it interfere with finding ways of compensating.  19th century electrical science. And of course, at the dawn of the "Age Of Electric Lights And Dynamos, nothing could have better served his destiny.... After his hero, Abraham Lincoln, was nominated for president, Tom not only distributed campaign literature on his behalf, he  peddled flattering photographs of this "great emancipator." (Note: Of related interest, 25 years later, Tom's strong feelings about abolition was the key factor in encouraging him to select as the first place on earth to model his "World's first calibrated, perfected and standardized 3 wire, undergound central power system etc., which is fully detailed elsewhere on this website.)  At its peak, Tom's mini-publishing venture netted him more than ten dollars per day. Because this was considerably more than enough to provide for his own support, he had a good deal of extra income, most of which went towards outfitting a chemical laboratory he had set up in the basement of his home. But because his, usually very patient and tolerant, mother was "worried about all the strange odors and dangerous poisons he was amassing," he transferred most of them to a locked room in the basement of his home. And placed the remainder in his locker room on the train.   One day, while traversing a bumpy section of track, the train lurched, causing a stick of phosphorous to roll onto the floor and  burst into flames. Within moments, the baggage car caught fire. The conductor was so angry, he severely chastised the boy and struck him with a powerful blow on the side of his head. Purportedly, this could have enhanced some of the loss of hearing he may have inherited and from a later bout he had with scarlet fever. In any case, the station-master penalized him by restricting him to peddling his newspaper to only venues in railroad stations along the track ....  Remarkably, many years later, and not long after he had acquired the means to have an operation that "might have very likely restored his hearing," he flatly refused to act upon the option. His rationale was that he was afraid he "would have difficulty re-learning how to channel his thinking in an ever more noisy world."              At this juncture, one of the most significant events in Tom's life occurred. As a reward for his heroism - the child's grateful father taught him how to master the use of Morse code and the telegraph. Which in the "age of telegraphy," this was akin to being introduced to learning how to use a state-of-the-art computer.        By age 15, Tom had pretty much mastered the basics of this fascinating new career and obtained a job as a replacement for one of the thousands of "brass pounders" (telegraph operators) who had gone off to serve in the Civil War. He now had a golden opportunity to enhance his speed and efficiency in sending and receiving code and performing experiments designed to improve this device....      Shortly after the Civil War ended, to his mother's great dismay, Tom decided that it was time to "seek his fortune." So, over the next few years, he meandered throughout the Central States, supporting himself as a "tramp telegraph operator".       At age 16, after working in a variety of telegraph offices, where he "was able to squeeze in numerous moonlight experiments of his own," he finally came up with his first invention. Called an "automatic repeater," it transmitted telegraph signals between unmanned stations, allowing virtually anyone to easily and accurately translate Morse code at their own speed and convenience. Curiously, he never patented the initial version of this idea.      In 1868 - after making a name for himself amongst fellow telegraphers for being a rather flamboyant and quick witted character who enjoyed playing "mostly harmless" practical jokes - he returned home one day ragged and penniless. Sadly, he found his parents in an even worse predicament.... First, his beloved mother was beginning to show signs of mental derangement "which was probably brought on by the strains of an often difficult life." Making matters worse, his occasionally impulsive father had just quit his job at the local bank, which was about to foreclose on the family's homestead.      Tom promptly came to grips with the pathos of this overall situation and - perhaps for the first time in his life - resolved to address head-on a number of his own immature shortcomings. After a good deal of soul searching and angiush about leaving his folks, he finally decided that the best thing he could do would be to get right back out on his own - and try to make some money....         Shortly thereafter, Tom accepted the suggestion of a fellow "lightening slinger" named Billy Adams to "Come East and apply for a permanent job as a telegrapher with the relatively prestigious Western Union Company in Boston." His willingness to travel over a thousand miles from home was at least partly influenced by the fact that he had been given a free rail ticket by the local street railway company for some repairs he had done for them. The most important factor, however, was the fact that greater Boston - not greater New York City - was then considered "the hub of the scientific, educational, and cultural universe..."        Throughout the mid-19th century, New England had many features that were somewhat analogous to today's Silicon Valley in California. However, instead of being a haven for the thousands of young "tekkies" - who communicate with each via the internet of today - it was the home of scores of young telegraphers who anxiously stayed abreast of the emerging new age of electricity by communicating via Morse telegraph code.      During these latter days of this "Age of Telegraphy," Tom toiled 12 hours a day and six days a week for Western Union. Meanwhile, he continued his habit of "moonlighting" on his own projects... Within six months, he had applied for and received his very first patent: "But, even though this beautifully constructed , was this first legitimate invention he was to come up with, it turned out to be a disaster."       When he tried to market it to members of the Massachusetts Legislature, they thoroughly denigrated it, claiming "its speed in tallying votes would disrupt the delicate political status-quo." Their specific concern was that - during times of stress - political groups regularly relied upon the brief delays that were provided by the process of counting votes to influence, and hopefully change, the opinions of their colleagues.... "This is exactly what we do want" a seasoned old politician scolded him, adding that "Your invention would not only destroy the only hope the minority would have in influencing legislation, it would deliver them over - bound hand and foot - to the majority!"       Although Tom was very disappointed by this turn of events, he immediately grasped its implications. Even though the remarkable invention allowed each voter to instantly and accurately cast and record his vote from his seat - exactly as it was supposed to do - he realized the idea was so far ahead of its time, it was completely devoid of any sales appeal.       Because of his desperate need for money, Tom now made a critically significant adjustment in his, heretofore, relatively naive outlook on the world of business and marketing.... "From now on,"  he vowed, he would "never waste time inventing things that people would not want to buy."      It is also important to note here that it was during Tom's 17 month stint in Boston that he was first exposed to lectures at Boston Tech (which was founded in 1861 and became the Mass. Institute of Technology in 1916) and the ideas of several associates on the state-of-the-art of "multiplexing" telegraph signals. Specifically, this theory and related experimental quests involved the transmission of electrical impulses at different frequencies over telegraph wires, producing horn-like simulations of the human voice - and even crude images (the first internet?) via an instrument called the .     Not surprisingly, his "casual (same aged) friend and acquaintance" Alexander Graham Bell, who was also living and working in Boston (trying to develop a telephone-like device right along side of Edison's bench at the famous Williams Shop) was equally fascinated by this exciting new aspect of communication science. And no wonder. The principles surrounding it would ultimately lead both men toward far greater heights....      Deeply in debt and about to be fired by Western Union for "not concentrating on his primary responsibilities and  for doing too much moonlighting for his own good "Edison now suddenly  borrowed $35.00 from his fellow telegrapher and "night owl" pal, Benjamin Bredding, to purchase a steamship ticket to the "much more commercially oriented city of New York."   During the third week after arriving in "the big apple" Tom (seen left) was purportedly "on the verge of starving to death." At this precipitous juncture, one of the most amazing coincidences in the annals of technological history now began to unfold. Immediately after having begged a cup of tea from a street vendor, Tom began to meander through some of the offices in New York's financial district. Observing that the manager of a local brokerage firm was in a panic, he eventually determined that a critically important stock-ticker in his office had just broken down....     Noting that no one in the crowd that had gathered around the defective machine seemed to have a clue on how to fix it, he elbowed his way into the scene and grasped a momentary opportunity to have a go at addressing what was wrong, himself. Luckily, since he had been sleeping in the basement of the building for a few days - and was, typically, doing quite a bit of snooping around - he already had a pretty good idea of what the device was supposed to do.      After spending a few more seconds confirming exactly how the stock ticker was intended to work in the first place, Tom boldly reached down and manipulated a loose spring back to where it belonged. And to everyone's amazement, except Tom's, the device began to "purr like a kitten."      The office manager was so ecstatic, he quickly made an on-the-spot decision to hire Edison to make all such repairs for the busy company, for the extraordinary salary of $300.00 per month. This was not only more than what his very talented pal Benjamin Bredding was making back in Boston, but twice the going rate for a top electrician in New York City. Later in life, Edison recalled that the incident was more euphoric than anything he had ever experienced before, "because it made me feel as though I had been suddenly delivered out of abject poverty, into prosperity. ==================================================================================       It should come as no surprise that, during his free time, Edison once again resumed his habit of "moonlighting" with the telegraph, the quadruplex transmitter, and the stock-ticker, etc. Shortly thereafter, he was absolutely astonished - in fact he nearly fainted - when a corporation paid him $40,000 for all of his rights to the latter device.        Convinced no bank would honor the large check he was given for it, which was the first "real" money he had ever received for an invention, young Edison walked around for hours in a stupor, staring at it in amazement. Fearful that someone would steal it, he laid the cash out on his bed and stayed up all night, counting it over and over in disbelief. The next day a wise friend told him to "deposit it in a bank forthwith and to just forget about it for a while.             A few weeks later, Edison wrote a series of extremely poignant letters back home to his father: "How is mother getting along?... I am now in a position to give you folks some cash... Write and say how much....Give mother anything she wants...." (Interestingly, It was during this time that he also repaid Bredding the $35.00 he had borrowed earlier.)      Over the next three years, Edison's progress in creating successful inventions for industry really took off.  For example, in 1874 - with the money he received from the sale of an electrical engineering firm that held several of his patents - he opened his first testing and use. Interestingly, at one point during this intense period, Edison was as close to inventing the telephone as Bell was to inventing the phonograph. Nevertheless, shortly after Edison moved his laboratory to Menlo Park, N.J. in 1876, he invented - in 1877 - the first phonograph.      In 1879, extremely disappointed by the fact that Bell had beaten him in the race to patent the first authentic transmission of the human voice, Edison now "one upped" all of his competition by inventing the first commercially practical incandescent electric light bulb...      And if that wasn't enough to forever seal his unequaled importance in technological history, he  came up with an invention that - in terms of its collective affect upon mankind - has had more impact than any other. In 1883 and 1884, while beating a path from his research lab to the patent office, he introduced the world's first economically viable system of centrally generating and distributing safe electric light, heat, and power. Sometimes properly acknowledged as his "greatest of acheivement" it has enormously impacted the world we know today... Even some of  his worst critics grant that "it was a Herculean achievement that only he was capable of bringing about at this specific point in history." By 1887, Edison was recognized for having set up the world's first full fledged research and development center in West Orange, New Jersey. An amazing enterprise, its significance is as much misunderstood as his work in developing the first practical centralized power system. Regardless, within a year, this fantastic operation was the largest scientific testing laboratory in the world.      In 1890, Edison immersed himself in developing the first Vitascope, which would lead to the first  silent motion pictures.        And, by 1892, his had fully merged with another firm to become the great General Electric Corporation, in which he was a major stockholder.      At the turn-of-the-century, Edison invented the first practical dictaphone, mimeograph, and storage battery. After creating the "kinetiscope" and the first silent film in 1904, he went on to introduce , which was a ten minute clip that was his first attempt to blend audio with silent moving images to produce       By now, Edison was being hailed world-wide as , The father of the electrical age," and ." And, quite naturally, when World War I began, he was asked by the U. S. Government to focus his genius upon creating devices for submarines and ships. During this time, he also perfected a number of important inventions relating to the enhanced use of rubber, concrete, and ethanol.      And, by the 1920s, Edison was internationally revered. However, even though he was personally acquainted with scores of very important people of his era, he cultivated very few close friendships. And according to his son, Charles, due to the "continuing demands of his unique career, there were still relatively long periods when he felt obliged to spend a shockingly small amount of time with his family. It wasn't until his health began to fail, in the late 1920s, that Edison finally began to slow down and, so to speak, "smell the flowers." Up until obtaining his last (1,093rd) patent at age 83, "he worked mostly at home where, though increasingly frail, he much enjoyed greeting former associates and famous people such as Charles Lindberg, Marie Curie, Henry Ford, and President Herbert Hoover etc. He also enjoyed reading mail from the thousands of his admirers - and puttering around, when  physically able, in his office and home laboratory."     Thomas Edison died At 9 P.M. On Oct. 18th, 1931 in New Jersey. He was 84 years of age. Shortly before passing away, he awoke from a deep coma to strains of his favorite composer, Bethoven, (Who was also deaf) that were "loudly" emanating from his favorite phonograph... Looking upward, to his very religious "ever-faithful" wife, Mina - who had been keeping a vigil all night by his side - and haltingly uttered... "I'm finished... Its very beautiful over there... Eternal GOD! papers" shortly after his death:  dominion it follows that the God is a living, intelligent and powerful Being. And that, from His other perfections, He alone is supreme, or most perfect... He is eternal, infinite, omnipotent and omniscient. That is, His duration reaches from eternity to eternity, and His presence is from infinity to infinity. He governs all things... And he knows all things that are, or can be, done.") Most realized that, even though he was far from being a perfect human being - and may not have really had the always amiable and avuncular  personality that was so often ascribed to him by myth makers -Thomas Edison was an essentially good man with a powerful mission.   Driven by a superhuman desire to fulfill the promise of objective persistent research and create things to serve and uplift all of mankind, no one did more to help realize our founders dream of creating a brand new country that - at its best - would be seen by everyone as "a shining new city upon a hill, whose light would be going out to the world...." Because of the peculiar voids that Edison sometime evinced in areas such as  cognition, speech, grammar, etc., a number of medical authorities have argued  that he may have been plagued by a fundamental learning disability that went well beyond mere deafness....  A few of have conjectured that this mysterious ailment - along with his lack of a formal education - may account for why he always seemed to "think so differently" compared to others of his time: "Always tenaciously clinging to those unique methods of analysis and experimentation with which he alone alwaya seemed to feel so comfortable...."  Whatever the impetus for his unique personality and traits, his incredible ability to come up with a meaningful new patent every two weeks throughout his working career "added more to the collective wealth of the world - and had more impact upon shaping modern civilization - than the accomplishments of any figure since Gutenberg...." Accordingly, most serious science and technology historians grant that he was indeed "The most influential figure of our millennium."   Notes: In 1929, Edison's close friend, Henry Ford, completed the task of moving Edison's original Menlo Park laboratory to the Greenfield Village museum in Dearborn, Mich. In 1962 his existing laboratory and home in West Orange, N.J. were designated as National Historic Sites. Copyright © Gerald Beals June, 1999. All rights registered and reserved.  Please Note: Absolutely no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form - or stored by any means in a database or retrieval system - without the prior written and express permission of the author.   Please note :  Infringements will be (in fact  one is currently being) prosecuted to the full extent of the law. gerrybeals@ verizon.net         Jump to Topic Edison - Age one (Private)       Thomas Edison Occupation: Businessman and Inventor Born: February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio Died: October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey Best known for: Inventing many useful items including the phonograph and a practical light bulb His middle name was Alva and his family called him Al. His first two kids had the nicknames Dot and Dash. He set up his first lab in his parent's basement at the age of 10. He was partially deaf. His first invention was an electric vote recorder. His 1093 patents are the most on record. He said the words to "Mary had a little lamb" as the first recorded voice on the phonograph. Listen to a recorded reading of this page: The Midwest Reading Lists The 10 Best Books on Thomas Edison Essential books on thomas edison. There are countless books on Thomas Edison, and it comes with good reason, as one of America’s foremost businessmen, his inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. “One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But speaking for myself, I can honestly say this is not so…I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success,” he remarked. In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of history’s most consequential figures to the heights of societal contribution, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books on Thomas Edison. Edison by Edmund Morris Although Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous American of his time, and remains an international name today, he is mostly remembered only for the gift of universal electric light. His invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world – already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other revolutionary devices – that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius (“I haven’t heard a bird sing since I was twelve years old”) patented 1,093 inventions, not including others, such as the X-ray fluoroscope, that he left unlicensed for the benefit of medicine. One of the achievements of this staggering new biography, the first major life of Edison in more than twenty years, is that it portrays the unknown Edison – the philosopher, the futurist, the chemist, the botanist, the wartime defense adviser, the founder of nearly 250 companies – as fully as it deconstructs the Edison of mythological memory. Edmund Morris, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, brings to the task all the interpretive acuity and literary elegance that distinguished his previous biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Ludwig van Beethoven. A trained musician, Morris is especially well equipped to recount Edison’s fifty-year obsession with recording technology and his pioneering advances in the synchronization of movies and sound. Morris sweeps aside conspiratorial theories positing an enmity between Edison and Nikola Tesla and presents proof of their mutually admiring, if wary, relationship. The Wizard of Menlo Park by Randall E. Stross At the height of his fame, Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as “the Napoleon of invention” and blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light and the first motion picture cameras, Edison’s name became emblematic of all the wonder and promise of the emerging age of technological marvels. But as Randall Stross makes clear in this critical biography of the man who is arguably the most globally famous of all Americans, Thomas Edison’s greatest invention may have been his own celebrity. Edison was certainly a technical genius, but Stross excavates the man from layers of myth-making and separates his true achievements from his almost equally colossal failures. How much credit should Edison receive for the various inventions that have popularly been attributed to him – and how many of them resulted from both the inspiration and the perspiration of his rivals and even his own assistants? This bold reassessment of Edison’s life and career answers this and many other important questions while telling the story of how he came upon his most influential inventions as a young man and spent the remainder of his long life trying to conjure similar success. The Vagabonds by Jeff Guin In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America’s roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history – and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul’s client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the light bulb and holds the right to power the country? In obsessive pursuit of victory, Paul crosses paths with Nikola Tesla, an eccentric, brilliant inventor who may hold the key to defeating Edison, and with Agnes Huntington, a beautiful opera singer who proves to be a flawless performer on stage and off. As Paul takes greater and greater risks, he’ll find that everyone in his path is playing their own game, and no one is quite who they seem. Innovate Like Edison by Michael J. Gelb Bestselling author Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott introduce a carefully researched, easy-to-apply system of the five success secrets inspired by the creative methods of Thomas Alva Edison. The greatest innovator in American history, Edison set the stage for America’s global leadership in innovation by his focus on practical accomplishment. Now Gelb and Caldicott apply the best practices of this American genius to contemporary business situations to help today’s leaders harness their own innovative potential. This gem among books on Thomas Edison is a blueprint for success that will enable executives and entrepreneurs to revitalize their own ingenuity and thrive in today’s culture of innovation. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age – Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse – battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light , historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber – Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair. Edison and the Electric Chair by Mark Essig Despite having been an avowed opponent of the death penalty, Edison threw his laboratory resources and reputation behind the creation of a very different sort of device – the electric chair. Deftly exploring this startling chapter in American history, Edison & the Electric Chair  delivers both a vivid portrait of a nation on the cusp of modernity and a provocative new examination of Edison himself. Edison championed the electric chair for reasons that remain controversial to this day. Plumbing the fascinating history of electricity, Mark Essig explores America’s love of technology and its fascination with violent death, capturing an era when the public was mesmerized and terrified by an invisible force that produced blazing light, powered streetcars, carried telephone conversations – and killed. Uncommon Friends by James Newton James Newton’s Uncommon Friends is “a delightful portrayal of five great men who shared special friendships and common visions” (Booklist). Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel, and Charles Lindbergh were twentieth-century giants known personally by very few. In this compelling memoir, James Newton recalls a lifetime of friendship with all of them – a friendship that began when he was only twenty years old and head of development of Edison Park in Fort Meyers, Florida. Based on Newton’s diaries, recollections, and extensive correspondence, Uncommon Friends is a unique opportunity to share a view of the personal side of some legendary historical figures. The Edison Gene by Thom Hartmann Thomas Edison was expelled from school for behavior that today would label him as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but his mother understood how to salvage his self-esteem and prepare him for a lifetime of success. In  The Edison   Gene  Thom Hartmann shows that the creativity, impulsiveness, and distractibility that are characteristic of ADHD are not signs of a disorder at all, but instead are components of a highly adaptive skill set utilized by our hunting and gathering ancestors. These characteristics have been critical to the survival and development of our modern civilization and will be vital as humanity faces new challenges in the future. Hartmann, creator of the “hunter versus farmer” theory of ADHD, examines the latest discoveries confirming the existence of an ADHD gene and the global catastrophe 40,000 years ago that triggered its development. Citing examples of significant innovators in our modern era, he argues that the children who possess the “Edison gene” have neurology that is wired to give them brilliant success as innovators, inventors, explorers, and entrepreneurs. He offers concrete strategies for helping Edison-gene children reach their full potential and shows that rather than being “problems,” such children are a vital gift to our society and the world. Edison: A Life of Invention by Paul Israel From the preeminent Edison scholar, in the revelatory Edison: A Life of Invention , author Paul Israel expertly situates his subject within a thoroughly realized portrait of a burgeoning country on the brink of massive change. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of corporate America, and with it the newly overlapping interests of scientific, technological, and industrial cultures. Working against the common perception of Edison as a symbol of a mythic American past where persistence and individuality yielded hard-earned success, Israel demonstrates how Edison’s remarkable career was actually very much a product of the inventor’s fast-changing era. Edison drew widely from contemporary scientific knowledge and research, and was a crucial figure in the transformation of invention into modern corporate research and collaborative development. Informed by more than five million pages of archival documents, Paul Israel’s ambitious life of Edison brightens the unexamined corners of a singularly influential and triumphant career in science. Armed with unprecedented access to his workshop diaries, notebooks, and letters, this gem among books on Thomas Edison brings fresh insights into how the inventor’s creative mind worked. And for the first time, much attention is devoted to his early family life in Ohio and Michigan-where the young Edison honed his entrepreneurial sense and eye for innovation as a newsstand owner and editor of a weekly newspaper-underscoring the inventor’s later successes with new resonance and pathos. If you enjoyed this guide to essential books on Thomas Edison, be sure to check out our list of The 10 Best Books on Henry Ford ! Why Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla Clashed During the Battle of the Currents Born in 1847, at the very end of the industrial revolution, Edison was part of a new wave of scientists and inventors that lit the way into the modern era. His famed research lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey hosted the development of innovations that still undergird much of our industrial and consumer infrastructure, including the phonograph (which recorded and played sound), motion pictures and the light bulb. His work there was so important that the town in which Menlo Park was located now bears his name. Obsessed with his work and known to be an exacting boss, Edison had an ego as incandescent as his light bulbs, a sense of his own greatness that was undoubtedly justified. He was also incredibly competitive, willing to do whatever was required to ensure that his idea won out. Edison invented DC lighting, a safer solution to the often dangerous arc lamps Born in Serbia, Tesla was a different kind of genius. Whereas Edison was an eternal experimenter and tinkerer, Tesla was a human calculator, and his ability to work out complex math and physics equations in his mind helped him achieve early career success in Europe. After a nomadic adolescence spent traveling and taking classes across Eastern Europe, Tesla wound up in Hungary at the age of 25, hired to work as an electrical engineer at the Budapest Telephone Exchange. He excelled there, channeling the workaholic tendencies he’d displayed as a top student back in Croatia before dropping out of school. Within a year he was off to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company, an offshoot of the inventor’s successful American business. At that point, electricity was beginning to light up the streets of cities around the world. At first, most cities were using high-voltage arc lamps to illuminate the night sky, but while they shone bright and amazed a civilization that had throughout all of history been governed by the sun’s rise and fall, the early lighting technology also presented a problem: it was very dangerous . Arc lighting was fueled by power stations that pumped through more than 3,000 volts of electricity at a time, which often led to sparks, overheating and full-on explosions in public places, raining flickers of electricity down on pedestrians and starting fires with regularity. Electricity generated by direct current (DC) was a far safer alternative, and once Edison developed a stable and long-lasting incandescent lightbulb , he set out to provide lighting to homes and buildings around the world. By 1882, his Edison Illuminating Company opened the world’s first central power station on Pearl Street in Manhattan. The company used direct current to deliver 110 volts of electricity to nearby buildings — it started out with 59 customers — and provided a significantly reduced risk of accidental mishap. Tesla invented an alternating current power system For the next two years, Edison’s DC electric generation spread the incandescent light to a growing number of cities across the country. But for its growing reach, it had a significant weakness: electricity delivered by direct current could only travel so far, especially in those early days. As a result, other inventors continued to develop what was called alternating current (AC), which could easily modulate voltage using transformers. Tesla was one of those AC devotees. In 1882, while working for Edison’s Parisian outpost and out on a walk with a friend, Tesla was suddenly struck with the solution to an engineering challenge that had been vexing him for some time. His ability to visualize entire complex mathematical equations and feats of engineering came in handy, as Tesla dreamed up the mechanics of an AC-generating motor. Developing and honing the alternating current generator became something of an obsession for him, and in 1884, when his American boss in Paris was summoned back to the United States, he suggested that Tesla emigrates to the west. And so in September of that year, Tesla arrived in Manhattan after a harrowing journey in which most of his possessions were stolen during a mutiny on the ship. Tesla eventually worked for Edison, but the two had clashing ideologies However, money wouldn’t be a concern for all that long. Tesla ran into Edison himself, who invited the immigrant inventor to work for him at the Edison Machine Works on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A letter of recommendation from his old boss did not hurt his cause. At the time, Tesla recalled in an interview years later, he was in awe of his new boss. “This wonderful man, who had received no scientific training, yet had accomplished so much, filled me with amazement." Tesla was put to work on a variety of projects, including repairing the circuitry system on the Oregon, the first boat to be lit by electrical power, reassembling DC generators and other tasks. Years later, in an interview conducted in 1921, Tesla recalled impressing Edison with his quick fix of the Oregon’s lighting system, to the point that Edison declared him a “damn good man.” The Serbian inventor was also charged with creating an arc lighting system, but his usage of AC power was of no interest to Edison, who had a fortune invested in DC power and did not want to lose his loyalties. Later, Tesla would purportedly say that Edison himself promised a large sum to improve on the DC system, then retracted the offer when Tesla presented him with his work, claiming that he “did not understand American humor,” infuriating Tesla to the point that he stormed out and set out on his own, determined to spite the elder inventor. Tesla then licensed patents to Edison's rival Tesla only worked for Edison for about six months , and after a time spent digging graves, he received enough investor cash to set up his own company in Rahway, New Jersey, close to Menlo Park. Those investors took the company out from under him, and it wasn’t until 1887, with a new factory in Manhattan, that Tesla was able to truly pursue his AC motor. It wouldn’t take long before he’d mastered the machine, as he was awarded seven separate patents for its various mechanics in the spring of 1888. Soon after, he licensed those patents to George Westinghouse , Edison’s chief rival in the race to supply cities with power. The race between AC and DC would escalate from there, with Edison pulling out nearly all the stops to prove that AC was dangerous, (though the famed death by electrocution of Topsy the elephant was not his doing) to discredit what would ultimately prove a far superior system. Tesla died nearly penniless, though that had nothing to do with Edison. He made a fortune from his contracts with Westinghouse, but lost it all through poor business deals, bad investments and expenditures on grand experiments that resulted in failure. His supposed rivalry with Edison was almost by association and difference of opinion on scientific matters, highlighted only in hindsight as Tesla’s incredible career, which spanned far more than AC power innovations. Watch Next .css-16toot1:after{background-color:#262626;color:#fff;margin-left:1.8rem;margin-top:1.25rem;width:1.5rem;height:0.063rem;content:'';display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;} Famous Inventors Inventor Garrett Morgan’s Lifesaving 1916 Rescue Frederick Jones Lonnie Johnson 11 Famous Black Inventors Who Changed Your Life Lewis Howard Latimer Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla's Secrets to Longevity Garrett Morgan Sarah Boone Henry Blair Alfred Nobel More From Forbes How edison’s 150-year-old secret for innovation can help your company’s competitiveness. Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Chief Product and Technology Officer at Fico | Delivering innovative analytics & decision management for better business outcomes. According to experts, Edison’s most important invention wasn’t patentable, but it could benefit modern-day banks and insurers trying to reinvent their digital capabilities. Thomas Edison is one of history’s most prolific inventors in the post-electric era. With 1,093 patents in an astonishing array of different fields, one wonders: Which would Edison say was his most important invention? According to historians at the Edison Innovation Foundation and the Thomas Edison Center, "His most important invention was one that couldn’t be patented: the process of modern invention itself." Edison opened what he called his "invention factory" in Menlo Park, New Jersey, with proceeds from his earlier inventions. His goal was to apply "the principles of mass production to the 19th-century model of the solitary inventor, ... [creating] Once in operation, Edison’s laboratory began churning out major new inventions at an astonishing pace: Opening in March 1876, it quickly introduced the electric copying machine (1876), phonograph (1877), filament light bulb (1879), electric lamp (1880), motion pictures (1888) and hundreds of other innovations. Mass-Production Of Innovation Menlo Park was successful because it enabled Edison to harness and direct—all under one roof—a dream team of top scientists, engineers, physicists, mechanics, machinists and draftsmen from all over the United States and Europe. Together, they worked as a collaborative team—sharing their expertise and the results of their many experiments—while scrutinizing colleagues’ ideas, challenging one another’s assumptions and pushing for better answers. Edison encouraged vigorous competition and the dissection of ideas; he encouraged taking them apart and analyzing them, constantly testing and retesting approaches until only the optimal solution passed muster. The diversity of teammates’ backgrounds ensured that less-than-ideal approaches were weeded out quickly. As new employees joined the lab, they were quickly enlisted to see what new thinking they might offer to the collective ideation. Francis Jehl, Edison’s long-time assistant, observed that "Edison is in reality a collective noun and means the work of many men." But under Edison’s watchful eye, the team’s combined workstyle came down to three maxims: collaboration, innovation and acceleration. Why Today's Businesses Need An "Invention Factory" To Stay Competitive Today, companies in every industry are under immense pressure to create invention factories of their own, to develop the next generation of information-based products and services consumers demand and to do it faster than their competitors. If you feel like the pressure’s on, you’re not alone: In a recent study, "The State of Business Building," business leaders told McKinsey & Company that by 2026, they expected half of their revenues to come from products, services or businesses that haven’t yet been created. The digital transformation gold rush is on, and 87% of major companies are actively building their portfolio of future products and services (according to IDG), so there’s no time for delay. The battle is coming to you whether you are ready or not. Given that speed and time-to-market are critical, IDG also reports that two-thirds of companies are seeking a modern-day competitive edge paralleling Edison’s lab: deploying an enterprise decisioning platform to orchestrate their digital transformation efforts. A Platform For Success In many respects, a platform serves the same purpose as Edison’s invention factory—only, instead of everything being under the same roof, it’s all connected to the same cloud. Deploying a platform needn’t be an expensive, arduous undertaking. Done properly, it simply unifies and brings interoperability to existing legacy resources. This fosters enterprise-wise collaboration and synergy among people, processes and technologies already in place to maximize. • Collaboration: A platform unifies all information across an organization to make it interoperable across all departments and applications, resulting in a composite, omnidirectional view of every customer and prospect in real time. Thus, companies can maintain a complete, actionable strategy for every consumer by identifying personalized up-selling and cross-selling strategies before the needs even emerge. • Innovation: A platform gives companies a foundation upon which they can continually experiment with new ways to repurpose and repackage their customer decision assets in different configurations. This makes it easy for them to quickly develop compelling new customer solutions, services and business lines. • Acceleration: Speed is an unbeatable competitive advantage in digital business. By helping project development and deployments go faster, a platform can enable companies to outpace and out-maneuver their competitors and win business opportunities before rivals even identify them. The Advantage Edison Was Missing: Simulation Of course, there’s a fourth advantage that a platform delivers that Edison did not have access to but would have greatly appreciated: simulation. When Edison set out to invent a better light bulb, he estimated it would take “three or four months.” It ended up taking 14 months due to the time and costs of building 10,000 prototypes. If Edison had access to modern simulation CAD tools, he might have found the right answer in days. In information-intensive enterprises, simulation gives companies the ability to quickly model decisions and strategies—based on their real-world data—before they are implemented. Variations can be easily tested until the optimal outcomes are identified, typically in hours or days, depending on complexity. This allows all stakeholders to see what the future holds, form consensus and devise a go-forward plan from the business ROI perspective. Timeless Lessons In Innovation By mastering and mass-producing collaboration, innovation and acceleration, Edison and his team introduced one world-changing invention after another for decades. Throughout his life, Edison frequently said that he operated on four simple principles . 1. Never get discouraged if you fail. Learn from it. Keep trying. 2. Learn with both your head and hands. 3. Not everything of value in life comes from books—experience the world. 4. Never stop learning. Now, 150 years later, those same principles apply to companies for which digital transformation is a paramount competitive goal. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? Editorial Standards Reprints & Permissions 427 IMAGES Biography: Thomas Edison Thomas Edison Graphic Biography Biography of Thomas Edison, American Inventor Thomas Edison : Biography: a Life from Beginning to End, with all his The Story of Thomas A. Edison Thomas Edison (First Reader) COMMENTS Thomas Edison Thomas Edison (born February 11, 1847, Milan, Ohio, U.S.—died October 18, 1931, West Orange, New Jersey) was an American inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world-record 1,093 patents. In addition, he created the world's first industrial research laboratory. How Thomas Edison changed the world. Thomas Edison DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S THOMAS EDISON FACT CARD. Children. In 1871 Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, who was an employee at one of his businesses. During their 13-year marriage, they had ... Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 - October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. [1] [2] [3] He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. [4]These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact ... Edison Biography Edison Biography. Young Thomas Edison. Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio; the seventh and last child of Samuel and Nancy Edison. When Edison was seven his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan. Edison lived here until he struck out on his own at the age of sixteen. Edison had very little formal education as a child ... Thomas Edison: Facts, House & Inventions ‑ HISTORY Thomas Edison's Early Life. Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the seventh and last child born to Samuel Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott Edison, and would be ... Life of Thomas Alva Edison One of the most famous and prolific inventors of all time, Thomas Alva Edison exerted a tremendous influence on modern life, contributing inventions such as the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera, as well as improving the telegraph and telephone. In his 84 years, he acquired an astounding 1,093 patents. Aside from being an inventor, Edison also managed to ... Biography of Thomas Edison, American Inventor Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847-October 18, 1931) was an American inventor who transformed the world with inventions including the lightbulb and the phonograph. He was considered the face of technology and progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fast Facts: Thomas Edison. Known For: Inventor of groundbreaking technology ... Thomas Edison's Life Thomas Alva Edison THE STORY OF A GREAT AMERICAN Journeying from Holland, the Edison family originally landed in Elizabethport, New Jersey, about 1730. In Colonial times, they farmed a large tract of land not far from West Orange, New Jersey, where Thomas A. Edison made his home some 160 years later. Their fortunes fluctuated with their politics. Thomas Edison's Inventive Life Thomas Alva Edison (nicknamed Al) was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. Edison was an inquisitive boy who began experimenting at an early age. His hometown of Milan, Ohio, was a busy place. Canals were the highways of the early 19th century. The Huron Canal connected Milan to the Huron River, which flowed into Lake Erie, giving ... Thomas Edison Biography & Facts: Inventions, Quotes, and Children SCIENTISTS (1847-1931); MILAN, OHIO. Thomas Alva Edison was an inventor unlike any throughout history—and his impact can still be felt in your everyday life. Thomas Edison Biography Thomas Edison Biography. Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed and made commercially available - many key inventions of modern life. His Edison Electric company was a pioneering company for delivering DC electricity directly into people's homes. He filed over 1,000 patents for a variety of ... A Brief Biography of Thomas Edison Thomas Edison. NPS Photo. People often say Edison was a genius. He answered, "Genius is hard work, stick-to-it-iveness, and common sense." Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio (pronounced MY-lan). In 1854, when he was seven, the family moved to Michigan, where Edison spent the rest of his childhood. Thomas Edison Biography: 1847-1882: Birth to Pearl Street Quick Facts. Thomas Edison Biography: 1847-1882: Birth to Pearl Street. Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847, and moved to Port Huron, Michigan when he was seven. He attended school only briefly and was taught reading and math by his mother. Edison began working at the age of twelve on the local railroad. Thomas Edison Thomas Edison's DC system struggled to supply electricity to customers more than a mile from the electric power plant. Additionally, compared to Edison's DC, AC system required relatively thinner and cheaper wires. This meant that AC was the preferred choice, especially for lighting up streets and other domestic purposes. ... Thomas Edison Biography Thomas Edison's 1874 invention of the quadruplex telegraph, with the ability to simultaneously transmit messages for four individuals over a single wire, was a momentous breakthrough in telegraphic communications. Thomas Edison began work on the carbon telephone transmitter in 1876. Upon completion, this device became an integral part of ... Inventions Thomas Edison Inventions. Thomas Edison's record 1,093 patented inventions have greatly improved the world we know today. In fact, Edison is recognized as one of the greatest inventors of all time. His key inventions include the light bulb and electric utility system, recorded sound, motion pictures, R&D labs, and the alkaline family of storage ... Edison Biography A proud descendant of the distinguished old Elliot family of New England, New York born Nancy Edison was the devout and charming daughter of a highly respected Presbyterian minister, as well as an accomplished educator in her own right. After the above incident, she commenced teaching her favorite son the "Three R's" and the Bible. Thomas Edison: America's Greatest Inventor Please SUPPORT my work on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2LT6opZ Visit my 2ND CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/2ILbyX8 Facebook: https://bit.ly/2INA7yt Twitter: https://b... Thomas Edison Biography Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. His family soon moved to Port Huron, Michigan where he spent most of his childhood. Surprisingly, he did not do well in school and ended up being home schooled by his mother. Thomas was an enterprising young man, selling vegetables, candy and newspapers on trains. Thomas Edison Thomas Edison was an American inventor and entrepreneur. He was born Thomas Alva Edison on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the last of seven children born to Samuel Edison, Jr. and Nancy ... The 10 Best Books on Thomas Edison The Wizard of Menlo Park by Randall E. Stross. At the height of his fame, Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as "the Napoleon of invention" and blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light and the first ... Thomas Edison Inventions Thomas Alva Edison has been described as America's greatest inventors. He was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio and he grew up in Port Michigan. He was the youngest of seven children of Samuel and Nancy Edison. His father was an exiled political activist from Canada, while his mother was an accomplished school teacher and a major ... Why Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla Clashed During the ... Thomas Edison is widely known as one of history's most consequential inventors, a legacy born of both his indisputable genius in the laboratory and noted ruthlessness as a businessman; the old ... How Edison's 150-Year-Old Secret For Innovation Can Help ... According to historians at the Edison Innovation Foundation and the Thomas Edison Center, "His most important invention was one that couldn't be patented: the process of modern invention itself ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis