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Explanation:
In his 84 years, Thomas Edison 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 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 and businessman 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. Thomas Edison received little formal education, and left school in 1859 to being working on the railroad between Detroit and Port Huron, Michigan, where his family then lived.
Did you know? By the time he died 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. He had developed serious hearing problems, which were variously attributed to scarlet fever, mastoiditis or a blow to the head. With the development of auditory signals for the telegraph, Edison was at a disadvantage, and he began to work on inventing devices that would help make things possible for him despite his deafness (including a printer that would convert the electrical signals to letters). In early 1869, he quit telegraphy to pursue invention full time.
Edison’s Emergence as a Leading Inventor
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 with the help of his father was able to build a laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey, 12 miles south of Newark.
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, and the press dubbed Edison “the Wizard of Menlo Park.”
Edison’s Innovations with Electric Light
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 George Westinghouse, 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 Co.
