Thomas Alva Edison was born in 11th February, 1847 and dead in 18th October,1931, was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park", he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production
and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of
that, he is often credited
with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.
Edison was a prolific inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name,
as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
More significant than the number of Edison's patents, are the impacts of
his inventions, because Edison not only invented things, his inventions
established major new industries world-wide, notably, electric light and power utilities, sound recording and motion pictures. Edison's inventions contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures.
His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison developed a system of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York.
Early life
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–96, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871, born in Chenango County, New York). His father had to escape from Canada because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837. Edison reported being of Dutch ancestry.
In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled".
This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled
later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me;
and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint."
His mother taught him at home. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.
Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever
during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. Around
the middle of his career, Edison attributed the hearing impairment to
being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical
laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan,
along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years, he modified
the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him
onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.
Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined;
his life there was bittersweet. Edison sold candy and newspapers on
trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and sold vegetables to
supplement his income. He also studied qualitative analysis, and
conducted chemical experiments on the train until an accident prohibited
further work of the kind.
Edison obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road,
and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers.
This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures, as he
discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led
him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.
Beginning His career
Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey,
with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices,
but the invention that first gained him notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to
appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo
Park," New Jersey.
His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder. Despite its limited sound quality
and that the recordings could be played only a few times, the
phonograph made Edison a celebrity. Joseph Henry, president of the
National Academy of Sciences and one of the most renowned electrical
scientists in the US, described Edison as "the most ingenious inventor
in this country . . . or in any other".
In April 1878, Edison travelled to Washington to demonstrate the
phonograph before the National Academy of Sciences, Congressmen,
Senators and US President Hayes. The Washington Post described Edison as a "genius" and his presentation as "a scene . . . that will live in history". Although Edison obtained a patent for the phonograph in 1878, he did little to develop it until Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter produced a phonograph-like device in the 1880s that used wax-coated cardboard cylinders.
