Thomas Edison

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 peoples 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
electric power station.

Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on Feb 11, 1847, the youngest of seven siblings.
His parents were middle class, though they were not wealthy, especially when the railroad
bypassed Milan, forcing the family to move to Port Huron, Michigan. He attended only
three months of formal schooling, he irritated his teacher with his repeated questioning
and inability to just follow instructions. He was largely disinterested at school, and was
mainly self-educated through reading. He took upon it himself to read every book on the
library shelf. By the age of 12, he was reading Sir Isaac Newtons famous work
Principa Mathematica. However, Edison was not impressed by the complex maths of
Newton, and resolved to try and make science more understandable.
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.
Edison had a big break when he saved a young boy on the railway track from being
struck by a runaway train. His grateful father, J.U. Mckenzie, had Edison trained as a
telegraph operator, and aged 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky to work as a
telegraph operator for Western Union.

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 in 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.
Talks with Edison
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.
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 Edisons 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. Edisons 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 work on electricity distribution. His first power station was
able to distribute DC current to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.
Edisons 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 fledgling 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
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.
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 ,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 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 correct diet, and believed a good diet
could play a large role in improving health. In 1903, he was quoted as saying:
He had six children, three from each marriage. Edison died of diabetes in October 18,
1931.