Biography of Thomas Alva Edison      

 

                                  By Cameron Hall

 

                                          

 Thomas Edison as a boy                                                                  Thomas Edison with a teletype

 

                                                

 

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        The older Thomas Edison                                                                               Cameron Hall at the Thomas Edison Home

                                                                                                                                        Holding a light bulb and a battery

 

I chose the light bulb invented by Thomas Edison because the light bulb changed human existence by illuminating the night allowing a wide range of activities never before available.  The light bulb led to city wide lighting by electricity which today provides not just light but heat, air conditioning and many other conveniences we have come to enjoy.  The biography of Thomas Edison is an exciting review of what motivated one of the most admired and respected inventors of all times. If it wasn’t for the light bulb I would be scared of my basement at night, pitch black on Halloween. 

Born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, Thomas Alva Edison was the last of the seven children of Samuel and Nancy Edison. Thomas's father was an exiled political activist from Canada. His mother, an accomplished school teacher, was a major influence in Thomas’ early life. An early bout with scarlet fever left him with hearing difficulties in both ears, a malady that would eventually leave him nearly deaf as an adult.

In 1854, the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where Edison attended public school for a total of 12 weeks. A hyperactive child, prone to distraction, he was deemed “difficult” by his teacher. His mother quickly pulled him from school and taught him at home. At age 11, he showed an appetite for knowledge, reading books on a wide range of subjects. In this wide-open curriculum Edison developed a process for self-education and learning independently that would serve him throughout his life.

At age 12, Edison set out to put much of that education to work. He convinced his parents to let him sell newspapers to passengers along the Grand Trunk Railroad line. Exploiting his access to the news bulletins teletyped to the station office each day, Thomas began publishing his own small newspaper, called the Grand Trunk Herald. The up-to-date articles were a hit with passengers.

Edison used his access to the railroad to conduct chemical experiments in a small laboratory he set up in a train baggage car.  While he worked for the railroad, a near-tragic event turned fortuitous for the young man. After Edison saved a three-year-old from being run over by an errant train, the child’s grateful father rewarded him by teaching him to operate a telegraph. By age 15, he had learned enough to be employed as a telegraph operator. For the next five years, Edison traveled throughout the Midwest as an itinerant telegrapher, subbing for those who had gone to the Civil War. In his spare time, he read widely, studied and experimented with telegraph technology, and became familiar with electrical science

In 1866, at age 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, working for The Associated Press. The night shift allowed him to spend most of his time reading and experimenting. He developed an unrestrictive style of thinking and inquiry, proving things to himself through objective examination and experimentation. Initially, Edison excelled at his telegraph job because early Morse code was inscribed on a piece of paper, so Edison’s partial deafness was no handicap. However, as the technology advanced, receivers were increasingly equipped with a sounding key, enabling telegraphers to “read” message by the sound of the clicks

In 1868, Edison returned home to find his beloved mother was falling into mental illness and his father was out of work. The family was almost destitute. Edison realized he needed to take control of his future. Upon the suggestion of a friend, he ventured to Boston, landing a job for the Western Union Company. At the time, Boston was America’s center for science and culture.  While there he designed and patented an electronic voting recorder for quickly tallying votes in the legislature. However, Massachusetts lawmakers were not interested. As they explained, most legislators didn’t want votes tallied quickly. They wanted time to change the minds of fellow legislators.

Thomas Edison’s inventions that made him famous both in the 1800s and still today:

In 1869, Edison moved to New York City and developed his first invention, an improved stock ticker, the Universal Stock Printer, which synchronized several stock tickers’ transactions. The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company was so impressed, they paid him $40,000 for the rights. Edison was only 22 years old. With this success, he quit his work as a telegrapher to devote himself full-time to inventing.

In 1870, Thomas Edison set up his first small laboratory and manufacturing facility in Newark, New Jersey, and employed several machinists. As an independent entrepreneur, Edison formed numerous partnerships and developed his products for the highest bidder. Often that was Western Union Telegraph Company, the industry leader, but just as often, it was one of Western Union’s rivals. In one such instance, Edison devised for Western Union the quadruplex telegraph, capable of transmitting two signals in two different directions on the same wire, but railroad tycoon Jay Gould snatched the invention from Western Union, paying Edison more than $100,000 in cash, bonds and stock, and generating years of litigation.

By the early 1870s, Thomas Edison had acquired a reputation as a first-rate inventor. In 1876, he moved his expanding operations to Menlo Park, New Jersey, and built an independent industrial research facility incorporating machine shops and laboratories.  In December of 1877, Edison developed a method for recording sound: the phonograph. Though not commercially viable for another decade, the invention brought him worldwide fame.

The 1880s were a busy time for Thomas Edison. After being granted a patent for the light bulb in January 1880, Edison set out to develop a company that would deliver the electricity to power and light the cities of the world. That same year, Edison founded the Edison Illuminating Company—the first investor-owned electric utility—which later became the General Electric Corporation. In 1881, he left Menlo Park to establish facilities in several cities where electrical systems were being installed. In 1882, the Pearl Street generating station provided 110 volts of electrical power to 59 customers in lower Manhattan. Edison built an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, which served as the primary research laboratory for the Edison lighting companies.  He spent most of his time there, supervising the development of lighting technology and power systems. He also perfected the phonograph, and developed the motion picture camera and the alkaline storage battery.

During the next few decades, Edison found his role as inventor transitioning to one as industrialist and business manager. The laboratory in West Orange was too large and complex for any one man to completely manage, and Edison found he was not as successful in his new role as he was in his former one.  He worked best in intimate, unstructured environments with a handful of assistants and was outspoken about his disdain for academia and corporate operations.

As the automobile industry began to grow, Edison worked on developing a suitable storage battery that could power an electric car. Eventually, the gasoline-powered engine prevailed, but in 1912 Edison designed a battery for the self-starter on the Model T for friend and admirer Henry Ford. The system was used extensively in the auto industry for decades.

By the end of the 1920s Thomas Edison was in his 80s and he slowed down somewhat, but not before he applied for the last of his 1,093 U.S. patents, for an apparatus for holding objects during the electroplating process.

Thomas Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, “Glenmont,” in West Orange, New Jersey. He was 84 years old. Many communities and corporations throughout the world dimmed their lights or briefly turned off their electrical power to commemorate his passing. Edison’s career was the perfect rags-to-riches success story that made him a folk hero in America. An uninhibited egoist, he could be a tyrant to employees and ruthless to competitors. Though he was a publicity seeker, he didn’t socialize well and often neglected his family. By the time he died he was one of the most well-known and respected Americans in the world. He had been at the forefront of America’s first technological revolution and set the stage for the modern electric world.

The Phonograph

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph back in 1877. This is the very first machine that could record a person’s voice and play it back. Edison recited the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on a tin cylinder that captured the recording. With a needle running through the grooves as it turned, this early recording device played back Edison's voice. Before the phonograph was invented, people only had entertainment by live musicians and actors. This invention allowed people to have music anytime.

The First Motion Picture Machine

Edison invented the “kinetoscope,” which was a box that contained strips of pictures. When the person looked through a hole, the pictures were pulled through, with the result that it looked as if the pictures were moving. People came to see his motion picture machine in New York City, where they paid a nickel to see the first short movie in 1894.  From that invention today we have movies that Thomas Edison would not believe possible!

A Simple Light Bulb

Thomas Edison opened the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. He invented a carbon filament lamp and worked on improving the incandescent light bulb. This light bulb burned for more than 13 hours and was marketed for home use. His helpers, who worked with Edison at the light company, spent time on developing other inventions with him that helped the electric systems work, such as switches, fuses and wires.

Other Projects by Edison

Thomas Edison was a very busy man who worked on projects that he could sell to improve people's lives. He invented improvements to the stock ticker and revised the telegraph machine in the late 1800s. He helped to better the telephone that was originally invented by Alexander Graham Bell. In the 1900s, Edison began to work on automobiles and refined batteries for electric cars.  These batteries were also used in mines and on the railroad.

Today Thomas Edison’s inventions are continually updated by such companies as Ford Motors, AT&T Telecommunications, General Electric Company and various technology companies such as Apple, Intel, and the movie industry.

As I sit on the steps of Thomas Edison’s house I look at what he has accomplished and how his inventions have affected my life.  I play baseball at night under the lights; I listen to music on my CD player, go to movies and text on my smartphone.   All of these things started from ideas and imagination.  In the words of Thomas Edison:  “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.  Accordingly, a genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework”.

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Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

www.Biography.com/ThomasEdison

Edison House in Louisville, Kentucky