Edison, Thomas Alva

Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931), American inventor, whose development of a practical

electric light bulb, electric generating system, sound-recording device, and film projector had
profound effects on the shaping of modern society.
Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847. He attended school for only three
months, in Port Huron, Michigan. When he was 12 years old he began selling newspapers on
the Grand Trunk Railway, devoting his spare time mainly to experimentation with printing
presses and with electrical and mechanical apparatus. In 1862 he published a weekly, known
as the Grand Trunk Herald, printing it in a freight car that also served as his laboratory. For
saving the life of a station official's child, he was rewarded by being taught telegraphy. While
working as a telegraph operator, he made his first important invention, a telegraphic repeating
instrument that enabled messages to be transmitted automatically over a second line without
the presence of an operator.
Edison next secured employment in Boston, Massachusetts, and devoted all his spare time
there to research. He invented a vote recorder that, although possessing many merits, was not
sufficiently practical to warrant its adoption. He also devised and partly completed a stockquotation printer. Later, while employed by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company of New
York, he greatly improved the company's apparatus and service. By the sale of telegraphic
appliances, Edison earned US$40,000, and with this money he established his own laboratory
in 1876. Afterwards he devised an automatic telegraph system that made possible a greater
speed and range of transmission. Edison's crowning achievement in telegraphy was his
invention of machines that made possible simultaneous transmission of several messages on
one line and thus greatly increased the usefulness of existing telegraph lines. Important in the
development of the telephone, which had recently been invented by the American physicist
and inventor Alexander Graham Bell, was Edison's invention of the carbon telephone
transmitter.
In 1877 Edison announced his invention of a gramophone by which sound could be recorded
mechanically on a tinfoil cylinder. Two years later he exhibited publicly his incandescent
electric light bulb, his most important invention and the one requiring the most careful
research and experimentation to perfect (see Electric Lighting). This new light was a
remarkable success; Edison promptly occupied himself with the improvement of the bulbs and
of the dynamos for generating the necessary electric current. In 1882 he developed and
installed the world's first large central electric-power station, located in New York. His use of
direct current, however, later lost out to the alternating-current system developed by the
American inventors Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse.
In 1887 Edison moved his laboratory from Menlo Park, New Jersey, to West Orange, New Jersey,
where he constructed a large laboratory for experimentation and research. (His home and

laboratory were established as the Edison National Historic Site in 1955). In 1888 he invented
the kinetoscope, the first machine to produce films by a rapid succession of individual views.
Among his later noteworthy inventions was the Edison storage battery (an alkaline, nickel-iron
storage battery), the result of many thousands of experiments. The battery was extremely
rugged and had a high electrical capacity per unit of weight. He also developed a gramophone
in which the sound was impressed on a disc instead of a cylinder. This gramophone had a
diamond needle and other improved features. By synchronizing his gramophone and
kinetoscope, he produced, in 1913, the first sound film (see Cinema, Early Development of).
His other discoveries include the mimeograph, the microtasimeter (used for the detection of
minute changes in temperature), and a wireless telegraphic method for communicating with
moving trains. At the outbreak of World War I Edison designed, built, and operated plants for
the manufacture of benzene, carbolic acid, and aniline derivatives. In 1915 he was appointed
president of the United States Navy Consulting Board and in that capacity made many valuable
discoveries. His later work consisted mainly of improving and perfecting previous inventions.
Altogether, Edison patented more than 1,000 inventions. He was a technologist rather than a
scientist, adding little to original scientific knowledge. In 1883, however, he did observe the
flow of electrons from a heated filamentthe so-called Edison effectwhose profound
implications for modern electronics were not understood until several years later.
In 1878 Edison was appointed Chevalier of the Lgion d'honneur of France and in 1889 was
made Commander of the Lgion d'honneur. In 1892 he was awarded the Albert Medal of the
Royal Society of Arts of Great Britain and in 1928 received the Congressional Gold Medal for
development and application of inventions that have revolutionized civilization in the last
century. Edison died in West Orange on October 18, 1931.
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