|
Thomas Alva Edison |
|
Inventor, born 1847 in Milan, Ohio, USA. Raised in Ohio and Michigan, he was taken out of school at age seven after only three months in the classroom (his constant questioning led some teachers to consider him retarded) and was educated by his mother. He showed an early curiosity for explanations of how everything worked, and was especially interested in chemistry. At age 12 he went to work selling newspapers and snacks on the railroad, printed his own little paper on the train, and experimented with chemicals in the baggage car until he caused a fire. Limited to selling papers at railroad stations, he learned how to operate a telegraph, and during the Civil War worked as a telegraph operator. In New York City (1869), as a supervisor in a stock-ticker firm, he made improvements to the stock-ticker. With the profits from the sale of an electrical-engineering firm that held his patents, he opened his own laboratory in Newark, NJ where he made important improvements in telegraphy and on the typewriter, and invented the carbon transmitter that made Alexander Graham Bell's telephone practical. In 1876 he moved his laboratory to Menlo Park, NJ, where he invented the first phonograph (1877) and the prototype of the commercially practical incandescent electric light bulb (1879). These and other inventions led to his being internationally known as ‘the wizard of Menlo Park’, although in 1887 he moved to a larger laboratory in West Orange, NJ. By the late 1880s he was contributing to the development of motion pictures, and by 1912 was experimenting with talking pictures. His many inventions include a storage battery, a dictaphone, and a mimeograph. Meanwhile, he had become interested in the development of a system for widespread distribution of electric power from central generating stations. In 1892 his Edison General Electric Co merged with another firm to become General Electric Co, of which he was a major stockholder. The holder of over 1000 patents, he lived out his final years in a round of awards and honours dying in 1931. |