Thomas Alva Edison

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Edison, Thomas Alva was born in 1847 and lived until 1931. He was an American inventor, whose development of a practical electric light bulb, electric generating system, sound-recording device, and motion picture projector had shaped the 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, using his spare time mainly to experiment with printing presses and with electrical and mechanical equipment.

In 1862 he published a weekly, known as the Grand Trunk Herald, printing it in a 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's next employment sent him to Boston, where he devoted all his spare time to research. He invented a vote recorder that. He also partly completed a stock-quotation printer. Later, while employed by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company of New York City he greatly improved their services.

By the sale of telegraphic appliances, Edison earned $40,000, and with this money he established his own laboratory in 1876. Afterward he constructed an automatic telegraph system that made possible a greater speed and range of transmission. Edison's biggest 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 phonograph by which sound could be recorded mechanically on a tinfoil cylinder. Two years later he showed his incandescent electric light bulb, his most important invention and the one requiring the most careful research and experimentation to perfect. 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 City. 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.

In 1888 he invented the kinetoscope, the first machine to produce motion pictures by a rapid succession of individual views. Among his later inventions was the Edison 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 phonograph in which the sound was impressed on a disk instead of a cylinder. This phonograph had a diamond needle and other improved features. By synchronizing his phonograph and kinetoscope, he produced, in 1913, the first talking moving pictures.

His other discoveries include the electric pen, the mimeograph, the microtasimeter and a wireless telegraphic method for communicating with moving trains. Because 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 U.S. Navy Consulting Board and in that made many valuable discoveries. His later work consisted mainly of improving and perfecting previous inventions. Altogether, Edison patented more than 1000 inventions. In 1883, he observed the flow of electrons from a heated filament, the so-called Edison effect.

In 1878 Edison was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France and in 1889 was made Commander of the Legion of Honor. In 1892 he was awarded the Albert Medal of the 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.