As a young child, Thomas Alva Edison was considered by teachers as “not teachable” and “a confused student”. Unwilling to believe this, his mother pulled him out of formal school after only 3 months to teach him herself. Being home schooled allowed young Thomas more time to do what he loved, conduct experiments in his basement. His early loved for experimenting followed him through adulthood and helped him to become of the greatest inventors of all time.
Born on February 11th, 1847 in Milan, Ohio, Thomas Alva Edison was the youngest of 7 children. At the age of 7 Thomas’s family moved to Port Huron, Michigan where he lived until he was old enough to move out on his own. Thomas took a job selling newspapers, candy and other miscellaneous items on a train at the age of 13. One day, as he was running to catch the train, a trainman reached out and pulled him aboard by his ear. Edison immediately felt something in his head snap and began to go deaf. The loss of hearing caused Edison to take up reading as a main hobby. Edison taught himself a lot by reading and even gained knowledge that school wouldn’t have provided.
On June 1st, 1869, Thomas Edison was awarded with his 1st of over 1,300 patents. The electric vote recorder, the machine he received the patent for, never made much of an impact on society. While waiting for a job interview in New York City, the central transmitting machine for the company broke down. Edison quickly fixed it, and was awarded with good paying job the very next day. After 4 months on the job, Edison and two other men decided to open their own company called “Pope, Edison and Company.” Soon after opening, the Gold and Stock Telegraphic Company paid a handsome fee to take over the company. Growing in wealth and knowledge, Thomas opened up a plant in Menlo Park, New Jersey where some of his greatest inventions were produced.
Edison, along with many consulting engineers, worked hard at Menlo Park to invent and improve. In 1877, Edison invented the phonograph; a device designed to record sounds and then play them back. The first song recorded on the phonograph was “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”
The biggest project to come out of Menlo Park was the improvement of the incandescent light bulb. While many people think that Edison invented the light bulb, he only improved on it. Scientist were working on the light bulb for many years before, but none of them could get it right. Edison discovered that if you use a charred length of cotton thread as the “wire”, the light would be able to burn for quite some time. Edison’s time with the light bulb was not done though, as he spent many of the next years adapting it and using it in other inventions. While working on improving the light bulb, Edison found that when a wire is placed in the bulb adjacent to the filament, an electrical current flows from the filament to the wire. This discovery is now known as the “Edison Effect”. Edison was eventually nicknamed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” in honor of all of the great inventions to from there.
With many new ideas and inventions, Edison was forced to move out of Menlo Park and into West Orange, New Jersey, a plant nearly ten times as large. Here, Edison continued his success as an inventor and thought up many new ideas. The most well known invention to be produced at West Orange was the kinetoscope. The kinetoscope was an early version of a motion picture machine which allowed you to arrange pictures on a strip and then run it through a projector. Some other famous inventions to come out of West Orange include the lead storage battery, the mimeograph machine, the dictaphone and the fluoroscope.
On October 18th, 1931, Thomas Edison died at West Orange, New Jersey at the age of 84. Even in his later year, Edison continued his career as an inventor. Edison was married twice, once to Mary Stilwell who died in 1884, and then to Mina Miller who passed away in 1947. Both marriages combined, Edison became the father of 6 children, including a son named Thomas Jr. Throughout his career, he received many awards for his contributions to society. Some of these honors include being elected into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, winning the John Fritz Medal and winning the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1928, Edison received his most impressive award, a gold medal presented to him by the US Congress.
According to www.dictionary.com, an invention is “a new, useful process, machine, improvement, etc., that did not exist previously and that is recognized as the product of some unique intuition or genius.” With this said, there is no question that Thomas Alva Edison was a genius. He produced over 1,000 inventions in his lifetime and is known as one of the most influential people in American history.
