• Home
• Bio-sketches
• MY GP DATA-CENTER
• Register
• Support Network
• Contact Us

Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. He had a late start in his schooling due to an illness. Once in school, his mind often wandered and his teacher Reverend Engle was overheard calling him "addled". This ended Edison's three months of formal schooling. Since his mother had been a school teacher in Canada, she happily took over the job of schooling her son. She encouraged and taught him to read and experiment. He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint."

From His Mother Being "The Making Of Me"

To Being Mentored In Telegraphy

Thomas proved to learn more quickly than his mother had anticipated. So, she introduced him to the town library, where at age 11, he read one of his favorites, The World Dictionary of Science. By the time he was 12, Tom (as he then wanted to be called) started his own business selling fruits and vegetables. At age 14 (shown here), Tom made a name for himself by distributing The Weekly Herald newspaper to people riding trains running from Port Huron, Michigan to Detroit. His various enterprises earned him about $10 a day which was very good money for a kid that age. He used the money to buy chemical supplies he used for experiments in his basement laboratory.

As a teenager, Tom had a bout with scarlet fever that contributed to his being almost completely deaf. After saving a friend, Jimmie Mackenzie, from being struck by a runaway train, Jimmie's father (station agent J.U. Mackenzie) was so grateful that he took Edison under his wing and trained him as a telegraph operator. Edison's being almost deaf helped him block out noises and prevented him from hearing the telegrapher sitting next to him. One of his mentors during those early years was Franklin Leonard Pope, a fellow telegrapher and inventor who allowed the then impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey home.

Edison Becomes "The Wizard Of Menlo Park"

Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey. He applied for his first patent, the electric vote recorder, on October 28, 1868. But, the key to Edison's fortune was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system.

However, the invention which first gained Edison fame was the phonograph in 1877 (shown here). This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park" New Jersey, where he lived. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil cylinders that had low sound quality and destroyed the track during replay so that one could listen only a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own "Perfected Phonograph".

Edison also holds the patent for the motion picture camera. In 1891, he built a Kinetoscope (or peep-hole viewer) which was installed in penny arcades where people could watch short, simple films. In April 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film. In 1908 Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios, commonly known as the Edison Trust. [Pictured above is a drawing of his 'Black Maria' studio used to make a movie, showing his phonograph on the left and the kinetograph on the right.]

But, His Best Invention Was The Edison Lab,

A Gift That Just Kept On Giving

Although credited with over a thousand U. S. patents, Edison's major innovation was his industrial research lab built in Menlo Park. [Edison is shown here with his Lab staff.] It was the first institution in the world set up for the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement, thus helping give the U. S. a leading 20th Century position in technology. While Edison was legally credited with most of the inventions produced in the lab, many employees carried out research and development work under his direction.

life magazine's most important person

In The Last 1000 Years"

In a special turn of the millennium issue, Life magazine placed Thomas Alva Edison #1 in the list of the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years." In its citation, it noted that ...

"Because of Thomas Edison, the millennium will end in a wash of brilliant light rather than in torchlit darkness as it began. In 1879, Edison gave humans the power to create light without fire by inventing a long-lasting, affordable incandescent lamp. Among life's many conveniences we can take for granted, thanks in part to him: copiers, radio, movies, TV, and phones (he improved Bell's). On the night after his funeral in 1931, Americans dimmed their lights for the man who lit up the world."