Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.
Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio and was raised in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–1896) (born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Edison nee Elliott (1810–1871). His family was of Dutch origin.
In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher the Reverend Engle was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. 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." His mother then home schooled him.Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy.
The cause of Edison's deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle ear infections. Edison around the middle of his career attributed the hearing loss to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical lab in a boxcar caught fire. In his later years he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.
Edison's family was forced to move to Port Huron, Michigan when the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854, but his life there was bittersweet. This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents would eventually lead him to found General Electric, which is still a publicly traded company, and 13 other companies. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, as well as vegetables that he sold to supplement his income.
Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario on the Grand Trunk Railway.In 1866, at the age of 19, Thomas Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky as an employee of Western Union working the Associated Press Bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift at work which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes -- reading and experimenting. However, it was the latter that eventually cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a battery when he spilled sulphuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss' desk below. The next morning he was fired.
Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained him fame was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large 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 around a grooved cylinder and had poor sound quality. The tinfoil recordings could only be replayed 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."
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Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison was a famous American scientist. He was born in 1847. When he was a child, he liked to find out how things worked. He was in school for only three months. He asked his teacher a lot of strange questions. Most of them had nothing to do with his lessons. The teacher thought the boy was not bright and was not worth teaching. When he told this to Edisons mother,she took her son out of school. As she had been a teacher,she taught him herself. The boy read a lot. Soon he became very interested in science. At the age of ten, Edison had already built a chemistry lab for himself. Ever since then, he never stopped searching for new and better ways to do things.
Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847 and died on October 18, 1931. He was an inventor and businessman who developed many important devices.
"The Wizard of Menlo Park" was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention.
In 1880 Edison founded the journal Science, which in 1900 became the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors, holding a record 1,093 patents in his name.
Most of these inventions were not completely original but improvements of earlier patents, and were actually works of his numerous employees.
Edison was frequently criticized for not sharing the credit.
Nevertheless, Edison received patents worldwide, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios