Inventor Thomas Edison created such great innovations as the electric light bulb and the phonograph. A savvy businessman, he held more than 1,000 patents for his inventions.
Born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio,
Thomas Edison rose from humble beginnings to work as an inventor of major
technology. Setting up a lab in Menlo Park, some of the products he developed
included the telegraph, phonograph, electric light bulb, alkaline storage
batteries and Kinetograph (a camera for motion pictures). He died on October
18, 1931, in West Orange, New Jersey.
At age 12, Edison set out to put much of
that education to work. He convinced his parents to let him sell newspapers to
passengers along the Grand Trunk Railroad line. Exploiting his access to the
news bulletins teletyped to the station office each day, Thomas began
publishing his own small newspaper, called the Grand Trunk Herald. The
up-to-date articles were a hit with passengers. This was the first of what
would become a long string of entrepreneurial ventures where he saw a need and
capitalized on opportunity.
Edison also used his access to the railroad
to conduct chemical experiments in a small laboratory he set up in a train
baggage car. During one of his experiments, a chemical fire started and the car
caught fire. The conductor rushed in and struck Thomas on the side of the head,
probably furthering some of his hearing loss. He was kicked off the train and
forced to sell his newspapers at various stations along the route.
While he worked for the railroad, a
near-tragic event turned fortuitous for the young man. After Edison saved a
3-year-old from being run over by an errant train, the child’s grateful father
rewarded him by teaching him to operate a telegraph. By age 15, he had learned
enough to be employed as a telegraph operator. For the next five years, Edison
traveled throughout the Midwest as an itinerant telegrapher, subbing for those
who had gone to the Civil War. In his spare time, he read widely, studied and
experimented with telegraph technology, and became familiar with electrical
science.
In 1866, at age 19, Edison moved to
Louisville, Kentucky, working for The Associated Press. The night shift allowed
him to spend most of his time reading and experimenting. He developed an
unrestrictive style of thinking and inquiry, proving things to himself through
objective examination and experimentation. Initially, Edison excelled at his
telegraph job because early Morse code was inscribed on a piece of paper, so
Edison's partial deafness was no handicap. However, as the technology advanced,
receivers were increasingly equipped with a sounding key, enabling telegraphers
to "read" message by the sound of the clicks. This left Edison
disadvantaged, with fewer and fewer opportunities for employment.
In 1868, Edison returned home to find his
beloved mother was falling into mental illness and his father was out of work.
The family was almost destitute. Edison realized he needed to take control of
his future. Upon the suggestion of a friend, he ventured to Boston, landing a
job for the Western Union Company. At the time, Boston was America's center for
science and culture, and Edison reveled in it. In his spare time, he designed
and patented an electronic voting recorder for quickly tallying votes in the
legislature. However, Massachusetts lawmakers were not interested. As they
explained, most legislators didn't want votes tallied quickly. They wanted time
to change the minds of fellow legislators.
Becoming an Inventor
In 1869, Edison moved to New York City and
developed his first invention, an improved stock ticker, the Universal Stock
Printer, which synchronized several stock tickers' transactions. The Gold and
Stock Telegraph Company was so impressed, they paid him $40,000 for the rights.
Edison was only 22 years old. With this success, he quit his work as a
telegrapher to devote himself full-time to inventing.
In 1870, Thomas Edison set up his first
small laboratory and manufacturing facility in Newark, New Jersey, and employed
several machinists. As an independent entrepreneur, Edison formed numerous
partnerships and developed his products for the highest bidder. Often that was
Western Union Telegraph Company, the industry leader, but just as often, it was
one of Western Union's rivals. In one such instance, Edison devised for Western
Union the quadruplex telegraph, capable of transmitting two signals in two
different directions on the same wire, but railroad tycoon Jay Gould snatched
the invention from Western Union, paying Edison more than $100,000 in cash,
bonds and stock, and generating years of litigation.
With his ever-increasing financial success,
in 1871 Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, who was an employee at one of
his businesses. During their 13-year marriage, they had three children, Marion,
Thomas and William, who became an inventor. Mary died of a suspected brain
tumor at the age of 29 in 1884.
By the early 1870s, Thomas Edison had
acquired a reputation as a first-rate inventor. In 1876, he moved his expanding
operations to Menlo Park, New Jersey, and built an independent industrial research
facility incorporating machine shops and laboratories. That same year, Western
Union encouraged him to develop a communication device to compete with
Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. He never did. However, in December of 1877,
Edison developed a method for recording sound: the phonograph. Though not
commercially viable for another decade, the invention brought him worldwide
fame.
Edison Illuminating Company
The 1880s were a busy time for Thomas
Edison. After being granted a patent for the light bulb in January 1880, Edison
set out to develop a company that would deliver the electricity to power and
light the cities of the world. That same year, Edison founded the Edison
Illuminating Company—the first investor-owned electric utility—which later became
the General Electric Corporation. In 1881, he left Menlo Park to establish
facilities in several cities where electrical systems were being installed.
In 1882, the Pearl Street generating
station provided 110 volts of electrical power to 59 customers in lower
Manhattan. In 1884 Edison's wife, Mary, died, and in 1886, he married Mina
Miller, 19 years his junior. In 1887, Edison built an industrial research
laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, which served as the primary research
laboratory for the Edison lighting companies. He spent most of his time there,
supervising the development of lighting technology and power systems. He also
perfected the phonograph, and developed the motion picture camera and the
alkaline storage battery.
Industrialist and Business Manager
Over the next few decades, Edison found his
role as inventor transitioning to one as industrialist and business manager.
The laboratory in West Orange was too large and complex for any one man to
completely manage, and Edison found he was not as successful in his new role as
he was in his former one. Edison also found that much of the future development
and perfection of his inventions was being conducted by university-trained
mathematicians and scientists. He worked best in intimate, unstructured
environments with a handful of assistants and was outspoken about his disdain
for academia and corporate operations.
He eventually became embroiled in a
longstanding rivalry with Nikola Tesla, an engineering visionary with academic
training who worked with Edison's company for a time, parting ways in 1885. The
two would publicly clash about the use of direct current electricity, which
Edison favored, vs. alternating currents, which Tesla championed. The latter
inventor entered into a partnership with George Westinghouse, an Edison
competitor as well, and thus a major business feud over electrical power came
into being. One of the unusual and cruel
ways Edison tried to convince people of the dangers of alternating current was
through public demonstrations in which animals were electrocuted. One of the
most infamous of these shows was the 1903 electrocution of a circus elephant
named Topsy in New York's Coney Island.
On a couple of occasions, Edison was able
to turn failure into success. During the 1890s, he built a magnetic iron-ore
processing plant in northern New Jersey that proved to be a commercial failure.
Later, he was able to salvage the process into a better method for producing
cement. On April 23, 1896, Edison became the first person to project a motion
picture, holding the world's first motion picture screening at Koster &
Bial's Music Hall in New York City.
As the automobile industry began to grow,
Edison worked on developing a suitable storage battery that could power an
electric car. Though the gasoline-powered engine eventually prevailed, Edison
designed a battery for the self-starter on the Model T for friend and admirer
Henry Ford in 1912. The system was used extensively in the auto industry for
decades.
During World War I, the U.S. government
asked Thomas Edison to head the Naval Consulting Board, which examined
inventions submitted for military use. Edison worked on several projects,
including submarine detectors and gun-location techniques. However, due to his
moral indignation toward violence, he specified that he would work only on
defensive weapons, later noting, "I am proud of the fact that I never
invented weapons to kill."
By the end of the 1920s Thomas Edison was
in his 80s and he slowed down somewhat, but not before he applied for the last
of his 1,093 U.S. patents, for an apparatus for holding objects during the
electroplating process. Edison and his second wife, Mina, spent part of their
time at their winter retreat in Fort Myers, Florida, where his friendship with
automobile tycoon Henry Ford flourished and he continued to work on several
projects, ranging from electric trains to finding a domestic source for natural
rubber.
Final Years
Thomas Edison died of complications of
diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont," in West
Orange, New Jersey. He was 84 years old. Many communities and corporations
throughout the world dimmed their lights or briefly turned off their electrical
power to commemorate his passing. Edison's career was the quintessential
rags-to-riches success story that made him a folk hero in America. An
uninhibited egoist, he could be a tyrant to employees and ruthless to
competitors. Though he was a publicity seeker, he didn’t socialize well and
often neglected his family. By the time he died he was one of the most
well-known and respected Americans in the world. He had been at the forefront
of America’s first technological revolution and set the stage for the modern
electric world.
Edison, considered one of America's leading
businessmen, is credited today for helping to build America's economy during
the nation's vulnerable early years.
The Phonograph
Edison's most original and lucrative
invention, the phonograph, was patented in 1877. From a manually operated
instrument making impressions on metal foil and replaying sounds, it became a
motor-driven machine playing cylindrical wax records by 1887. By 1890 he had
more than 80 patents on it. The Victor Company developed from his patents.
(Alexander Graham Bell impressed sound tracks on cylindrical shellac records;
Berliner invented disk records. Edison's later dictating machine, the Ediphone,
used disks.)
Incandescent Lamp
To research incandescence, Edison and
others, including J. P. Morgan, organized the Edison Electric Light Company in
1878. (Later it became the General Electric Company.) Edison made the first
practical incandescent lamp in 1879, and it was patented the following year.
After months of testing metal filaments, Edison and his staff examined 6,000
organic fibers from around the world and decided that Japanese bamboo was best.
Mass production soon made the lamps, although low-priced, profitable.
First Central Electric-Light Power Plant
Prior to Edison's central power station,
each user of electricity needed a dynamo (generator), which was inconvenient
and expensive. Edison opened the first commercial electric station in London in
1882; in September the Pearl Street Station in New York City marked the
beginning of America's electrical age. Within 4 months the station was lighting
more than 5,000 lamps for 230 customers, and the demand for lamps exceeded
supply. By 1890 it supplied current to 20,000 lamps, mainly in office
buildings, and to motors, fans, printing presses, and heating appliances. Many
towns and cities installed central stations.
Increased use of electricity led to
Edison-base sockets, junction boxes, safety fuses, underground conduits,
meters, and the three-wire system. Jumbo dynamos, with drum-wound armatures,
could maintain 110 volts with 90 percent efficiency. The three-wire system,
first installed in Sunbury, Pa., in 1883, superseded the parallel circuit, used
110 volts, and necessitated high-resistance lamp filaments (metal alloys were
later used).
In 1883 Edison made a significant discovery
in pure science, the Edison effect—electrons flowed from incandescent
filaments. With a metal-plate insert, the lamp could serve as a valve,
admitting only negative electricity. Although "etheric force" had
been recognized in 1875 and the Edison effect was patented in 1883, the
phenomenon was little known outside the Edison laboratory. (At this time
existence of electrons was not generally accepted.) This "force"
underlies radio broadcasting, long-distance telephony, sound pictures,
television, electric eyes, x-rays, high-frequency surgery, and electronic
musical instruments. In 1885 Edison patented a method to transmit telegraphic
"aerial" signals, which worked over short distances, and later sold
this "wireless" patent to Guglielmo Marconi.
Creating the Modern Research Laboratory
The vast West Orange, N.J., factory, which
Edison directed from 1887 to 1931, was the world's most complete research
laboratory, an antecedent of modern research and development laboratories, with
teams of workers systematically investigating problems. Various inventions
included a method to make plate glass, a magnetic ore separator, compressing
dies, composition brick, a cement process, an all-concrete house, an electric
locomotive (patented 1893), a fluoroscope, a nickel-iron battery, and motion
pictures. Edison refused to patent the fluoroscope, so that doctors could use
it freely; but he patented the first fluorescent lamp in 1896.
The Edison battery, finally perfected in
1910, was a superior storage battery with an alkaline electrolyte. After 8000
trials Edison remarked, "Well, at least we know 8000 things that don't
work." In 1902 he improved the copper oxide battery, which resembled
modern dry cells.
Edison's motion picture camera, the
kinetograph, could photograph action on 50-foot strips of film, 16 images per
foot. A young assistant, in order to make the first Edison movies, in 1893
built a small laboratory called the "Black Maria,"—a shed, painted
black inside and out, that revolved on a base to follow the sun and kept the
actors illuminated. The kinetoscope projector of 1893 showed the films. The
first commercial movie theater, a peepshow, opened in New York in 1884. A coin
put into a slot activated the kinetoscope inside the box. Acquiring and
improving the projector of Thomas Armat in 1895, Edison marketed it as the
Vitascope.
Movie Production
The Edison Company produced over 1,700
movies. Synchronizing movies with the phonograph in 1904, Edison laid the basis
for talking pictures. In 1908 his cinemaphone appeared, adjusting film speed to
phonograph speed. In 1913 his kinetophone projected talking pictures: the
phonograph, behind the screen, was synchronized by ropes and pulleys with the
projector. Edison produced several "talkies."
Meanwhile, among other inventions, the
universal motor, which used alternating or direct current, appeared in 1907;
and the electric safety lantern, patented in 1914, greatly reduced casualties
among miners. That year Edison invented the telescribe, which combined features
of the telephone and dictating phonograph.
Work for the Government
During World War I Edison headed the U.S.
Navy Consulting Board and contributed 45 inventions, including substitutes for
previously imported chemicals (especially carbolic acid, or phenol), defensive
instruments against U-boats, a ship-telephone system, an underwater
searchlight, smoke screen machines, antitorpedo nets, turbine projectile heads,
collision mats, navigating equipment, and methods of aiming and firing naval
guns. After the war he established the Naval Research Laboratory, the only
American institution for organized weapons research until World War II.
Synthetic Rubber
With Henry Ford and the Firestone Company,
Edison organized the Edison Botanic Research Company in 1927 to discover or
develop a domestic source of rubber. Some 17,000 different botanical specimens
were examined over 4 years—an indication of Edison's tenaciousness. By
crossbreeding goldenrod, he developed a strain yielding 12 percent latex, and
in 1930 he received his last patent, for this process.
The Man Himself
To raise money, Edison dramatized himself
by careless dress, clowning for reporters, and playing the role of homespun
sage with aphorisms like "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent
perspiration" and "Discovery is not invention." He scoffed at
formal education, thought 4 hours' sleep a night enough, and often worked 40 or
50 hours straight. As a world symbol of Yankee ingenuity, he looked and acted
the part. George Bernard Shaw, briefly an Edison employee in 1879, put an
Edisontype hero into his novel The Irrational Knot: free-souled, sensitive,
cheerful, and profane.
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