Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He was an American inventor and businessman. He was known to be the wizards of inventions holding 1093 US patents in his name and as many patents in UK, France and Germany. His famous inventions are namely – phonograph, motion picture camera and long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. He was also credited for first industrial research laboratory. He was also responsible for generating electricity to be used in houses and industries at mass scale.

Childhood

Thomas Edison was born to father Samuel Ogden Edison Jr. and mother Nancy Matthews Elliot. Edison didn’t continue his school education and much of his learning came from his mother only. He constantly followed reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.

Education

The first hands-on experience of Edison was as a telegraph operator and trained at Mount Clemens, Michigan. Later, Grand Trunk Railway offered him his first job as telegraph operator. Along with that, Edison kept on working on various experiments and came out with stock ticker.

Career

Thomas Edison’s first patent was of electric vote recorder granted on June 1, 1869. Most of his work was at Newark, New Jersey. In 1877, he got the recognition for “phonograph”. At Menlo Park, Edison built the first industrial lab where he carried several research and innovations. His inventions established major new industries world-wide notably electric light, power utilities and telecommunication. Nearly all of Edison's patents were utility patents.

Edison was not the inventor of electric bulbs, but he invented the method to produce first commercially practical light bulb. The earlier scientists who worked on making bulbs had flaws like - extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially. During 1878, following his business interests, Thomas Edison founded Edison Electric Light Company (now known as: General Electric) and gave the world a future of lights. In early 1880s, Edison invented and patented the system of electricity distribution.

At the End

On October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison died of complications of diabetes in his home "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. He is buried behind the home. Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum.