thomas edison biography wikipedia

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison is credited with inventions such as the first practical incandescent light bulb and the phonograph. He held over 1,000 patents for his inventions.

(1847-1931)

Who Was Thomas Edison?

Early life and education.

Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the youngest of seven children of Samuel and Nancy Edison. His father was an exiled political activist from Canada, while his mother was an accomplished school teacher and a major influence in Edison’s early life. An early bout with scarlet fever as well as ear infections left Edison with hearing difficulties in both ears as a child and nearly deaf as an adult.

Edison would later recount, with variations on the story, that he lost his hearing due to a train incident in which his ears were injured. But others have tended to discount this as the sole cause of his hearing loss.

In 1854, Edison’s family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where he attended public school for a total of 12 weeks. A hyperactive child, prone to distraction, he was deemed "difficult" by his teacher.

His mother quickly pulled him from school and taught him at home. At age 11, he showed a voracious appetite for knowledge, reading books on a wide range of subjects. In this wide-open curriculum Edison developed a process for self-education and learning independently that would serve him throughout his life.

At age 12, Edison 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, Edison 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 the 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 Edison 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.

Edison the Telegrapher

While Edison worked for the railroad, a near-tragic event turned fortuitous for the young man. After Edison saved a three-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 unrestricted 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.

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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 himself became an inventor.

In 1884, Mary died at the age of 29 of a suspected brain tumor. Two years later, Edison married Mina Miller, 19 years his junior.

Thomas Edison: Inventions

In 1869, at 22 years old, Edison moved to New York City and developed his first invention, an improved stock ticker called 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. With this success, he quit his work as a telegrapher to devote himself full-time to inventing.

By the early 1870s, Edison had acquired a reputation as a first-rate inventor. In 1870, he 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 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.

Quadruplex Telegraph

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.

In 1876, Edison 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.

In December 1877, Edison developed a method for recording sound: the phonograph . His innovation relied upon tin-coated cylinders with two needles: one for recording sound, and another for playback.

His first words spoken into the phonograph's mouthpiece were, "Mary had a little lamb." Though not commercially viable for another decade, the phonograph brought him worldwide fame, especially when the device was used by the U.S. Army to bring music to the troops overseas during World War I .

While Edison was not the inventor of the first light bulb, he came up with the technology that helped bring it to the masses. Edison was driven to perfect a commercially practical, efficient incandescent light bulb following English inventor Humphry Davy’s invention of the first early electric arc lamp in the early 1800s.

Over the decades following Davy’s creation, scientists such as Warren de la Rue, Joseph Wilson Swan, Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans had worked to perfect electric light bulbs or tubes using a vacuum but were unsuccessful in their attempts.

After buying Woodward and Evans' patent and making improvements in his design, Edison was granted a patent for his own improved light bulb in 1879. He began to manufacture and market it for widespread use. 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 General Electric .

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.

Later Inventions & Business

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.

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.

During the 1890s, Edison 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.

Motion Picture

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.

His interest in motion pictures began years earlier, when he and an associate named W. K. L. Dickson developed a Kinetoscope, a peephole viewing device. Soon, Edison's West Orange laboratory was creating Edison Films. Among the first of these was The Great Train Robbery , released in 1903.

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 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, Edison was in his 80s. He 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.

During his lifetime, Edison received 1,093 U.S. patents and filed an additional 500 to 600 that were unsuccessful or abandoned.

He executed his first patent for his Electrographic Vote-Recorder on October 13, 1868, at the age of 21. His last patent was for an apparatus for holding objects during the electroplating process.

Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla

Edison became embroiled in a longstanding rivalry with Nikola Tesla , an engineering visionary with academic training who worked with Edison's company for a time.

The two parted ways in 1885 and would publicly clash in the " War of the Currents " about the use of direct current electricity, which Edison favored, vs. alternating currents, which Tesla championed. Tesla then entered into a partnership with George Westinghouse, an Edison competitor, resulting in a major business feud over electrical power.

Elephant Killing

One of the unusual - and cruel - methods Edison used to convince people of the dangers of alternating current was through public demonstrations where animals were electrocuted.

One of the most infamous of these shows was the 1903 electrocution of a circus elephant named Topsy on New York's Coney Island.

Edison died on October 18, 1931, from complications of diabetes 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.

But by the time he died, Edison 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.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Thomas Alva Edison
• Birth Year: 1847
• Birth date: February 11, 1847
• Birth State: Ohio
• Birth City: Milan
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Thomas Edison is credited with inventions such as the first practical incandescent light bulb and the phonograph. He held over 1,000 patents for his inventions.
• Technology and Engineering
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius
• The Cooper Union
• Interesting Facts
• Thomas Edison was considered too difficult as a child so his mother homeschooled him.
• Edison became the first to project a motion picture in 1896, at Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New York City.
• Edison had a bitter rivalry with Nikola Tesla.
• During his lifetime, Edison received 1,093 U.S. patents.
• Death Year: 1931
• Death date: October 18, 1931
• Death State: New Jersey
• Death City: West Orange
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Thomas Edison Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/inventors/thomas-edison
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 13, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
• Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
• I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.
• I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
• Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.
• To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
• Hell, there ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something.
• I always invent to obtain money to go on inventing.
• The phonograph, in one sense, knows more than we do ourselves. For it will retain a perfect mechanical memory of many things which we may forget, even though we have said them.
• We know nothing; we have to creep by the light of experiments, never knowing the day or the hour that we shall find what we are after.
• Everything, anything is possible; the world is a vast storehouse of undiscovered energy.
• The recurrence of a phenomenon like Edison is not very likely... He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity.” (Nikola Tesla)

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Thomas Edison

By: History.com Editors

Updated: October 17, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor and savvy businessman who acquired a record number of 1,093 patents (singly or jointly) and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb, the alkaline battery and one of the earliest motion picture cameras. He also created the world’s first industrial research laboratory. Known as the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” for the New Jersey town where he did some of his best-known work, Edison had become one of the most famous men in the world by the time he was in his 30s. In addition to his talent for invention, Edison was also a successful manufacturer who was highly skilled at marketing his inventions—and himself—to the public.

Thomas Edison’s Early Life

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the seventh and last child born to Samuel Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott Edison, and would be one of four to survive to adulthood. At age 12, he developed hearing loss—he was reportedly deaf in one ear, and nearly deaf in the other—which was variously attributed to scarlet fever, mastoiditis or a blow to the head.

Thomas Edison received little formal education, and left school in 1859 to begin working on the railroad between Detroit and Port Huron, Michigan, where his family then lived. By selling food and newspapers to train passengers, he was able to net about $50 profit each week, a substantial income at the time—especially for a 13-year-old.

Did you know? By the time he died at age 84 on October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison had amassed a record 1,093 patents: 389 for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph, 150 for the telegraph, 141 for storage batteries and 34 for the telephone.

During the Civil War , Edison learned the emerging technology of telegraphy, and traveled around the country working as a telegrapher. But with the development of auditory signals for the telegraph, he was soon at a disadvantage as a telegrapher.

To address this problem, Edison began to work on inventing devices that would help make things possible for him despite his deafness (including a printer that would convert electrical telegraph signals to letters). In early 1869, he quit telegraphy to pursue invention full time.

Edison in Menlo Park

From 1870 to 1875, Edison worked out of Newark, New Jersey, where he developed telegraph-related products for both Western Union Telegraph Company (then the industry leader) and its rivals. Edison’s mother died in 1871, and that same year he married 16-year-old Mary Stillwell.

Despite his prolific telegraph work, Edison encountered financial difficulties by late 1875, but one year later—with the help of his father—Edison was able to build a laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey, 12 miles south of Newark.

With the success of his Menlo Park “invention factory,” some historians credit Edison as the inventor of the research and development (R&D) lab, a collaborative, team-based model later copied by AT&T at Bell Labs , the DuPont Experimental Station , the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and other R&D centers.

In 1877, Edison developed the carbon transmitter, a device that improved the audibility of the telephone by making it possible to transmit voices at higher volume and with more clarity.

That same year, his work with the telegraph and telephone led him to invent the phonograph, which recorded sound as indentations on a sheet of paraffin-coated paper; when the paper was moved beneath a stylus, the sounds were reproduced. The device made an immediate splash, though it took years before it could be produced and sold commercially.

Edison and the Light Bulb

In 1878, Edison focused on inventing a safe, inexpensive electric light to replace the gaslight—a challenge that scientists had been grappling with for the last 50 years. With the help of prominent financial backers like J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family, Edison set up the Edison Electric Light Company and began research and development.

He made a breakthrough in October 1879 with a bulb that used a platinum filament, and in the summer of 1880 hit on carbonized bamboo as a viable alternative for the filament, which proved to be the key to a long-lasting and affordable light bulb. In 1881, he set up an electric light company in Newark, and the following year moved his family (which by now included three children) to New York.

Though Edison’s early incandescent lighting systems had their problems, they were used in such acclaimed events as the Paris Lighting Exhibition in 1881 and the Crystal Palace in London in 1882.

Competitors soon emerged, notably Nikola Tesla, a proponent of alternating or AC current (as opposed to Edison’s direct or DC current). By 1889, AC current would come to dominate the field, and the Edison General Electric Co. merged with another company in 1892 to become General Electric .

Later Years and Inventions

Edison’s wife, Mary, died in August 1884, and in February 1886 he remarried Mirna Miller; they would have three children together. He built a large estate called Glenmont and a research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, with facilities including a machine shop, a library and buildings for metallurgy, chemistry and woodworking.

Spurred on by others’ work on improving the phonograph, he began working toward producing a commercial model. He also had the idea of linking the phonograph to a zoetrope, a device that strung together a series of photographs in such a way that the images appeared to be moving. Working with William K.L. Dickson, Edison succeeded in constructing a working motion picture camera, the Kinetograph, and a viewing instrument, the Kinetoscope, which he patented in 1891.

After years of heated legal battles with his competitors in the fledgling motion-picture industry, Edison had stopped working with moving film by 1918. In the interim, he had had success developing an alkaline storage battery, which he originally worked on as a power source for the phonograph but later supplied for submarines and electric vehicles.

In 1912, automaker Henry Ford asked Edison to design a battery for the self-starter, which would be introduced on the iconic Model T . The collaboration began a continuing relationship between the two great American entrepreneurs.

Despite the relatively limited success of his later inventions (including his long struggle to perfect a magnetic ore-separator), Edison continued working into his 80s. His rise from poor, uneducated railroad worker to one of the most famous men in the world made him a folk hero.

More than any other individual, he was credited with building the framework for modern technology and society in the age of electricity. His Glenmont estate—where he died in 1931—and West Orange laboratory are now open to the public as the Thomas Edison National Historical Park .

Thomas Edison’s Greatest Invention. The Atlantic . Life of Thomas Alva Edison. Library of Congress . 7 Epic Fails Brought to You by the Genius Mind of Thomas Edison. Smithsonian Magazine .

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Biography of Thomas Edison, American Inventor

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Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847–October 18, 1931) was an American inventor who transformed the world with inventions including the lightbulb and the phonograph. He was considered the face of technology and progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Fast Facts: Thomas Edison

• Known For : Inventor of groundbreaking technology, including the lightbulb and the phonograph
• Born : February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio
• Parents : Sam Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott Edison
• Died : October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey
• Education : Three months of formal education, homeschooled until age 12
• Published Works : Quadruplex telegraph, phonograph, unbreakable cylinder record called the "Blue Ambersol," electric pen, a version of the incandescent lightbulb and an integrated system to run it, motion picture camera called a kinetograph
• Spouse(s) : Mary Stilwell, Mina Miller
• Children : Marion Estelle, Thomas Jr., William Leslie by Mary Stilwell; and Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore Miller by Mina Miller

Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, the son of a Canadian refugee and his schoolteacher wife. Edison's mother Nancy Elliott was originally from New York until her family moved to Vienna, Canada, where she met Sam Edison, Jr., whom she later married. Sam was the descendant of British loyalists who fled to Canada at the end of the American Revolution, but when he became involved in an unsuccessful revolt in Ontario in the 1830s he was forced to flee to the United States. They made their home in Ohio in 1839. The family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where Sam worked in the lumber business.

Education and First Job

Known as "Al" in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood, and all of them were in their teens when Edison was born. Edison tended to be in poor health when he was young and was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison "addled," or slow, his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint." At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and chemical experiments.

In 1859 at the age of 12, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. He started two businesses in Port Huron, a newsstand and a fresh produce stand, and finagled free or very low-cost trade and transport in the train. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the "Grand Trunk Herald," the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board.

Loss of Hearing

Around the age of 12, Edison lost almost all of his hearing. There are several theories as to what caused this. Some attribute it to the aftereffects of scarlet fever, which he had as a child. Others blame it on a train conductor boxing his ears after Edison caused a fire in the baggage car, an incident Edison claimed never happened. Edison himself blamed it on an incident in which he was grabbed by his ears and lifted to a train. He did not let his disability discourage him, however, and often treated it as an asset since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. Undoubtedly, though, his deafness made him more solitary and shy in dealing with others.

Telegraph Operator

In 1862, Edison rescued a 3-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward. That winter, he took a job as a telegraph operator in Port Huron. In the meantime, he continued his scientific experiments on the side. Between 1863 and 1867, Edison migrated from city to city in the United States, taking available telegraph jobs.

Love of Invention

In 1868, Edison moved to Boston where he worked in the Western Union office and worked even more on inventing things. In January 1869 Edison resigned from his job, intending to devote himself full time to inventing things. His first invention to receive a patent was the electric vote recorder, in June 1869. Daunted by politicians' reluctance to use the machine, he decided that in the future he would not waste time inventing things that no one wanted.

Edison moved to New York City in the middle of 1869. A friend, Franklin L. Pope, allowed Edison to sleep in a room where he worked, Samuel Laws' Gold Indicator Company. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to maintain and improve the printer machines.

During the next period of his life, Edison became involved in multiple projects and partnerships dealing with the telegraph. In October 1869, Edison joined with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley to form the organization Pope, Edison and Co. They advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. The partnership merged with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. in 1870.

American Telegraph Works

Edison also established the Newark Telegraph Works in Newark, New Jersey, with William Unger to manufacture stock printers. He formed the American Telegraph Works to work on developing an automatic telegraph later in the year.

In 1874 he began to work on a multiplex telegraphic system for Western Union, ultimately developing a quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in both directions. When Edison sold his patent rights to the quadruplex to the rival Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co. , a series of court battles followed—which Western Union won. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in 1875.

Marriage and Family

His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edison's mother died in 1871, and he married his former employee Mary Stilwell on Christmas Day that same year. While Edison loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues.

Nevertheless, their first child Marion was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., in January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two "Dot" and "Dash," referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie, was born in October 1878.

Mary died in 1884, perhaps of cancer or the morphine prescribed to her to treat it. Edison married again: his second wife was Mina Miller, the daughter of Ohio industrialist Lewis Miller, who founded the Chautauqua Foundation. They married on February 24, 1886, and had three children, Madeleine (born 1888), Charles (1890), and Theodore Miller Edison (1898).

Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park , New Jersey, in 1876. This site later become known as an "invention factory," since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there. Edison would conduct numerous experiments to find answers to problems. He said, "I never quit until I get what I'm after. Negative results are just what I'm after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results." Edison liked to work long hours and expected much from his employees .

In 1879, after considerable experimentation and based on 70 years work of several other inventors, Edison invented a carbon filament that would burn for 40 hours—the first practical incandescent lightbulb .

While Edison had neglected further work on the phonograph, others had moved forward to improve it. In particular, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter developed an improved machine that used a wax cylinder and a floating stylus, which they called a graphophone . They sent representatives to Edison to discuss a possible partnership on the machine, but Edison refused to collaborate with them, feeling that the phonograph was his invention alone. With this competition, Edison was stirred into action and resumed his work on the phonograph in 1887. Edison eventually adopted methods similar to Bell and Tainter's in his phonograph.

Phonograph Companies

The phonograph was initially marketed as a business dictation machine. Entrepreneur Jesse H. Lippincott acquired control of most of the phonograph companies, including Edison's, and set up the North American Phonograph Co. in 1888. The business did not prove profitable, and when Lippincott fell ill, Edison took over the management.

In 1894, the North American Phonograph Co. went into bankruptcy, a move which allowed Edison to buy back the rights to his invention. In 1896, Edison started the National Phonograph Co. with the intent of making phonographs for home amusement. Over the years, Edison made improvements to the phonograph and to the cylinders which were played on them, the early ones being made of wax. Edison introduced an unbreakable cylinder record, named the Blue Amberol, at roughly the same time he entered the disc phonograph market in 1912.

The introduction of an Edison disc was in reaction to the overwhelming popularity of discs on the market in contrast to cylinders. Touted as being superior to the competition's records, the Edison discs were designed to be played only on Edison phonographs and were cut laterally as opposed to vertically. The success of the Edison phonograph business, though, was always hampered by the company's reputation of choosing lower-quality recording acts. In the 1920s, competition from radio caused the business to sour, and the Edison disc business ceased production in 1929.

Ore-Milling and Cement

Another Edison interest was an ore milling process that would extract various metals from ore. In 1881, he formed the Edison Ore-Milling Co., but the venture proved fruitless as there was no market for it. He returned to the project in 1887, thinking that his process could help the mostly depleted Eastern mines compete with the Western ones. In 1889, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works was formed, and Edison became absorbed by its operations and began to spend much time away from home at the mines in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Although he invested much money and time into this project, it proved unsuccessful when the market went down, and additional sources of ore in the Midwest were found.

Edison also became involved in promoting the use of cement and formed the Edison Portland Cement Co. in 1899. He tried to promote the widespread use of cement for the construction of low-cost homes and envisioned alternative uses for concrete in the manufacture of phonographs, furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. Unfortunately, Edison was ahead of his time with these ideas, as the widespread use of concrete proved economically unfeasible at that time.

Motion Pictures

In 1888, Edison met Eadweard Muybridge at West Orange and viewed Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope. This machine used a circular disc with still photographs of the successive phases of movement around the circumference to recreate the illusion of movement. Edison declined to work with Muybridge on the device and decided to work on his motion picture camera at his laboratory. As Edison put it in a caveat written the same year, "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear."

The task of inventing the machine fell to Edison's associate William K. L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device for recording images, before turning to a celluloid strip. In October 1889, Dickson greeted Edison's return from Paris with a new device that projected pictures and contained sound. After more work, patent applications were made in 1891 for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion picture peephole viewer.

Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York and soon spread to other major cities during 1894. In 1893, a motion picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (the slang name for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled), was opened at the West Orange complex. Short films were produced using a variety of acts of the day. Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers.

When Dickson assisted competitors on developing another peephole motion picture device and the eidoscope projection system, later to develop into the Mutoscope, he was fired. Dickson went on to form the American Mutoscope Co. along with Harry Marvin, Herman Casler, and Elias Koopman. Edison subsequently adopted a projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and renamed it the Vitascope and marketed it under his name. The Vitascope premiered on April 23, 1896, to great acclaim.

Patent Battles

Competition from other motion picture companies soon created heated legal battles between them and Edison over patents. Edison sued many companies for infringement. In 1909, the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Co. brought a degree of cooperation to the various companies who were given licenses in 1909, but in 1915, the courts found the company to be an unfair monopoly.

In 1913, Edison experimented with synchronizing sound to film. A Kinetophone was developed by his laboratory and synchronized sound on a phonograph cylinder to the picture on a screen. Although this initially brought interest, the system was far from perfect and disappeared by 1915. By 1918, Edison ended his involvement in the motion picture field.

In 1911, Edison's companies were re-organized into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. As the organization became more diversified and structured, Edison became less involved in the day-to-day operations, although he still had some decision-making authority. The goals of the organization became more to maintain market viability than to produce new inventions frequently.

A fire broke out at the West Orange laboratory in 1914, destroying 13 buildings. Although the loss was great, Edison spearheaded the rebuilding of the lot.

World War I

When Europe became involved in World War I, Edison advised preparedness and felt that technology would be the future of war. He was named the head of the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, an attempt by the government to bring science into its defense program. Although mainly an advisory board, it was instrumental in the formation of a laboratory for the Navy that opened in 1923. During the war, Edison spent much of his time doing naval research, particularly on submarine detection, but he felt the Navy was not receptive to many of his inventions and suggestions.

Health Issues

In the 1920s, Edison's health became worse and he began to spend more time at home with his wife. His relationship with his children was distant, although Charles was president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. While Edison continued to experiment at home, he could not perform some experiments that he wanted to at his West Orange laboratory because the board would not approve them. One project that held his fascination during this period was the search for an alternative to rubber.

Death and Legacy

Henry Ford , an admirer and a friend of Edison's, reconstructed Edison's invention factory as a museum at Greenfield Village, Michigan, which opened during the 50th anniversary of Edison's electric light in 1929. The main celebration of Light's Golden Jubilee, co-hosted by Ford and General Electric, took place in Dearborn along with a huge celebratory dinner in Edison's honor attended by notables such as President Hoover , John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George Eastman , Marie Curie , and Orville Wright . Edison's health, however, had declined to the point that he could not stay for the entire ceremony.

During the last two years of his life, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma on October 14, 1931. He died on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey.

• Israel, Paul. "Edison: A Life of Invention." New York, Wiley, 2000.
• Josephson, Matthew. "Edison: A Biography." New York, Wiley, 1992.
• Stross, Randall E. "The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World." New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007.
• Thomas Edison's Greatest Inventions
• The Failed Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison
• What Was Menlo Park?
• Thomas Edison's 'Muckers'
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• History of Electricity
• Major Innovators of Early Motion Pictures
• Great Father-Son Inventor Duos
• Famous Thomas Edison Quotes
• A Timeline for the Invention of the Lightbulb
• The Most Important Inventions of the 19th Century
• Notable American Inventors of the Industrial Revolution
• A Look at the 6 Technologies That Revolutionized Communications
• Biography of Granville T. Woods, American Inventor
• History and Timeline of the Battery
• Reginald Fessenden and the First Radio Broadcast

A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison

Written by John D. Venable

“But the man whose clothes were always wrinkled, whose hair was always tousled and who frequently lacked a shave probably did more than any other one man to influence the industrial civilization in which we live. 

To him we owe the phonograph and motion picture which spice hours of leisure; the universal electric motor and the nickel-iron-alkaline storage battery with their numberless commercial uses; the magnetic ore separator, the fluorescent lamp, the basic principles of modern electronics. Medicine thanks him for the fluoroscope, which he left to the public domain without patent. Chemical research follows the field he opened in his work on coal-tar derivatives, synthetic carbolic acid, and a source of natural rubber that can be grown in the United States. 

His greatest contribution, perhaps, was the incandescent lamp – the germ from which sprouted the great power utility systems of our day…​Although his formal education stopped at the age of 12, his whole life was consumed by a passion for self-education, and he was a moving force behind the establishment of a great scientific journal.

The number of patents – 1100 – far exceeds that of any other inventor. And the 2500 notebooks in which he recorded the progress of thousands of experiments are still being gleaned of unused material. Once, asked in what his interests lay, Edison smilingly responded, ‘Everything.’ If we ask ourselves where the fruits of his life are seen, we might well answer, ‘Everywhere.’”

Thomas Alva Edison

The story of a great american ​.

Journeying from Holland, the Edison family originally landed in Elizabethport, New Jersey, about 1730.  In Colonial times, they farmed a large tract of land not far from West Orange, New Jersey, where Thomas A. Edison made his home some 160 years later.  Their fortunes fluctuated with their politics.  Like many well-to-do landowners of that time, John Edison, a great-grandfather of the inventor, remained a Loyalist during the revolution, suffered imprisonment and was under sentence of execution from which he was saved only through the efforts of his own and his wife’s prominent Whig relatives.  His lands were confiscated, however, and the family migrated to Nova Scotia, where they remained until 1811, when they moved to Vienna, Ontario.  Edison’s grandfather, Captain Samuel Edison, served with the British in the War of 1812.

In Ontario, Edison’s father, another Samuel, met and married Nancy Elliott, schoolteacher and daughter of a minister whose family had originally come from Connecticut where her grandfather Ebenezer Elliott had served as a captain in Washington’s army.

The younger Samuel now became involved in another political struggle – the much later and unsuccessful Canadian counterpart of the American Revolution known as the Papineau-MacKenzie Rebellion.  Upon the failure of this movement, he was forced to escape across the border to the United States, and after innumerable dangers and hardships, finally reached the town of Milan, Ohio, where he decided to settle.

Thomas Edison’s Early Days

The brick cottage in which Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, still stands in Milan, Ohio.  Its humble size and simple design serve as a constant reminder that in America, a humble beginning does not hamper the rise to success.

Even as a boy of pre-school age, “Al” Edison was extraordinarily inquisitive; he wanted to find out things for himself.  The story is told of how he tried – unsuccessfully – to solve the mystery of hatching eggs by sitting on them himself, in his brother-in-law’s barn.  Among other tales of his youth in Milan are his narrow escape from drowning in the barge canal that ran alongside the Edison home, and his public spanking in the town square after he accidentally had set fire to his father’s barn.

When he was seven years old, his family moved again; this time to Port Huron, Michigan.  But, unlike their earlier migrations by wagon, the trip was made by railroad train and lake schooner.

Edison’s formal schooling was of short duration and of little value to him.  To use his own words, he “was usually at the foot of the class.”  His teacher did not have the patience to cope with so active and inquisitive a mind, so his mother withdrew him from school and capably undertook the task of his education herself.  In spite of his lack of formal schooling, Edison recognized  the great worth of education and, in his later years, sponsored the famous Edison scholarships for outstanding high school graduates who were selected each year through a national contest.

Young Tom’s First Laboratory

Most of Edison’s vast knowledge was acquired through independent study and training.  At the age of eleven, for example, he had his own chemical laboratory in the cellar of his Port Huron home and had read such books as Gibbon’s  “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Sears’ “History of the World,”  Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” and the “Dictionary of Sciences.”

At twelve, his parents permitted him to take a job as newsboy and candy “butcher” on the train of the Grand Trunk Railroad running from Port Huron to Detroit.  In this, his first job, Edison exhibited a knack for business and an ambition that far exceeded that of the average boy of his years.  He maintained a chemical laboratory in the train’s baggage car, which also served to house a printing press on which young Edison ran off copies of “The Weekly Herald,” the first newspaper ever edited, published and printed aboard a moving train.  In addition, he became a middle-man for fresh vegetables and fruit, buying from the farmers along the route and selling to Detroit markets.

When only thirteen years old, he was earning several dollars a day, a tidy sum even for a man in that period.  Already he was putting into practice a theory followed through his life – that hard work and sound thinking recognize no substitutes.

One of the most widely known stories about Edison is the one which attributes his deafness to a quick-tempered trainman who soundly boxed his ears when Edison’s traveling laboratory caused a fire to break out in the baggage car.

Only part of the tale is true:  the fire broke out and the trainman boxed his ears, but Edison himself never believed his deafness resulted from this incident.  He traced it to a later occasion when another trainman thoughtlessly picked him up by the ears to help him aboard a train that was pulling out of a station.

It was during this period that a dramatic incident occurred which altered the entire course of Edison’s career and which, therefore, may well have also altered the course of world progress.  At Mt. Clemens, Michigan, the young Edison risked his own life to save the station agent’s little boy from death under a moving freight car.  The grateful father taught him telegraphy as a reward.  Edison’s association with telegraphy brought to a climax his interest in electricity – a word with which the name of Edison was to become inseparably associated – and led him into studies and experiments which resulted in some of the world’s greatest inventions.

A Telegrapher at Seventeen

Edison’s skill as a sender and receiver earned him a job as a regular telegrapher on the Grand Trunk line at Stratford Junction, Ontario, when only seventeen years of age.  His creative imagination, however, proved his downfall in this instance.  He was fired when a supervisor happened across the secret of one of the young inventor’s creations – a device for automatically “reporting in” on the wire in Morse code every hour, when, in actuality, Edison was napping to make up for sleep lost in pursuing his studies.

As a telegrapher, Edison traveled throughout the middle west, always studying and experimenting to improve the crude telegraph apparatus of the era.  Turning eastward, Edison went to Boston where he went to work for Western Union as an operator.  In his spare time, he created his first invention to be patented – a machine for electrically recording and counting the “Ayes” and “Nays” cast by members of a legislative body.  While the invention earned him no money, because members of Congress could not be interested in any device to speed up proceedings, it did teach him a commercial lesson.  Then and there he decided never again to invent anything unless he was sure it was wanted.

From Boston, Edison went to New York, where he landed, poor and in debt, in 1869.  While working as an employee of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company and later as a partner with Franklin L. Pope in their own electrical engineering company.  Edison invented the Universal Stock Printer.  For this device he received $40,000, the first money an invention brought him.

To Edison, the mere possession of money meant nothing; its only value rested in its ability to provide the tools and equipment necessary for further work and experiment.  With the $40,000 he opened a factory in Newark, New Jersey, in 1870, where he manufactured stock tickers and devoted his energies to invention.

By the time he was twenty-three, his established methods of hard work and sound thinking  had catapulted him to a point on the road to success rarely attained by one so young.

Edison’s Hectic Years

With his success as an inventor and manufacturer at the age of twenty-three, Thomas Alva Edison in 1870 plunged into a period of feverish endeavor that has no parallel in the lives of other great men of science.  His fertile brain and boundless energy drove him from one great invention to another, each of which, in turn, launched new manufacturing enterprises, giving employment to thousands of people.  Few were his working days that did not extend through twenty of the twenty-four hours.  The group of men who worked closely with him as his immediate assistants earned him the name of the “insomnia squad” as they tried valiantly to follow the pace set by the “boss.”

Actually there was no “boss” since, as the men who worked with him have testified, he worked harder, longer, and looked less like the owner of the plant than anyone present.  A casual visitor, we are told, would have regarded Edison as one of the least likely persons to have been in charge, judging by outward appearances.  Democracy walked with him through his laboratory.

Work in his Newark plants constantly demanded more time for production than creation, so in 1876, in order to devote more of his energies to invention, he turned the management of his factories over to trusted assistants and established laboratories at Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Before moving to Menlo Park, however, Edison made one of his great discoveries, an electrical phenomenon he called “etheric force.”  This was the discovery that electrically generated waves would traverse an open circuit – the principle on which wireless telegraphy and radio are founded.  The idea that electricity would traverse space was almost beyond belief at that time.

In a related field of research, Edison also discovered that messages could be sent through space by induction, in which a current generated in one set of wires induced a  like current to flow through another set of wires between which no connection existed.  As a result of this research, he received patents in 1885 on the transmission of signals, by induction, between moving train and a station and between ship and shore.

Edison Aids Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi had become a personal friend of Edison’s and, because of this friendship, Edison made these patents available to him rather than to a competitor who offered more money.  Thus, these patents helped Marconi to become recognized as the inventor of the wireless telegraph.

Edison was the first to give credit where credit was due, even though some of his earlier experiments and discoveries laid the groundwork for his successors.

It was at Newark, too, that Edison invented the “electric pen,” forerunner of the mimeograph machine.

With the opening of his Menlo Park laboratories, Edison devoted most of his time to invention rather than to the manufacture of things.  The results were astounding.

One of the greatest of the many “firsts” attributed to Edison is the carrying out of research on an organized basis.  Before Edison did this, the process of invention was usually a one-man and one-brain undertaking.  At  Menlo Park, Edison surrounded himself with scientific apparatus and trained assistants who handled the drudgery and time-consuming details of research, making possible his most acclaimed invention, the incandescent electric lamp.  Menlo Park itself was an experiment for Edison, and he did not really perfect his invention of organized research in industry until eleven years later, when he transferred operations to West Orange on a greatly enlarged scale.

Edison’s Favorite – The Phonograph

The carbon telephone transmitter which made the telephone commercially practical was invented by Edison in 1877, the same year he gave the world the phonograph.

Until Edison produced the carbon transmitter, telephone communication had been highly impractical.  He sold his rights in the invention to Western Union which, in turn, reached an agreement with the company backed by Alexander Graham Bell, and for many years thereafter telephone instruments bore the names of both Bell and Edison.  To use Edison’s expression, it was fifty-fifty – he invented the transmitter and Bell the receiver.

Edison’s carbon transmitter later helped to make radio possible in that the same principle was adopted in developing a practical microphone.

The phonograph not only was Edison’s favorite invention, but it probably was one of the most original ever created.  In most instances, the inventor is the man who first perfects a device or method for achieving a result which for a long period of time had been a goal of experimentation and research by others as well as himself.  But in the case of the phonograph, the idea of recording  sound for later reproduction had not been conceived until Edison received inspiration while experimenting with the automatic telegraph.  Just as amazing, perhaps, is the fact that his first phonograph, although just a crude model, was a complete success.

Lawyer Steals Edison Patents

Edison worked at breakneck speed during the decade following 1876.  Not alone was his own tireless constitution responsible for this pace; the period was one of unending competition and no holds were barred by his competitors. Despite his almost inhuman capacity for work, others in some instances gained recognition for creations that were rightfully his.  On one occasion, a lawyer entrusted to file applications for fifty-seven new patents stole the papers instead and sold them to Edison’s rivals.

The desire for revenge formed no part of Edison’s character, as revealed by his reaction to the theft of these patents.  Even after long years had gone by he steadfastly refused to name the dishonest attorney.  “His family might suffer,” he told associates who suggested that he make public the lawyer’s name.

Edison followed a policy which, absurd though it may sound today in contrast to the secrecy now surrounding most inventive endeavor, permitted the press to know and report even minute advances he made in experiments leading to the perfection of the first practical incandescent lamp.

The Edison Lamp

Others before and in the same period with Edison toiled long and hard to produce a practical incandescent lamp.  The idea was not original with him, but it required the Edison genius to solve the difficult problems involved.

Many persons tried to deprive Edison of the honor of having been the first to perfect a practical incandescent electric lamp, but they all met with failure.  Edison’s claim was to genuine to be set aside, even by the courts which, for one reason or another, might have been inclined to bias.

An English jurist considering the claim of an English inventor, for example, might well be inclined to rule against Edison, if such a ruling were at all possible.  But Lord Justice Fry, sitting in one of Great Britain’s Royal Courts of Justice, made this commentary on the claims of Joseph W. Swan, an English inventor: “Swan could not do what Edison did…the difference between a carbon rod (as employed by Swan) and a carbon filament (Mr. Edison’s method) was the difference between success and failure.

“Mr. Edison used the filament instead of the rod for a definite purpose, and by diminution of the sectional area made a physical law subserve the end he had in view.  The smallness of size, then, was no casual matter, but was intended to bring about, and did bring about, a result which the rod could never produce, and so converted failure into success.”

Edison realized that the invention of a practical lamp alone was not enough to replace gas as the most-used means of lighting.  Therefore, his work on the electric light is even more astonishing, because in addition to perfecting a commercially practical lamp he also invented a ‘complete generation and distribution system, including dynamos, conductors, fuses, meters, sockets, and numerous other devices.  Of 1,097 United States patents granted to Edison during his lifetime – by far the greatest number ever granted to one individual – 356 dealt with electric lighting and the generation and distribution of electricity.

The "Edison Effect"

The year 1883 was significant for Edison in that, by his discovery of what was to become known as the “Edison effect,” he pushed aside a veil of darkness behind which were to be found all the wonders of electronics.  Edison in this achievement discovered the previously unknown phenomenon by which an independent wire or plate, when placed between the legs of the filament in an electric bulb, serves as a valve to control the flow of current.  This discovery unearthed the fundamental principle on which rests the modern science of electronics.

In that year, 1883, Edison filed a patent on an electrical indicator employing the “Edison effect,” the first application in the field of electronics.

The facilities of Menlo Park were proving inadequate to meet the requirements of Edison’s amazing ability.  He began looking around for a place more suitable for his needs.  This he found in the little Essex County community of West Orange in northern New Jersey.  He gave the orders that set workmen to the task of building a new and greater research laboratory.

The West Orange Laboratory

Thomas Alva Edison entered into a new and the fullest phase of his career when, at age of forty, he moved his talents and tools from Menlo Park to his great new laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey, on November 24, 1887.

One of his first undertakings was the development of his favorite creation, the phonograph.  The pressure of his work in connection with the perfection and installation of electric lighting systems throughout the country had made it impossible for him to concentrate on the phonograph, but now he went to work in earnest to see that the instrument fulfilled the high destiny he had held out for it from its beginning ten years earlier.

During the first four years of his occupancy of his new laboratory at West Orange, he took out more than eighty patents on improvements on the cylinder phonograph and its businessman’s counterpart, the dictating machine.

At the same time, Edison interested himself in an entirely different field, one that was as new to the world as it was to him.  That field was the motion picture.  Eadweard Muybridge and others had done some experimental work, but had only hinted of motion pictures.  Muybridge, for example, by the employment of multiple cameras strung along a racetrack, had taken successive shots of a trotting horse, but he offered no method whereby the pictures could be viewed in motion.

The Motion Picture Camera

Two things led Edison to the invention of the motion picture camera:  His idea that motion could be captured by having one camera that would take repeated pictures at high speed, and a new celluloid film developed by George Eastman for use in still photography that proved adaptable to Edison’s proposed camera.

To Edison’s mind, motion pictures would do for the eye what the phonograph did for the ear.  Thus, we find that on Oct. 6, 1889, when they first projected an experimental motion picture in his laboratory, he gave birth to sound pictures as well.  The first movie actually was a “talkie.”  The picture was accompanied by synchronized sound from a phonograph record.

He applied for a patent on the motion picture camera on July 31, 1891.  The first commercial showing of motion pictures occurred three years later, April 14, 1894, with the opening of a “peephole” Kinetoscope parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York  City.

Several men developed machines for projecting motion pictures.  The best such projector, to Edison’s mind, was one built by Thomas Armat.  Edison acquired rights to Armat’s crude machine and then perfected it in his West Orange laboratory.

Commercial projection of motion pictures as we know it today began on April 23, 1896, at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall, New York City, where  the Edison Vitascope, embodying the basic principles of Armat’s invention with improvements by Edison, was used.

The vitascope was Edison’s name for the motion picture projector.  When he added sound, he called it the kinetophone, which he introduced commercially in 1913, or 13 years before Hollywood adopted that means of improving motion picture entertainment.

With Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen’s discovery of the X-ray in 1895, Edison turned his attention to the mysteries of these invisible rays.  Within a few months he developed the fluoroscope, which invention he did not patent, choosing to leave it to the public domain because of its universal need in medicine and surgery.  On May 16, 1896, he applied for a patent on the first fluorescent electric light, an invention that stemmed directly from his experimentation with the X-ray.

At the turn of the century, Edison propelled himself into one of the greatest sagas of science – his search for the acidless battery.  Others scoffed at his theory that somewhere in nature there existed the elements for a battery which would not destroy itself by corrosive action, but Edison was not to be denied.  After 10 years exhaustive experimentation he produced the alkaline storage battery, which today is employed in hundreds of industrial applications, such as providing power for mine haulage and inter- and intra-plant transportation, and in railway train lighting.

No field of scientific endeavor seemed foreign to his talents.  When, in 1914, a shortage of carbolic acid developed because World War I had cut off European supplies, Edison quickly devised a method of making domestic carbolic acid and was producing a ton a day within a month.

Edison and the War

New problems were heaped on Edison by the approaching entry of the United States into the war and the destruction by fire of his giant West Orange manufacturing plant.  Almost before the embers died, new buildings began to rise from the ruins.

America at that time was almost entirely dependent upon foreign sources for fundamental coal-tar derivatives vital to many manufacturing processes.  These derivatives were to become increasingly essential for the production of explosives, so Edison established plants for  their manufacture.  His work is recognized as having laid the groundwork for the most important development of the coal-tar chemical industry in the nation today.

Josephus Daniels, then-Secretary of the Navy, foresaw the country’s need for technological advances in its preparedness program.  His mind turned to one man, Thomas Edison, to undertake such a program, and in 1915, Edison became president of the newly created Naval Consulting Board, forerunner of the Navy Department’s great research division of today.  A colossal bronze head of the inventor, honoring him as the founder of the Naval Research Laboratories, was unveiled December 3, 1952, on the mall at the Anacostia, Maryland, Laboratories.

Edison arranged for leading scientists to serve with him on the consulting board and also made available to the government the facilities of his laboratory.  Much of the consulting board’s effort was directed against the German submarine menace.  Among the many inventions and ideas turned over to the Navy were devices and methods for detecting submarines  by sound from moving vessels and for detecting enemy planes, for locating gun positions by range sounding, improved torpedoes, a high-speed signalling shutter for searchlights, and underwater searchlights.  These and many other devices and formulas of prime importance came out of the Edison laboratory.

With the end of the war, Edison, although he had passed the 70 mark, thought only in terms of scientific and industrial progress.  There would be time enough to think of taking it easy when he reached 100, he said.  “My desire,” he once said of this period of his life, “is to do everything within my power to further free the people from drudgery, and create the largest possible measure of happiness, and prosperity.”

Honors Come to Edison

A great many honors and awards had been bestowed upon Edison by persons, societies, and countries throughout the world.  To him, such things were nice to have but were not to be sought after.  He could never get over being embarrassed when some new medal came his way.  But one of his greatest honors was yet to come.  On Oct. 20, 1928, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor – the nation’s highest award in recognition of services rendered.

A year later, on Oct. 21, 1929, the 50th anniversary of his invention of the incandescent  light, the world again paid homage to him.  In ceremonies participated in by Herbert Hoover, then-president of the United States, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, and other world figures, Edison re-enacted the making of the first practical incandescent lamp.

Time was running out for Edison, even though his keen mind and energies refused to admit it.  Creative thought and hard work still constituted his creed, and at the age of 80 he was launched on another great experiment.  Remembering his nation’s lack of preparedness for World War I, he attacked the problem of rubber so that, in the event of another war, the United States would not be dependent upon foreign sources for this vital material.  From goldenrod grown in his experimental gardens at Fort Myers, Fla., Edison was to produce rubber before his death.

A peaceful death enveloped him at his home, Glenmont, in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, on Oct. 18, 1931.  He was 84 years old.  His lifetime had embraced four wars and as many depressions.  His achievements, more so than those of any one man, had helped to lift America to the pinnacle of greatness.  The world was his beneficiary.

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Thomas Alva Edison

It is difficult to imagine the modern world without the contributions of Thomas Alva Edison. Although Edison’s inventions are well known and his place in history firmly established, familiarity with his work doesn’t lessen the awe inspired by it. While many can lay claim to creative genius, few demonstrate the remarkable breadth of Edison’s interests. Fewer still demonstrate Edison’s business insight. His inventions, coupled with a business vision focused on commercial development, gave rise to three major industries: recording, motion pictures, and electric utilities.

Edison was born on 11 February 1847 in Milan, Ohio, the last of seven children. Like many children during that era, Edison had little formal education. During his early youth his mother taught him at home. As he grew older he became more self-directed in his reading and sought out scientific books and technical journals.

Born to modest means, Edison began his working life early. At age thirteen he took a job as a newsboy on the local railroad. At the age of sixteen, acting on his interest in telegraphy, he found full-time work as a telegraph operator. In 1868 Edison settled in Boston and began his transformation from itinerant telegrapher to world-class inventor. In that year Edison received his first patent—an electric vote recorder intended for use by elected bodies to speed the voting process. Although Edison’s instincts were noble, the machine was a commercial failure. For the rest of his career Edison focused on inventions that had strong commercial appeal, and therefore the potential of financial reward.

In 1869, Edison moved to New York City, and it was there that he made an improved stock ticker . With the money generated by the stock ticker’s success, Edison set up his first laboratory and manufacturing facility at Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey. After several years, Edison left Newark for the small village of Menlo Park, New Jersey. At Menlo Park , Edison created the first industrial research laboratory, which contained equipment and materials necessary to work on any idea that might pique his interest. Akin to an inventor’s playground, the lab at Menlo Park became the prototype for later, modern research and development (R & D) facilities such as the famous Bell Laboratories . The Menlo Park Laboratory was followed in 1887 by a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. This complex consisted of five buildings which housed, among other things, a power plant, machine shops, a physics lab, a chemistry lab, and a metallurgy lab. Over the years, factories to manufacture Edison inventions were built around the laboratory. At its peak during World War I, the complex covered more than twenty acres and employed 10,000 people.

With everything he needed on hand in his laboratories, Edison launched a flurry of creative and business activity that earned him the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” His first great invention (and, he once said, his favorite) was the phonograph , the first device that could record and reproduce sound. His invention found a receptive public and Edison became internationally famous. His companies manufactured both the phonograph as well as the wax cylinders and, later, the disks, that the phonograph played. In one of the rare cases of Edison shortsightedness, he refused to acknowledge the growing popularity of disc records in the early 1900s. While other companies, such as Columbia, made both discs and cylinders and let consumers make the choice, Edison stuck with the cylinder far too long. Eventually, his declining market share forced him to introduce a disc record in 1912.

The second of the Edison-created industries was that of electric power generation and distribution. Edison developed practical electrical lighting and, in essence, ushered in the electrical age. Edison’s monumental achievement was not the invention of the incandescent light bulb, for which he is often mistakenly credited, but rather the invention of a complete system of electric light and power and the launching of the modern electric utility industry. Pearl Street Station , which opened in lower Manhattan in September 1882 featured safe and reliable central power generation, efficient distribution, and a successful end use (i.e., the long-lasting incandescent light bulb and electric motors developed by Edison), all at a competitive price. The one-square mile lit up by the Pearl Street station demonstrated the potential of electric power.

In the 1890s, Edison began working on motion picture technology, and in the process helped to create a third industry. Edison began commercial production of short movies in 1893, often filming in the famous “Black Maria,” the first motion picture studio. Like the electric light and phonograph before it, Edison developed a complete system that encompassed everything needed to both film and show motion pictures. Although Edison’s work in motion pictures was pioneering, the industry quickly became so competitive that Edison left the business.

Edison’s inventions bought him great fame and wealth. A savvy publicist, Edison carefully cultivated a public image of eccentric genius combined with common man. By the dawn of the twentieth century Edison had become an icon of American ingenuity. During the last years of his life, Edison’s health deteriorated and on 18 October 1931, he died at the age of 84.

The following minute, adopted by the Institute's board of directors shortly after Mr. Edison's death, indicates briefly the tremendous scope of his activity: "The physical life of Thomas Alva Edison, world benefactor, ended on Sunday, October 18, 1931. The spiritual benefits of his contributions to humanity continue to live. His genius, vision, patience, persistence, industry, and widely diversified talents, which brought to fruition many of his conceptions, have contributed greatly to the comfort, convenience, and happiness of mankind, and his achievements constitute a great incentive and inspiration to those who follow. In particular, his invention of the incandescent electric lamp and his conception, more than 50 years ago, of the combination of a central generating station with a suitable distributing system for electrical energy, firmly establish him as the founder of the electric lighting industry of the world. He was the outstanding world leader in the group of inventors, scientists, and engineers whose achievements in technology have produced great social and economic benefits, including the employment, in useful occupations throughout the civilized world, of tens of thousands of men and women. He was respected and admired by his associates who cherish their memory of his ability, simplicity, and other personal characteristics. Mr. Edison was, in 1884, one of the signers of the call for the organization meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and he was elected a vice-president at the first election of officers; later he was elected an Honorary Member. His achievements caused a group of his associates and friends to establish the Edison Medal, which is now awarded annually by this Institute."

John W. Howell and John W. Lieb.

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Photo credit: Richard Warren Lipack / Wikimedia Commons. The evolution of Edison's incandescent electric light bulb and socket - 1880-1881. Left to right: First form "1880 Wire Terminal Base" socket and bulb as used on the S.S. Columbia - first commercial installation of Edison electric lighting system; Second form "1880 Wire Terminal Base" socket and bulb; "1880 Original Screw Base" socket and bulb and the "1881 Improved Screw Base" socket and light bulb.

"Edison Chemical Meter" for reading power

Photo credit: Richard Warren Lipack / Wikimedia Commons. Detail of original Edison chandelier with first form "1880 Wire Terminal Base" sockets and incandescent lamps behind "Edison Pioneer" and 'Edisonian' author Francis Jehl.

Photo credit: Richard Warren Lipack / Wikimedia Commons. Table card obverse reads: "Banquet by the American Electricians in honor of the Foreign Official Delegates to the International Electrical Congress" held at The Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago, Illinois on 24 August 1893. Signatories include General Electric co-founders Elihu Thomson and Thomas A. Edison. Event occurred as Tesla Polyphase A.C. electrical system was introduced at 1893 Chicago Columbian Expo as effort to aid D.C. direct current faction cause in face of new Tesla Polyphase A.C. system soon to supplant it.

Photo credit: Richard Warren Lipack / Wikimedia Commons. Table card verso bearing printed inscription reading: "The Grand Pacific Hotel - Chicago, Thursday, August 24th, 1893," for banquet held in Chicago, Illinois by the American Electricians in honor of the Foreign Official Delegates to the International Electrical Congress. Signatories include H.Helmholtz, A. Palaz and T. A. Edison. Provenance is estate of Thomas A. Edison.

Upstairs at Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory (removed to Greenfield Village) Note the organ against the back wall. Photo by Andrew Balet

Edison's Electrographic Vote Recorder

Photo credit: Richard Warren Lipack / Wikimedia Commons. Westinghouse Corporation Tesla based Polyphase A.C. electric light display shown in foreground dominating Edison-Thomson General Electric Company D.C. / direct current based electric lighting display at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Edison Movie Projector

Black Maria Movie Studio

Further Reading

• Thomas Alva Edison Historic Site at Menlo Park, 1876 - Edison's site in Menlo Park was recognized as an IEEE Milestone
• Thomas A. Edison West Orange Laboratories and Factories, 1887 - Edison's laboratory in West Orange was recognized as an IEEE Milestone
• Papers of Thomas Edison - correspondence, records and ephemera, 1926 - 1947
• Thomas Edison at Menlo Park
• Thomas Edison's Children
• Edison and Ore Refining
• Edison's Electric Light and Power System
• Edison and Motion Pictures
• Edison's Alkaline Battery
• Edison's Electric Pen
• Edison Effect
• Edison's Incandescent Lamp
• Biographies
• Power distribution

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The Tenacity of Thomas Edison

In the face of failure, edison's persistence led him to new possibilities and helped cement his legacy as america's greatest inventor..

By The Henry Ford

"Edison's Perfected Electric Light," Page from January 10, 1880 Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (1880-01-10) by Frank Leslie's Publishing House Original Source: Digital Collections

A Relentless Researcher

In 1878, Thomas Edison immersed himself in research related to electric light at his Menlo Park laboratory in New Jersey. The filaments in the incandescent lamps he was developing required a material that glowed long enough to provide light when heated by electric current. As the solution remained elusive, Edison and his team tested hundreds of materials. Finally, platinum emerged as a promising possibility. 

Laboratory Assistants Working in Menlo Park Laboratory, Menlo Park, New Jersey, circa 1880 (1875/1885) Original Source: Digital Collections

The scarcity of platinum made it expensive. Edison knew that if he was to sell his incandescent lamps at a reasonable price, he would need access to large quantities of the metal. After investigating literature on geology, mining, and mineral processing, Edison concluded that platinum could be recovered from gold mine tailings. His team at Menlo Park began a new round of experiments.

Illustration, Preparing the First Practical Incandescent Lamp for Testing at Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, October 19, 1879 (1879-10-19) by Flemming, Harry K. and Jehl, Francis, 1860-1941 Original Source: Digital Collections

When carbon became the solution to Edison's incandescent filament problem, he turned his attention away from platinum. Experiments continued, but now focused on ways to extract gold ore from tailings.

Francis Jehl with the Magnetic Ore-Separator on the Grounds of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, 1880 (1936-05-28) by Ford Motor Company. Engineering Photographic Department Original Source: Digital Collections

One experiment, the electromagnetic ore-separator, proved to be the most feasible. In Edison's design, crushed rock was fed through a hopper that allowed it to fall in a thin, even line. As the powder moved past electromagnets, magnetic grains like iron were attracted to one bin, while non-magnetic grains like gold fell in another.

Portrait of Charles Batchelor, "First Photograph Made with Incandescent Light," 1880 (1880) Original Source: Digital Collections

Over the next decade, Edison continued to experiment with ore separating technology while building America's early electrical infrastructure -- an enterprise that relied heavily on iron, and the steel that it produced. Edison realized that his ore-separator technology might have more lucrative applications in the iron industry. He wrote research papers, filed ore-separator patents, launched new companies, and scaled-up experiments in iron ore processing plants.

Thomas Edison at an Iron Mine, Ogden, New Jersey, 1895 (1895) by Kreidler, V.A. Original Source: Digital Collections

A Rocky Road Ahead 

By 1890, the Eastern iron ore mines of the United States were becoming quickly depleted. High-grade ore from a few Midwestern mines remained too expensive to transport and mining low-grade ore proved economically unfeasible – leaving Eastern steel and iron industries faltering. In the iron ore shortage, Edison attempted to economize the mining of low-grade ore with his electromagnetic ore-separator.

Alfred Muller, William Kent, Thomas Edison and A. Ruce at Edison's Ore-Concentrating Works, October 1891 (1891-10) by Miller, Spencer, 1859-1953 Original Source: Digital Collections

After years of experimentation, Edison acquired an old mine in northern New Jersey that still contained large quantities of low-grade iron ore. There, he designed and built a mill near the mine that used his electromagnetic ore-separator to turn that low-grade ore into a profitable product.

Thomas Edison and Another Man at Edison's Ore-Concentrating Works, Ogdensburg, New Jersey, circa 1895 (1890/1900) Original Source: Digital Collections

In 1892, when his electrical company merged with a rival's, Edison left the electrical industry, retaining only stock in the new company. Edison turned his full attention to the new mill. The mill's cutting edge, automated process moved mined boulders along steel conveyor belts to the top of a tall building. Inside, multiple sets of massive rollers crushed the rock into a fine powder.

Thomas Edison at His Ore-Concentrating Works, circa 1897 (1892/1902) Original Source: Digital Collections

Carried by conveyor belt to another tower, the powder fell past hundreds of electromagnets that pulled granules of iron to one side, allowing waste sand to fall on the other. The concentrated iron ore powder produced at Edison's mill, pictured here, could then be sold and shipped to Eastern steel mills.

Iron Ore Briquette from Edison Mines, New Jersey, 1890-1899 (1890/1899) by New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works Original Source: Digital Collections

Setbacks and Successes

Edison soon ran into setbacks with his ore concentrating process. Massive rollers broke loose, abrasive dust covered everything, and several workmen died in machinery accidents. Some ore powder blew away during transport to the steel mills; still more blew away in steel mill furnaces. One of Edison's successful developments, a glue-like substance that bound the iron powder in briquettes, allowed the iron ore to be transported and used effectively in steel-making.

Thomas Edison at His Ore Concentrating Plant in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, circa 1896 (1891/1901) Original Source: Digital Collections

From 1894 to 1897, Edison spent nearly all of his time tinkering at the plant, only coming home on Sundays. Despite modest demand for the ore he was producing, Edison frequently shut down the plant to redesign machinery and rebuild inefficient structures. As Edison sank more money into his now-failing project, investors left, workers lost faith, and foremen resigned.

Thomas Edison in a Machine Shop at His Ore-Concentrating Works in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, 1897 (1897) by Underhill, Irving, d. 1960 Original Source: Digital Collections

To keep his mill running, Edison sold the stock from his electric company merger and went into debt. The final blow came with the opening of the Mesabi iron range in Minnesota. High-grade iron ore became plentiful again, leaving Edison's iron ore powder unneeded.

Thomas Edison at His Ore-Concentrating Works, Ogdensburg, New Jersey, 1897 (1897) by Underhill, Irving, d. 1960 Original Source: Digital Collections

By the end of the 1890s, Thomas Edison had spent nearly ten years and more than two million dollars attempting to build an industry around the mining of low-grade iron ore. Deeply in debt, Edison shuttered his operations, but in true Edison fashion, found a new direction in the dust of his failed mining venture.

"Thomas A. Edison Portland Cement Manufacturer," circa 1920 (1918/1922) by Edison Portland Cement Company Original Source: Digital Collections

Cementing a Legacy

After Thomas Edison's mining operations failed, he saw an opportunity for his rock crushing technology to be used in the growing Portland cement industry. Edison's initial exposure to cement production began with the sale of waste sand from his ore-separator to cement manufacturers. By 1901, Edison had built a manufacturing plant in New Jersey and launched the Edison Portland Cement Company.

Thomas Edison with an "Ediphone" Dictation Machine at His Desk in the West Orange Laboratory, 1911 (1911-11-20) Original Source: Digital Collections

Led by Edison's inventive spirit, the Edison Portland Cement Company became America’s largest cement producer. His innovative redesign of the rotatory kilns used in cement-making increased efficiency so much that he led the industry to overproduction.

With cement now unprofitable, Edison explored new uses for the building material in order to increase demand.

One experiment attempted to solve the shortage of affordable housing for working class families.

Using giant iron molds, Edison created entire houses of cement at the rate of one per day.

Ultimately, mass-producing houses with Edison's process proved too expensive for builders to adopt.

President Harding Visiting the "Vagabonds" Camp Site, 1921 (1921) by Ford Motor Company. Engineering Photographic Department Original Source: Digital Collections

Edison eventually profited from the general expansion of cement use in infrastructure and was able to repay the debt incurred from his ore mining venture. When Edison's friend Henry Ford began construction on Ford Motor Company's massive manufacturing complex, the Rouge plant, the Edison Portland Cement Company supplied the cement.

Henry Ford Watching Thomas Edison Sign Edison Institute Cornerstone, September 27, 1928 (1928-09-27) Original Source: Digital Collections

Like Edison, Henry Ford also found opportunity in failure. As an adversary of waste, Ford ensured his Rogue plant could manufacture Portland cement from the left over slag produced by its blast furnace. In 1928, Henry Ford used this cement to cast a cornerstone for the new museum he was building and dedicating to Thomas Edison.

Cornerstone of Edison Institute Signed by Thomas A. Edison, September 27, 1928 (1928) Original Source: http://collections.thehenryford.org/Collection.aspx?objectKey=10475

Signed by Edison, the Portland cement cornerstone helps tell the story of his legacy -- a legacy built on the tenacious ability to find new opportunity in what others considered failure.

From The Henry Ford Archive of American Innovation™. America’s greatest innovators ask big “What If” questions—and answer them in even bigger ways. Step into the unfolding drama of those questions and discover how visionaries like Thomas Edison triumphed to create lasting change.

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