Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many important devices. "The Wizard of Menlo Park" was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention.
Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors of his time, holding a record 1,093 patents in his name. Most of these inventions were not completely original but improvements of earlier patents, and were actually made by his numerous employees - Edison was frequently criticized for not sharing the credits. Nevertheless, Edison received patents worldwide, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust).
In the early 1900s, Thomas Edison bought a house in Fort Myers, Florida (Seminole Lodge) as a winter retreat. Henry Ford, the automobile magnate lived across the street at his winter retreat (The Mangoes). They were friends until Edison died. The Edison and Ford Winter Estates are now open to the public.
Early years
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. Partially deaf since adolescence, he became a telegraph operator in the 1860s, and a famously fast one. Some of his earliest inventions related to electrical telegraphy, including a stock ticker.
Edison spent a time in his youth selling snacks and candy on the railroad. He also worked as a pig slaughterer and started a business selling vegetables. He could reputedly guess a mans weight correctly by simply looking at him. Around 1862, Edison printed and published The Weekly Herald. It was the first newspaper typeset and printed on a moving train. The Port Huron Times-Herald featured a story on Edison and his paper. Edison applied for his first patent, the electric vote recorder, on October 28, 1868.
Middle years
Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey with the stockticker and other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained Edison wide fame was the phonograph in 1877. While non-reproducible sound recording was first achieved by Leon Scott de Martinville (France, 1857), and others at the time (notably Charles Cros) were contemplating the notion that sound waves might be recorded and reproduced, Edison was the first to publicly demonstrate a device to do so. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park" after the New Jersey town where he resided. His first phonograph recorded onto tinfoil cylinders that had low sound quality and destroyed the track during replay so that one could listen only once. A redesigned model using wax cylinders was produced soon after by Alexander Graham Bell. Sound quality was still low, and replays were limited before wear destroyed the recording, but the invention enjoyed popularity. The "gramophone", playing gramophone records, was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887, but in the early years, the audio fidelity was worse than the phonograph cylinders marketed by Edison Records.
Menlo Park
Edisons major innovation was the Menlo Park research lab, which was built in New Jersey. It was the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was the inventor of most of the inventions produced there, though he primarily supervised the operation and work of his employees.
Most of Edisons patents were utility patents, with only about a dozen being design patents. Many of his inventions were not completely original, but improvements which allowed for mass production. For example, contrary to public perception, Edison did not invent the electric light bulb. Several designs had already been developed by earlier inventors including Joseph Swan, Henry Woodward, Mathew Evans, James Bowman Lindsay, William Sawyer, Humphrey Davey, and Heinrich Göbel. In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although English inventor Joseph Swan used the term prior to this. Edison took the features of these earlier designs and set his workers to the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. After Edison purchased the Woodward and Evans patent of 1875, his employees experimented with a large number of different materials to increase the bulbs burning time. By 1879, they had increasied the burning time enough to make the light bulb commercially viable. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, Edison concentrated on commercial application and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a system for the generation and distribution of electricity.
The Menlo Park research lab was made possible by the sale of the quadruplex telegraph that Edison invented in 1874. The quadruplex telegraph could send four simultaneous telegraph signals over the same wire. When Edison asked Western Union to make an offer, he was shocked at the unexpectedly large amount that Western Union offered; the patent rights were sold for $10,000. The quadruplex telegraph was Edisons first big financial success.
Incandescence era
In 1878, Edison formed Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilts. Edison made the first public demonstration of incandescent lighting on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. On January 27, 1880, he filed a patent in the United States for the electric incandescent lamp.
On October 8, 1883, the U.S. patent office ruled that Edisons patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was invalid. Litigation continued until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edisons electric light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid. After losing a court battle with Joseph Swan, they formed a joint company (Ediswan) to market the invention. This company and its technological heritage became General Electric in 1892.
In 1880, Edison patented a electric distribution system. The first investor-owned electric utility was the 1882 Pearl Street Station, New York City. On January 25, 1881, Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company. On September 4, 1882, Edison switched on the worlds first electrical power distribution system, providing 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan, around his Pearl Street laboratory. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey.
original article pagehttp://www.goinvention.com