Thomas Edison





Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 - October 18, 1931) was a United
States 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 was one of the most prolific inventors of his time, holding a record
1,093 patents in his name from work done by him and his employees. 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 9 major film studios (commonly known as the
Edison Trust).

Life magazine, in a special double issue, placed Edison first in the "100
Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years".

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 had worked for a time in his youth selling snacks, and candy on the
railroad, labored as a pig slaughterer and started a business selling
vegetables. He could reputedly correctly guess a man's weight 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 London Times featured a story on Edison and his paper. Edison applied
for his first patent, the electric vote recorder, on October 28, 1868.

Middle years

The invention which first gained Edison wide fame was the phonograph in
1877. While others at the time (notably Charles Cros) were contemplating the
notion that sound waves might be recorded and reproduced, Edison was the
first to produce a device to actually do so, and this was so astoundingly
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).

Menlo Park

The greatest invention of Thomas Edison 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. Most of the inventions there carried Edison as the inventor,
though he mostly oversaw the operation.

Many of his inventions were not unique, but Edison showed unique skills in
winning the patents and beating his opponents by better marketing skills and
influence. Edison's patents were mostly utility patents, only about a dozen
being design patents. While Edison did not invent the electric lightbulb, it
was Edison's relentless and endless experimentation that made the lightbulb
a practical, commercial proposition.

Where earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory
conditions, Edison created a system to generate electricity (direct
current), distributed it locally to homes and businesses, and mass produced
long-lasting bulbs for sale to the public, using the designs and patents of
earlier inventors including Joseph Swan, Henry Woodward, James Bowman
Lindsay and William Sawyer.

On November 21, 1877, Edison invented the phonograph.

Incandescence era

In 1878, Edison applied the term "filament" to the element of glowing wire
carrying an electric current. In 1878, Edison formed Edison Electric Light
Company in New York City with financiers (including J.P. Morgan and the
Vanderbilts).

Edison wired his lights by parallel circuit, which causes the current to
divide among alternative paths. In parallel circuits, the failure of one
light bulb does not cause a circuit to fail, which happens to lamps wired in
series. On December 31, 1879, Edison demonstrated incandescent lighting to
the public for the first time with some fanfare in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
On January 27, 1880 he filed a patent in the United States for the electric
incandescent lamp. On February 13, 1880, Edison became the first person to
observe the Edison Effect. On October 8, 1883 the U.S. patent office ruled
that Edison's patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was invalid.

In 1880, Edison patented 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
world's 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.

Litigation continued until on October 6, 1889, a judge ruled that Edison's
electric light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high
resistance" was valid. Research exposed in "A Streak of Luck" by Robert
Conot (1979), shows that Edison and his attorneys hid significant
information from the judge, they cut out the October 7-21, 1879 section of a
notebook. Edison failed to patent the light bulb in the United Kingdom.
After losing a court battle with Swan, they formed a joint company (Ediswan)
to market the invention. This company and its technological heritage became
a part of General Electric in 1892.

War of Currents era

During the initial years of electricity distribution, Edison's direct
current was the standard for the United States and Edison was not disposed
to lose all his patent royalties. During the commonly referred to "War of
Currents" era, Nikola Tesla and Edison became adversaries due to Edison's
promotion of DC for electric power distribution over the more efficient
alternating current advocated by Tesla. Edison (or, reportedly, one of his
employees) employed the tactics of misusing Tesla's patents to construct the
first electric chair for the state of New York in order to promote the idea
that alternating current was deadly. Popular myth has it that Edison solely
invented the electric chair as a means of impressing the public that
alternating current was more dangerous than direct current. Though Edison
did advocate executions via AC electrocution, the chair was primarily
invented by a few of his employees, in particular Harold P. Brown, working
at Menlo Park (though Edison certainly monitored their operations). [1]

Edison went on to carry out a campaign to discourage the use of alternating
current, what today would be commonly referred to as FUD. Edison did preside
personally over several executions of animals, primarily stray cats and
dogs, for the benefit of the press to prove that his inferior system of
direct current was safer than that of alternating current. Edison's series
of animal executions peaked with the electrocution of Topsy the Elephant.
Ironically, Edison was against capital punishment, but his desire to
disparage the superior system of alternating current led to the invention of
one of the world's most recognizable killing devices.

Many of Edison's inventions using direct current ultimately lost to
alternating current devices proposed by others: primarily Tesla's polyphase
systems and other contributors, such as Charles Proteus Steinmetz (of
General Electric). AC distribution systems replaced DC, enormously extending
the range and improving the safety and efficiency of power distribution.
Since the 1950s, High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission systems
have become more common in certain situations. HVDC systems are presently
used for some specialised applications like the underwater interconnection
of Power Systems.

Work relations

Nikola Tesla, possibly Edison's most famous employee and great scientist in
his own right, said about Edison's method of problem-solving: "If Edison had
a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence
of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his
search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory
and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor."

At a meeting in late 1885, of Edison, Edward H. Johnson (President of the
Edison Illuminating Company), Charles Batchellor (Manager of the Edison
works) and Nikola Tesla, one of the group suggested guessing weights and
Tesla was induced to step on a scale. Edison guessed that Tesla weighed 152
pounds, to an ounce. Johnson confidentially related to Tesla that Edison
could guess individuals' weight as he had developed the skill when he was
employed for a long time in a Chicago slaughter-house where he weighed
thousands of hogs every day. [2]

Media inventions

Initially, it was believed that Thomas Edison invented the motion picture
camera, but it has since been proven that William Kennedy Laurie Dickson
actually invented it at the Edison laboratories. However, his influence on
the history of film stretches far beyond that of instigator. He became a
powerhouse of film production and must be given credit for establishing the
standard of using 35mm celluloid film with 4 perforations on the edge of
each frame that allowed film to emerge as a mass medium and not just a
vaudeville novelty. He built what has been called the first movie studio,
the Black Maria in New Jersey. Here he made the first copyrighted film, Fred
Ott's Sneeze.

His inventions benefited people the world wide and in 1878, he was appointed
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France and in 1889 was made Commander of
the Legion of Honor.

On September 30, 1890, Edison obtained patent US437422 for telegraphy,
US437423, US437424, US437426 for the phonograph, US437425 for a
phonograph-recorder, US437427 for a "Method of Making Phonograph Blanks",
US437428 for a "Propelling Device for Electrical Cars", and US437429 for a
phonogram blank.

In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This device
was installed in penny arcades where people could watch short, simple films.
This was important to Thomas Edison especially because he had been searching
for a way to entertain customers that were listening to music on his
phonograph. Now, people could go to a penny arcade, put in a coin, put on
the headphones and watch a film through the peep-hole. Later that same year,
on December 29th, Edison patented the radio ("transmission of signals
electrically").

On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph.

Later years

In West Orange, New Jersey on February 1, 1893 Edison finished construction
of "Black Maria", the first motion picture studio. However, A United States
court of appeals ruled on March 10, 1902 that Edison did not invent the
movie camera and thus could not excise monopoly power over its use (see
Edison v. American Mutoscope). In 1894, Edison experiments with
synchronizing audio with film; the Kinetophone is invented which loosely
synchronizes a Kinetoscope image with a cylinder phonograph. In April of
1896, Edison and Thomas Armat's Vitascope is used to project motion pictures
in public screenings in New York City.

Thomas Edison submitted his last patent application, "Holder for Article to
be Electroplated", on January 6, 1931 and died later that year. The patent
was granted two years later in 1933.

Personal life

He was married twice, the first time in 1871 to Mary Stilwell (1855-1884),
with whom he had three children - Marion Estelle, Thomas Jr., and William
Leslie - before she died at age 29, probably of typhoid fever. His second
marriage was to Mina Miller (1865-1946), also with three children,
Madeleine, Charles (who took over the company), and Theodore Miller. Thomas
Edison was an atheist.

List of contributions

   * Phonograph
   * Kinetoscope
   * dictaphone
   * radio
   * electric bulb
   * autographic printer
   * tattoo gun