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Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an
American inventor and businessman who developed many devices
which greatly influenced life in the 20th century. Dubbed "The
Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the
first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to
the process of invention, and can therefore be credited with the
creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Some of
the inventions credited to him were not completely original, but
improvements of earlier inventions, or were actually created by
his numerous employees working under his direction.
Nevertheless, Edison is considered one of the most prolific
inventors in history, holding 1,097 U.S. patents in his name, as
well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
****
Born: February 11, 1847
Milan, Ohio, United States
Died: October 18, 1931
West Orange, New Jersey, United States
Occupation: American inventor and businessman
****
Early life
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, to Samuel Ogden Edison,
Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871). Thomas was their
seventh child, and had a late start in his schooling due to an
illness. His mind often wandered and his teacher Reverend Engle
was overheard calling him "addled". This ended Edison's three
months of formal schooling. His mother had been a school teacher
in Canada and happily took over the job of schooling her son.
She encouraged and taught him to read and experiment. He
recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so
true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for,
someone I must not disappoint."[1] Many of his lessons came from
reading R.G. Parker's School of natural philosophy. Edison went
almost completely deaf at the age of twelve. There are many
theories of what caused this; according to Edison he went deaf
because he was pulled up to a train car by his ears.[2]
Thomas's life in Port Huron, Michigan was bittersweet. He sold
candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to
Detroit. Partially deaf since adolescence, he became a telegraph
operator after he saved Jimmie Mackenzie from being struck by a
runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. Mackenzie of
Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he took Edison
under his wing and trained him as a telegraph operator. Edison's
deafness aided him as it blocked out noises and prevented Edison
from hearing the telegrapher sitting next to him. One of his
mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and
inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the then
impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his
Elizabeth, New Jersey home.
Some of his earliest inventions related to electrical
telegraphy, including a stock ticker. Edison applied for his
first patent, the electric vote recorder, on October 28, 1868.
Marriage
On
December 25, 1871, he married the then 16 year old Mary Stilwell
whom he had met two months earlier. They had three children,
Marion Estelle Edison (known as Dot), Thomas Alva Edison, Jr.
(known as Dash) and William Leslie Edison. Mary Edison died on 9
August 1884.
In
the 1880s, Thomas Edison bought property in Fort Myers, Florida,
and built Seminole Lodge as a winter retreat. Henry Ford, the
automobile magnate, later lived a few hundred feet away from
Edison at his winter retreat, The Mangoes. Edison even
contributed technology to the automobile. They were friends
until Edison died. On February 24, 1886, when he was
thirty-nine, he married 19 year old Mina Miller in Akron, Ohio.
They also had three children: Madeleine Edison, Charles Edison
(who took over the company upon his father's death and who later
was elected Governor of New Jersey) and Theodore Edison.
Beginning his career
Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New
Jersey, with the automatic repeater and other improved
telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained him
fame was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so
unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical.
Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park, New Jersey",
where he lived. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil
cylinders that had low sound quality and destroyed the track
during replay so that one could listen only a few times. In the
1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders
was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and
Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison
continued work on his own "Perfected Phonograph".
Thomas Edison was a freethinker, and was most likely a deist,
claiming he did not believe in "the God of the theologians", but
did not doubt that "there is a Supreme Intelligence". However,
he rejected the idea of the supernatural, along with such ideas
as the soul, immortality, and a personal God. "Nature", he said,
"is not merciful and loving, but wholly merciless,
indifferent."[3]
Menlo Park
Edison's major innovation was the first industrial research lab,
which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was the first
institution set up with the specific purpose of producing
constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was
legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there,
though many employees carried out research and development work
under his direction.
William Joseph Hammer, a consulting electrical engineer, began
his duties as a laboratory assistant to Edison in December 1879.
He assisted in experiments on the telephone, phonograph,
electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and
other developing inventions. However, Hammer worked primarily on
the incandescent electric lamp and was put in charge of tests
and records on that device. In 1880 he was appointed Chief
Engineer of the Edison Lamp Works. In his first year, the plant
under general manager Francis Robbins Upton turned out 50,000
lamps. According to Edison, Hammer was "a pioneer of
incandescent electric lighting."
Most of Edison's patents were utility patents, which during
Edison's lifetime protected for a 17 year period inventions or
processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in
nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an
ornamental design for a 14 year period. Like most inventions,
his were not typically completely original, but improvements to
prior art. The phonograph patent, on the other hand, was
unprecedented as the first device to record and reproduce
sounds. Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but
instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent
light. Several designs had already been developed by earlier
inventors including the patent he purchased from Henry Woodward
and Mathew Evans, Moses G. Farmer,[4] Joseph Swan, James Bowman
Lindsay, William Sawyer, Humphry Davy, and Heinrich Göbel. They
all had such flaws as extremely short life, high expense to
produce, and high current draw, making them little more than
laboratory curiosities. In 1878, Edison applied the term
filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current,
although English inventor Joseph Swan had 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. By
1879, he had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a
very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While
the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in
laboratory conditions dating back to a demonstration of a
glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, 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 complete 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, which 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 Edison's first big financial success.
Incandescent era
In
1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New
York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and
the Vanderbilt families. Edison made the first public
demonstration of the incandescent light bulb on December 31,
1879, in Menlo Park. On January 27, 1880, he filed a patent in
the United States for the electric incandescent lamp; it was
during this time that he said, "We will make electricity so
cheap that only the rich will burn candles."[citation needed]
On
October 8, 1883, the U.S. patent office ruled that Edison's
patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was therefore
invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until
October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison's electric light
improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance"
was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, he
and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to market the
invention in Britain.
Other designs for a light bulb included Serbian inventor Nikola
Tesla's idea of utilizing radio frequency waves emitted (in the
Tesla effect) from the side electrode plates to light a wireless
bulb. He also developed plans to light a bulb with only one wire
with the energy refocused back into the center of the bulb by
the glass envelope with a center "button" to emit an
incandescent glow. Edison's design won out during this time,
although Tesla did go on to invent fluorescent lighting.
Edison patented an electric distribution system in 1880, which
was critical to capitalize on the invention of the electric
lamp. The first investor-owned electric utility was the 1882
Pearl Street Station, New York City. 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
generating station. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized
incandescent electric lighting system employing overhead wires
began service in Roselle, New Jersey.
War
of currents
George Westinghouse and Edison became adversaries due to
Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power
distribution over the more easily transmitted alternating
current (AC) system developed by Nikola Tesla and sold by
Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high
voltages with transformers, sent over thinner wires, and stepped
down again at the destination for distribution to users.
Despite Edison's contempt for capital punishment, the war
against AC led Edison to become involved in the development and
promotion of the electric chair as a demonstration of AC's
greater lethal potential versus the "safer" DC. Edison went on
to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC
or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part
of this campaign, Edison publicly electrocuted dogs, cats, and
in one case, an elephant[5] to demonstrate the dangers of AC.
Tesla's AC replaced DC in many instances of generation and power
distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the
safety and efficiency of power distribution Though widespread
use of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists
today primarily in long-distance high-voltage direct current
(HVDC) transmission systems. Had modern HVDC technology been
available to Edison, there is speculation that the War of the
Currents would have ended differently.
Work relations
Frank J. Sprague, a competent mathematician and former naval
officer, was recruited by Edward H. Johnson, and joined the
Edison organization in 1883. One of Sprague's significant
contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park was to
expand Edison's mathematical methods. (Despite the common belief
that Edison did not use mathematics, analysis of his notebooks
reveal that he was an astute user of mathematical analysis, for
example, determining the critical parameters of his electric
lighting system including lamp resistance by a sophisticated
analysis of Ohm's Law, Joule's Law and economics.) A key to
Edison's success was a holistic rather than reductionist
approach to invention, making extensive use of trial and error
when no suitable theory existed. (See Edisonian approach). Since
Sprague joined Edison in 1883 and Edison's output of patents
peaked in 1880 it could be interpreted that the shift towards a
reductionist analytical approach may not have been a positive
move for Edison. Sprague's important analytical contributions,
including correcting Edison's system of mains and feeders for
central station distribution, form a counter argument to this.
In 1884, Sprague decided his interests in the exploitation of
electricity lay elsewhere, and he left Edison to found the
Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company. However, Sprague, who
later developed many electrical innovations, always credited
Edison for their work together.
Another of Edison's assistants was Nikola Tesla who claimed that
Edison promised him $50,000 if he succeeded in making
improvements to his DC generation plants. Several months later,
when he had finished the work and asked to be paid, Tesla
claimed that Edison said, "When you become a full-fledged
American you will appreciate an American joke"[6]. Tesla
immediately resigned. This anecdote is somewhat doubtful, since
at Tesla's salary of $18 per week the bonus would have amounted
to over 53 years pay, and the amount was equal to the initial
capital of the company. Tesla resigned when he was refused a
raise to $25 per week (Jonnes, p110). Although Tesla accepted an
Edison Medal later in life and professed a high opinion of
Edison as an inventor and engineer, he remained bitter. The day
after Edison died the New York Times contained extensive
coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming
from Tesla who was quoted as saying, "He had no hobby, cared for
no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of
the most elementary rules of hygiene" and that, "His method was
inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be
covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened
and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings,
knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have
saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable
contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting
himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical
American sense." When Edison was a very old man and close to
death, he said, in looking back, that the biggest mistake he had
made was that he never respected Tesla or his work. [7]
Media inventions
The
key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained
from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the
basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early
fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based
broadcast system. Edison patented the sound recording and
reproducing phonograph (or gramophone in British English) in
1878. Edison also holds the patent for the motion picture
camera. 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.
On
August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way
telegraph. In April 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured
by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to
project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City.
Later he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on
cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film. In
1908 Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which
was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as
the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow
of the Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929.
Later years
Edison became the owner of his Milan, Ohio, birthplace in 1906,
and, on his last visit, in 1923, he was shocked to find his old
home still lit by lamps and candles. Influenced by a fad diet
that was popular in the day, in his last few years "he consumed
nothing more than a pint of milk every three hours".[8] He
believed this diet would restore his health.
Thomas Edison was active in business right up to the end. Just
months before his death in 1931, the Lackawanna Railroad
implemented electric trains in suburban service from Hoboken to
Gladstone, Montclair and Dover in New Jersey. Transmission was
by means of an overhead catenary system, with the entire project
under the guidance of Thomas Edison. To the surprise of many,
Thomas Edison was at the throttle of the very first MU
(Multiple-Unit) train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken,
driving the train all the way to Dover. As another tribute to
his lasting legacy, the very same fleet of cars Thomas Edison
deployed on the Lackawanna in 1931 served commuters until their
retirement in 1984. A special plaque commemorating the joint
achievement of both the railway and Edison, can be seen today in
the waiting room of Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, presently
operated by New Jersey Transit.
Edison purchased a home known as "Glenmont" in 1886 as a wedding
gift for Mina in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. The
remains of Thomas and Mina Edison are now buried there. The 13.5
acre (55,000 m²) property is maintained by the National Park
Service as the Edison National Historic Site. Thomas Edison died
on October 18, 1931, in New Jersey at the age of eighty-four.
His final words to his wife were "It is very beautiful over
there."[9] Mina died in 1947. Thomas Edison's last breath is
purportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum.
Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of
air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a
memento. A plaster death mask was also made.
Criticism
Although in his early years Edison worked alone, he built up a
research and development team to a considerable number while at
his Menlo Park research laboratory. This large research group,
which included engineers and other workers, often based their
research on work done by others before them, as is true of all
research and development. Some have claimed that when his staff
succeeded, he presented the inventions as his own and got the
credit for them as they were patented in his name[citation
needed]. His staff generally carried out his directions in
conducting research, and when he was absent from the lab, the
pace of work slowed greatly. Other inventors had attempted to
create an incandescent light bulb before Edison, but he is often
credited as its inventor, even though a number of employees also
worked on the device under his direction. His was the first
incandescent light bulb with high resistance, a small radiating
area, and a commercially useful lifetime. Other critics have
claimed that he put obstacles in the way of his competitors, and
used other methods which were ethically questionable, even if
their technology was superior to what was created by his own
workers[citation needed].
Tributes
As
a famous inventor, many tributes have been made to Thomas
Edison. Several places and objects have been named after the
inventor, including the town of Edison, New Jersey, and Thomas
Edison State College, a nationally-known college for adult
learners in Trenton, New Jersey. There is a Thomas Alva Edison
Memorial Tower and Museum in the town of Edison. In the
Netherlands, major music awards are named after him. The City
Hotel, in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, was the first building to be
lit with Edison's three-wire system. The hotel was renamed The
Hotel Edison, and retains that name today. The "Incredible
Machines: Contraptions" game series has an alligator with the
name Edison (with other animals given the names of other
scientists).
The
United States Navy named the USS Edison, a Gleaves class
destroyer, in his honor in 1940. The ship was decommissioned a
few months after the end of World War II. In 1962, the Navy
commissioned USS Thomas A. Edison, a fleet ballistic missile
nuclear-powered submarine. Decommissioned on 1 December 1983,
Thomas A. Edison was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on
April 30, 1986. She went through the Navy’s Nuclear Powered Ship
and Submarine Recycling Program at Bremerton, Washington,
beginning on 1 October 1996. When she finished the program on
December 1, 1997, she ceased to exist as a complete ship and was
listed as scrapped.
The
Edison Medal was created on February 11, 1904, by a group of
Edison's friends and associates. Four years later the American
Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), later IEEE, entered
into an agreement with the group to present the medal as its
highest award. The first medal was presented in 1909 to Elihu
Thomson, and was surprisingly awarded to Nikola Tesla in 1917.
The Edison Medal is the oldest award in the area of electrical
and electronics engineering, and is presented annually "for a
career of meritorious achievement in electrical science,
electrical engineering or the electrical arts."
Several landmarks exist in honor of Edison. The Port Huron
Museums, in Port Huron, Michigan, restored the original depot
that Thomas Edison worked out of as a young newsbutcher. The
depot has appropriately been named the Thomas Edison Depot
Museum. The town has many Edison historical landmarks including
the gravesites of Edison's parents.
In
Detroit, the Edison Memorial Fountain in Grand Circus Park was
created to honor his achievements. The limestone fountain was
dedicated October 21, 1929.
Life magazine (USA), in a special double issue, placed Edison
first in the list of the "100 Most Important People in the Last
1000 Years", noting that his light bulb "lit up the world". He
was ranked thirty-fifth on Michael H. Hart's list of the most
influential figures in history. In 1940, his life was documented
on the screen when Spencer Tracy starred as Edison in "Edison
The Man." He has been called the fifteenth Greatest American.
In
recognition of the enormous contribution inventors make to the
nation and the world, the Congress, pursuant to Senate Joint
Resolution 140 (Public Law 97 - 198), has designated February
11, the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Alva Edison, as
National Inventor's Day.
In
1879, Comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam wrote the book "L'Ève
Future" (translated into English as "Tomorrow's Eve"), about a
fictional Thomas Edison who creates the ideal (artificial)
woman.[citation needed]
Companies bearing
Edison's name
Edison General Electric, now General Electric
Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon
Consolidated Edison
Edison International
Southern California Edison
Edison Mission Energy
Edison Capital
Detroit Edison, a unit of DTE Energy
Edison Sault Electric Company, a unit of Wisconsin Energy
FirstEnergy
Metropolitan Edison
Ohio Edison
Toledo Edison
Edison S.p.A., a unit of Italenergia
Boston Edison, a unit of NSTAR
References
^
Edison Family Album. US National Park Service. Retrieved on
2006-03-11.
^
Timeline (November 5, 2004). Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
^
Vernon, Thomas S.. Thomas Alva Edison. Retrieved on 2006-03-11.
^
Moses G. Farmer, Eliot's Inventor. Retrieved on 2006-03-11.
^
IMDB entry on Electrocuting an Elephant (1903). Retrieved on
2006-03-11.
^
Tesla - Master of Lightning:Coming to America. Retrieved on
2006-03-11.
^
Tesla says Edison was an empiricist. 1931. New York Times,
October 19, 1931, p.25.
^
Paul Israel. Edison : A Life of Invention.
^
Thomas Alva Edison and the invention factory. Adrio
Communications Ltd. Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
Ernst Angel: Edison. Sein Leben und Erfinden. Berlin: Ernst
Angel Verlag, 1926.
Mark Essig: Edison & the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and
Death. New York: Walker & Company, 2003. ISBN 0802714064
Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and
the Race to Electrify the World. New York: Random House, 2003.
ISBN 0-375-50739-6
****
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