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Thomas Alva Edison is one of the most prolific American inventor and innovator of all time and he accomplished this feat despite the fact that he was not formally educated in science and technology. According to observers, Edison was able to secure more than 1,000 patents in his lifetime, which includes significant inventions such as the utilization of electricity for lighting, the camera, the motion picture, and the phonograph. Apart from his work, Edison’s personal life is also as remarkable as his inventions. Thomas Edison was of British and Dutch origin. His father being a loyalist of the British monarchy was one of those who flee America during the revolution in the later part of the 18th century (Edison, His Life and Inventions 7). For a time, Thomas Edison’s family settled in Canada, where his father also becomes engaged in a revolution against the Canadian government. Edison’s father was, again, forced to go back to America, specifically in in Milan, Ohio in 1847 where Edison was born (Edison, His Life and Inventions 7). Edison did not receive a formal education. When the family settled in Michigan in 1854, Edison briefly attended school for three months (Edison, His Life and Inventions 15). Nevertheless, his mother homeschooled him and taught him about writing, reading and mathematics. Edison met his first wife, Mary Stilwell, in 1871 while she was working in one of Edison’s companies (Kennelly 292). They have a daughter and two sons, but unfortunately, his wife died in 1884. Edison married again in 1886 to Mina Miller (Kennelly 296). They, too, had a daughter and two sons. Edison, however, was too focused with his work that he rarely spends time with his family. He works with so much intensity that he spends most of his time in his laboratory and would often skip sleep and meals when his work is near completion. According to observers, “When engaged on some difficult problem like the incandescent lamp, he and his staff worked together days, nights, Sundays and holidays, until they became unmindful of time” (Kennelly 297).
Edison started working at a very young age, which was quite a trend of his time. At twelve, he was already selling apples and newspapers in a railroad station in Detroit. At fifteen, he was already an owner of a small printing press called ‘The Weekly Herald’ that he himself produce and sell to the railroad commuters (A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison 4). It was a well-known story that Thomas Edison’s career as a telegraph operator started when he saved the son of a station master from being over-run by a boxcar. Accordingly, the station master awarded Edison by offering to teach him on how to operate the telegraph, which was the most popular mode of communication during the time. For several years, Edison used his career in telegraphy to support his experiments and inventions. Using his knowledge of electricity and telegraphy, at a young age of 21 years old, Thomas Edison was able to develop an electrographic vote-recording machine; the first of the many inventions that he has patented in 1868 (Edison, His Life and Inventions 471). After which, Edison invented a new version of a stock ticker that prints automatically stock market quotations as well as gold prices. Edison’s work with the stock ticker was one of his first inventions to give him financial success. Commissioned by the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, Edison went on to improve his stock ticker wherein he was paid $40,000 for his invention (Edison, His Life and Inventions 65). Edison then used the money to create a new factory that manufactured improved stock tickers. In 1876, Thomas Edison established one of the first research and development laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. In this laboratory, Edison produced many of his most significant inventions; one of which is the improvement of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone system by developing a carbon telephone transmitter. Prior to Edison’s transmitter, Bell’s telephone can only operate over a limited distance. Edison, however, improved Bell’s invention and made the telephone work over long distances. According to scholars, due to Edison’s invention, the telephone became commercially useful (A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison 14).
Another significant invention of Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park laboratory was the phonograph. A phonograph was the first device to record audio and is considered as one of Edison’s original inventions (A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison 15). The circumstances that led to the invention of the phonograph was inspired by the telephone though. Accordingly, Edison noticed that the telephone’s diaphragm vibrates every time he speaks on the mouthpiece. Edison theorized that if these vibrations can be mimicked, then the voiced that caused the vibration can be preserved and reproduced. In order to record the vibration, Edison placed a needle whose end touches the diaphragm while the other end touches a strip of waxed paper. Edison then pulled the waxed paper while he shouts hello on the diaphragm. The vibration pushed the needle and produced groves in the wax. Reversing the process, Edison tried to pull the wax through the needle and it produced the same sounds in the diaphragm as the needle traced the grooves in the wax.
The first operable incandescent electric bulb was also due to the innovative genius of Thomas Edison. It should be noted that Edison was not the first to discover the incandescent bulb. In fact, long before Edison was born, the incandescent lamp was already invented by the British scientist, Humphrey Davy in 1812 (Gendre 1). The principle behind the incandescent is to use electricity to heat up certain elements that emits light at high temperature. The lifespan of the incandescent lamps of Edison’s predecessors, however, were “too short to be commercially viable” (Gendre 3). Edison discovered that by using low resistance filament materials, the lamp could produce more intense light and can achieve higher lifespan. Edison’s innovation on the incandescent lamp commercialized it and enabled its use as a popular lighting system. Edison’s work on the incandescent light bulb inspired him to create an electrical system that would make his light bulb invention practically operable. An efficient electrical system, therefore, is needed in order to deliver electricity in residential and commercial areas. Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory was one of the first to use an electrical lighting system. Edison was also the first to establish a commercial electrical power generating station that served residents of New York sometime in 1882.
Thomas Edison was also noted for his contribution in the field of motion pictures. Through this achievement, Edison again demonstrated his ability to innovate upon crude ideas by converting it to something that is of practical importance and commercially viable. Edison’s interest with motion pictures, for instance, was inspired by his acquaintance with Edward Muybridge, a photographer and a horse-racing enthusiast who showed Edison how he created an illusion of a running horse using still cameras. The still pictures of a galloping horse are then shown in rapid succession, creating an illusion that the horse was moving. Based on this concept, Edison worked on a camera that can take rapid pictures of moving objects and reanimate them later. The production of the roll film by George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, greatly improved the efficiency of Edison’s motion picture camera. According to Edison, “In the year 1887 the idea occurred to me that it was possible to devise an instrument which should do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, and that by a combination of the two, all motion and sound could be recorded and reproduced simultaneously” (Edison, His Life and Inventions 262). Combining the motion picture technology with his phonograph, Edison created the first talking pictures. Edison was also the first to create a motion picture studio where he produced several short films.
Another notable accomplishment of Edison in his career as an inventor and innovator is the development of electrical storage devices or batteries. Before Edison, battery manufacturers use acid solutions as their electrolyte and used lead for the battery’s electrode. For the same reason, these batteries were commonly called as lead-acid batteries, which refer to the materials they were made of. These types of batteries, however, corrode easily, heavy and are difficult to recharge. Instead of using acid, Edison used alkaline solution, which greatly reduced the corrosion of his batteries. Instead of lead, Edison also used alloyed nickel for the electrodes. Edison alkaline batteries were more efficient and durable than lead-acid batteries. It revolutionized the electrical storage technology; the principles of which are still utilized until today. The nations’ interest is also one that inspires Edison in his work. Realizing how important the rubber industry is in America’s war effort during World War I, Edison focused his attention on improving the availability and production of rubber in the U.S. Edison experimented with several plants that can naturally grow in the United States that can be used as raw materials for making rubber. Edison’s efforts were so profound that it is recognized as “having laid the groundwork for the important development of coal-tar chemical industry” of the United States today (A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison 27). In his lifetime, Edison was awarded with many honors in recognition of his efforts to serve humanity through his inventions and innovations. In 1928, he was awarded with the Congressional Medal of Honor; the highest award given to America’s most remarkable citizens. Thomas Alva Edison died in 1931, but the legacy he created in the field of science and technology remains significant until today. No wonder he is considered by many as one of the greatest inventors of all time.
Works Cited
A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison. n.d. February 2016 <http://lmxac.org/edisonlib/edisonhistorycollection/documentcollection/Pamphlets/brief-biography-of-thomas-alva-edison.pdf>.
Edison, His Life and Inventions . n.d. February 2016 <http://www.iar.unicamp.br/lab/luz/ld/Hist%F3ria/Edison%20His%20Life%20and%20Inventions.pdf>.
Gendre, M. Two Centuries of Electric Light Source Innovations . n.d. February 2016 <http://www.einlightred.tue.nl/lightsources/history/light_history.pdf>.
Kennelly, A. Biographical Memoir of Thomas Alva Edison 1847-1931. 1932. February 2016 <http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/edison-thomas.pdf>.
