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Biography of Thomas Alva EdisonName: Thomas Alva EdisonBirth Date: February 11, 1847 Death Date: October 18, 1931 Place of Birth: Milan, Ohio, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: inventor Thomas Alva Edison The American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) held hundreds of patents, most for electrical devices and electric light and power. Although the phonograph and incandescent lamp are best known, perhaps his greatest invention was organized research.Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on Feb. 11, 1847; his father was a jack-of-all-trades, his mother a former teacher. Edison spent 3 months in school, then was taught by his mother. At the age of 12 he sold fruit, candy, and papers on the Grand Trunk Railroad. In 1862, using his small handpress in a baggage car, he wrote and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which was circulated to 400 railroad employees. That year he became a telegraph operator, taught by the father of a child whose life Edison had saved. Exempt from military service because of deafness, he was a tramp telegrapher until he joined Western Union Telegraph Company in Boston in 1868.Early InventionsProbably Edison's first invention was …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…and to know everything about a subject. Some 25,000 notebooks contained his research records, ideas, hunches, and mistakes. Supposedly, his great shortcoming was lack of interest in anything not utilitarian; yet he loved to read Shakespeare and Thomas Paine.Edison died in West Orange, N.J., on Oct. 18, 1931. The laboratory buildings and equipment associated with his career are preserved in Greenfield Village, Detroit, Mich., thanks to Henry Ford's interest and friendship. Further Reading A good biography of Edison, filled with human interest, is Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (1959). Biographies emphasizing his inventions include William Adams Simonds, Edison: His Life, His Work, His Genius (1934), and H. Gordon Garbedian, Thomas Alva Edison: Builder of Civilization (1947). There is more emphasis on industry in John Winthrop Hammond, Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric, edited by Arthur Pound (1941). See also Charles Singer and others, eds., A History of Technology, vol.5: The Late Nineteenth Century (1958). |