Thomas Edison

Early life

• Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, the youngest of Samuel and Nancy Eliot Edison's seven children.
• In 1862, using a small printing press in a baggage car, he wrote and printed the Grand Trunk Herald.
• It was very popular among the railroad workers of the time.
• Edison was excused from military service due to his deafness, so he spent most of his time reading from his fathers extensive library.

Untitled Slide

First Inventions

• Automatic telegraph repeater (1864), which enabled telegraph signals to travel greater distances.
• From 1870 to 1875 Edison invented many telegraphic improvements, including transmitters, receivers, automatic printers and tape.
• In 1876 Edison's carbon telegraph transmitter for Western Union marked a real advance toward making the Bell telephone successful. With the money Edison received from Western Union for his transmitter, he established a factory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
• Edison's most original and successful invention, the phonograph, was patented in 1877.

Untitled Slide

INCANDESCENT Light

• Edison and others organized the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. (It later became the General Electric Company.) Made the first practical electric light bulb in 1879, and it was patented the following year.
• In 1887, Edison built an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, that remained unsurpassed until the twentieth century. For four years it was the primary research facility for the Edison lighting companies, and Edison spent most of his time on that work. In 1888 and 1889, he concentrated for several months on a new version of the phonograph that recorded on wax cylinders.

Untitled Slide

Later years

• In 1887 Edison also returned to experiments on the electromagnetic separation and concentration of low-grade iron and gold ores, work he had begun in 1879. During the 1890's he built a full-scale plant in northern New Jersey to process iron ore. This venture was Edison's most notable commercial failure.
• In the early years of the automobile industry there were hopes for an electric vehicle, and Edison spent the first decade of the twentieth century trying to develop a suitable storage battery. Although gas power won out, Edison's battery was used extensively in industry.

The end