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Thomas Alva Edison ( February 11, 1847 - October 18, 1931) was an 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 considered one of the most prolific inventors of his time, holding a record 1,093 patents in his name. Most of these inventions were not completely original but improvements of earlier patents, and were actually made by his numerous employees - Edison was frequently criticized for not sharing the credits. Nevertheless, Edison received patents worldwide, including the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in, United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly, FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents., and Germany. Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust ).
Life magazine (USA), in a special double issue, placed Edison first in the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years", noting that his light bulb "lit up the world". Although a less successful light bulb was pioneered by Heinrich Goebel (who does not even appear on Time's list), it was Edison who made the modern era possible by commercializing his "invention." Edison's placement has been criticized as misunderstood patriotism, since even during his lifetime there were non-US inventors whose inventions (combustion engines, cars, electricity-making machines, etc.) are believed by some to have had greater impact than Edison's, despite the unusual brilliance of his innovations.
1 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 guess a man's weight correctly 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 Times featured a story on Edison and his paper. Edison applied for his first patent, the electric vote recorder, on October 28, 1868.
