Thomas Edison Biography

Thomas Edison Biography
Inventor (1847–1931)

Inventor Thomas Edison created such great innovations as the practical incandescent electric light bulb and the phonograph. A savvy businessman, he held more than 1,000 patents for his inventions.

Who Was Thomas Edison?

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 to October 18, 1931) was an American inventor who is considered one of America's leading businessmen. Edison rose from humble beginnings to work as an inventor of major technology, including the first commercially viable incandescent light bulb. He is credited today for helping to build America's economy during the Industrial Revolution. 

What Did Thomas Edison Invent?

Thomas Edison’s inventions included the telegraph, the universal stock ticker, the phonograph, the first commercially practical incandescent electric light bulb, alkaline storage batteries and the Cinematography (a camera for motion pictures). 

When and Where Was Thomas Edison Born?

Inventor Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. 

Family

Thomas Edison was the youngest of seven children of Samuel and Nancy Edison. His father was an exiled political activist from Canada, while his mother was an accomplished school teacher and a major influence in Thomas’ early life. 

Childhood and Education

An early bout with scarlet fever as well as ear infections left Edison with hearing difficulties in both ears as a child and nearly deaf as an adult. Edison would later recount, with variations on the story, that he lost his hearing due to a train incident in which his ears were injured. But others have tended to discount this as the sole cause of his hearing loss.

In 1854, Edison’s family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where he attended public school for a total of 12 weeks. A hyperactive child, prone to distraction, he was deemed "difficult" by his teacher. 

His mother quickly pulled him from school and taught him at home. At age 11, he showed a voracious appetite for knowledge, reading books on a wide range of subjects. In this wide-open curriculum Edison developed a process for self-education and learning independently that would serve him throughout his life.

At age 12, Edison convinced his parents to let him sell newspapers to passengers along the Grand Trunk Railroad line. Exploiting his access to the news bulletins teletyped to the station office each day, Thomas began publishing his own small newspaper, called the Grand Trunk Herald. The up-to-date articles were a hit with passengers. This was the first of what would become a long string of entrepreneurial ventures where he saw a need and capitalized on the opportunity.

Edison also used his access to the railroad to conduct chemical experiments in a small laboratory he set up in a train baggage car. During one of his experiments, a chemical fire started and the car caught fire. The conductor rushed in and struck Thomas on the side of the head, probably furthering some of his hearing loss. He was kicked off the train and forced to sell his newspapers at various stations along the route.

Edison the Telegrapher

While Edison worked for the railroad, a near-tragic event turned fortuitous for the young man. After Edison saved a three-year-old from being run over by an errant train, the child’s grateful father rewarded him by teaching him to operate a telegraph. By age 15, he had learned enough to be employed as a telegraph operator. 

For the next five years, Edison traveled throughout the Midwest as an itinerant telegrapher, subbing for those who had gone to the Civil War. In his spare time, he read widely, studied and experimented with telegraph technology, and became familiar with electrical science.

In 1866, at age 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, working for The Associated Press. The night shift allowed him to spend most of his time reading and experimenting. He developed an unrestricted style of thinking and inquiry, proving things to himself through objective examination and experimentation. 

Initially, Edison excelled at his telegraph job because early Morse code was inscribed on a piece of paper, so Edison's partial deafness was no handicap. However, as the technology advanced, receivers were increasingly equipped with a sounding key, enabling telegraphers to "read" message by the sound of the clicks. This left Edison disadvantaged, with fewer and fewer opportunities for employment.

In 1868, Edison returned home to find his beloved mother was falling into mental illness and his father was out of work. The family was almost destitute. Edison realized he needed to take control of his future. 

Upon the suggestion of a friend, he ventured to Boston, landing a job for the Western Union Company. At the time, Boston was America's center for science and culture, and Edison reveled in it. In his spare time, he designed and patented an electronic voting recorder for quickly tallying votes in the legislature. 

However, Massachusetts lawmakers were not interested. As they explained, most legislators didn't want votes tallied quickly. They wanted time to change the minds of fellow legislators.

Thomas Edison: Inventions

In 1869, at 22 years old, Edison moved to New York City and developed his first invention, an improved stock ticker called the Universal Stock Printer, which synchronized several stock tickers' transactions. The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company was so impressed, they paid him $40,000 for the rights. With this success, he quit his work as a telegrapher to devote himself full-time to inventing.

By the early 1870s, Thomas Edison had acquired a reputation as a first-rate inventor. In 1870, he set up his first small laboratory and manufacturing facility in Newark, New Jersey, and employed several machinists. 

As an independent entrepreneur, Edison formed numerous partnerships and developed products for the highest bidder. Often that was Western Union Telegraph Company, the industry leader, but just as often, it was one of Western Union's rivals. 

In one such instance, Edison devised for Western Union the quadruple telegraph, capable of transmitting two signals in two different directions on the same wire, but railroad tycoon Jay Gould snatched the invention from Western Union, paying Edison more than $100,000 in cash, bonds and stock, and generating years of litigation.

In 1876, Edison moved his expanding operations to Menlo Park, New Jersey, and built an independent industrial research facility incorporating machine shops and laboratories. That same year, Western Union encouraged him to develop a communication device to compete with Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. He never did. 

However, in December of 1877, Edison developed a method for recording sound: the phonograph. Though not commercially viable for another decade, the invention brought him worldwide fame.