Thomas Alva Edison
Inventor, entrepreneur
Born: Feb. 11, 1847, in Lima, Ohio
Died: Oct. 18, 1931, in West Orange, New Jersey
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2008: Historical
One could argue that Thomas Edison created the modern world. As an inventor, he gave us the phonograph, the first practical light bulb, the first electrified streetlights, the first motion pictures, the storage battery, and more. As a businessman, he brought many of his inventions into our daily lives. It’s no wonder Time magazine named Edison the “Man of the Millennium.”
Remarkably, Edison received little formal education. Instead, he was home-schooled by his mother, a former teacher. He developed a fascination with technology and by age 12 was already conducting chemistry experiments. At around the same time, he lost most of his hearing, due either to a physical injury or the aftereffects of scarlet fever.
Edison was about 15 when he rescued a small boy from being run over by a runaway rail car. In gratitude, the boy’s father taught Edison railroad telegraphy. Armed with a skill, Edison took a job as a railroad telegrapher in Port Huron, Ohio, where his family had recently moved. In the years that followed, Edison migrated from city to city, taking telegraphy jobs wherever available. At the same time, he continued his experiments with electricity and chemicals.
Landing in New York City in 1869, Edison entered into a series of partnerships through which he developed improvements in telegraphy and earned numerous early patents. His first big financial success was the quadruplex telegraph, which could send four messages at once. After selling the patent, Edison set up a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, with the goal of developing new technologies and controlling their commercial applications.
Technical marvels started pouring forth from the Menlo Park lab, including improvements in Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. But the invention that got the most attention was Edison’s phonograph, a device that could record and reproduce sounds using a cylinder wrapped in tin foil. An amazed public started referring to Edison as “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”
Edison began working on electrification in 1878. After experimenting with numerous materials as filaments, he demonstrated his improved incandescent light bulb the following year. Next, he turned his attention to the creation of an electric-lighting system, installing his first commercial system with 400 bulbs in Lower Manhattan in 1882. He further demonstrated his system at world expositions in Paris and London, and for the coronation of the czar in Moscow. Soon, he established Edison-branded companies in the U.S. and Europe to develop and operate his lighting systems.
In 1887, Edison moved to a larger laboratory in West Orange. In the new lab, he worked on improvements to the phonograph and some 500 other patented innovations, including the motion-picture camera and the Kinetoscope, a motion-picture peephole viewer. In 1893, he began producing short films in his boxlike West Orange motion-picture studio, dubbed Black Maria. Starting in 1896, the Vitascope, a motion-picture projector manufactured by Edison, was used for public exhibition of his films. Edison remained in the film business until 1918.
Other Edison ventures included a mining operation in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, and a cement company that supplied the cement for the construction of Yankee Stadium in 1922. He pioneered the manufacture of concrete homes, several of which still stand in New Jersey. Other key inventions and innovations included the alkaline storage battery, which Edison believed could be used to power automobiles instead of gasoline.
In all, Edison received more than 1,000 U.S. patents that helped create the modern world and left a legacy of innovation for the Garden State. His West Orange lab and his nearby home in Llewellyn Park are preserved today as the Thomas Edison National Historic Park.