Thomas Edison - Biography, Achievements and Quotes

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.
Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications.
These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures.
His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison developed a system of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York.

Achievements & Facts about Thomas Edison

• Edison became a telegraph operator after his experience saving a three year old boy from being hit by a runaway train.  His first telegraphy job that was away from Port Huron was in Ontario.  
• At the age of nineteen, Thomas Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and he worked for the Western Union.  
• Working the night shift allowed him to spend time reading and conducting experiments, but one of his experiments got him fired from his job.  He was working with a lead-acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid on the floor.  
• The acid went between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk.  During his early years, Thomas Edison had a mentor, an inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope.  He allowed Thomas to live and work in his basement in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
• Edison had two wives in his lifetime.  First, he married Mary Stilwell, a sixteen year old, on December 25, 1871.  Together, they had three children:  Marion Estelle Edison, Thomas Alva Edison Jr., and William Leslie Edison.  
• Mary Edison died on August 9, 1884, most likely from a brain tumor.  On February 24, 1886, when he was thirty nine years old, Thomas Edison married a twenty year old named Mina Miller from Akron Ohio.  She was the child of Lewis Miller, an inventor.  Together, they had three children:  Madeleine Edison, Charles Edison, and Theodore Edison.  His second wife outlived him, passing away on August 24, 1947.
• You may have heard of Thomas Edison, or at least a few small things he invented. You know, like the first movie camera, the incandescent light bulb, just a few minor things. Anyway, Edison was close friends with Henry Ford, yes, the same Henry Ford that owned the car company.
• It is rumored that when Edison was passing away as a result of complications with his diabetes, Henry Ford convinced him to seal his last breathe in a test tube as a memento.
• The test tube is stored in the Henry Ford museum. Edison wasn’t alone in having something stored like this. It is rumored that part of Einstein’s brain is being studied in a University in Canada! Learn more about Thomas Edison’s life in the source
• Thomas Edison's career as an inventor began in Newark, New Jersey.  The first invention he made that got him any fame was in 1877 when he invented the phonograph.  When he invented it, he was known as "The WIzard of Menlo Park."
• In 1877-1878, Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone.  In 1880, Thomas Edison patented a system to be used for electricity distribution.  This was important in order to make use of the invention of the electric lamp.  
• The Edison Illuminating Company was founded in this same year, and it started the first investor owned electric utility on Pearl Street Station in New York City in 1882.  On September 4, 1882, Thomas Edison turned on his Pearl Street generating station's power distribution system, providing customers in lower Manhattan 110 volts of direct current.
• Arguably Thomas Edison's best success was his ability to maximize his profits by establishing mass production systems as well as intellectual property rights.  By 1887, there were 121 of Edison's power stations that were delivering electricity to customers in the United States.  
• He continued to promote DC electricity rather than AC electricity.  This continued to be a competition between Edison and Westinghouse, who preferred AC electricity which could be raised to high voltages with the use of transformers and sent over cheaper wires.  In order to demonstrate his view of AC electricity and his dangers, employees of Edison would publicly electrocute animals.  One of these animals was Topsy the elephant at Luna Park following Topsy's killing of several men.
• As a tribute to the contributions courtesy of inventors everywhere to the benefit of mankind, the United States Congress assigned in 1983 February 11 as National Inventors’ Day in conjunction with Thomas Edison’s birthday.
• During the onset of World War I, Thomas Edison had determined to apportion both time and talent to conceiving contraptions for defense purposes, namely flamethrowers, submarine periscopes, and a range of ingredients necessary for the production of explosives.
• The Universal Stock Printer was Thomas Edison’s first profitable invention, an enhanced version of the stock ticker upon being aware of trouble with the stock ticker equipment encountered by a New York brokerage above Edison’s abode back then. Edison was subsequently reward $40, 000 for said invention. The money was later invested in the set-up of Edison’s first laboratory in Newark, New Jersey in 1871.
• Thomas Edison’s first patent was an electric vote recorder invented for the advantage of elected bodies such as the Congress, which did not pay off as well. At this point, he determined to invent only devices that people would see a need in.
• Thomas Edison decided to marry Mary Stilwell in 1871, Edison’s laboratory assistant who was also nine years younger than him. Being the man’s first wife, Mary left Thomas a daughter named Marion Estelle and two sons by the name of Thomas Alva Jr. and William Leslie. Marion Estelle and Thomas Alva Jr. were nicknamed ‘Dot and Dash’ respectively on account of their father’s involvement with the telegraph, in which the Morse code was used chiefly.
• In 1882, Thomas Edison discovered that an electric current could be conveyed between two separate wires through the emptiness of vacuum. Said discovery was named the Edison effect after its discoverer. 
• The Edison effect was the basis of vacuum tubes used commonly in electronic devices such as the radio and television before transistors were even born. The first computers were known to run on a large number of vacuum tubes which could well fill up an entire room, instead of computer chips comprising mainly of transistors that we know of today.
• Thomas Edison began working as a telegraph operator at the age of 15 upon rescuing a three-year-old boy named Jimmie MacKenzie from the tracks of a speeding train, whose father J. U. MacKenzie, a station agent working at Mount Clemens, decided to teach a young Edison telegraphy.
• Thomas Edison, in collaboration with George Arrington, patented the first electric typewriter in 1871, toward which the general public had expressed great mistrust that it would even work.
• Thomas Edison filed for a patent for his carbon filament lamp.  In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric lIght Company with the assistance of several financiers.  He had a demonstration of the incandescent light bulb for the public on December 31, 1879.  
• In 1883, it was ruled by the patent office that Edison's patent was based on the work of William Sawyer.  Therefore, the patent was considered invalid.  The litigation on the case continued for six years.  Edison and Joseph Swan formed a joint company in order to manufacture the invention.
• Another credited invention for Edison was the fluoroscope,  which is a machine that uses radiographs.  The general design of his fluoroscope is still being used today.  
• Unfortunately, Edison's assistant, Clarence Dally, had made himself the human experiment for Edison's invention, so he died of injuries that were related to his exposure.  In 1903, Edison refused to talk about the X-rays because he said he was afraid of them.
• Edison also invented the stock ticker, which was an electricity based broadcast system.  He also was granted a patent for the kinetograph, or the motion picture camera, but his employee, W.K.L. Dickson, who was a photographer, worked on the optical and photographical development.
• Edison continued with business until his last days.  He died from complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931 at his home in West Orange, New Jersey. 
•  His wife, Dina, died in 1947.  It is said that Edison's final breath is contained in a test tube located at the Henry Ford Museum.  There was also a plaster death mask made of Edison.

Superb Quotes of Thomas Edison

• My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions.... The dove is my emblem.... I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it.... I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill....
• I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent....
• My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others.... Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.
• "Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a  'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."
• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
• The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it.
• I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident.... Almost none of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.
• As a cure for worrying, work is better than whisky.
• I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.
• Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I  am always extremely interested in how others have used them....
• A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die without publicizing it, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another....
• I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention.... Its their 'ideas' that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'
• Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
• Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction--faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.
• Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something.
• I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun.
• I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident
• If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
• Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
• Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
• Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
• The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
• There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
• Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.
• Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.
• Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking all day from one laboratory table to another.  I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.
• If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
• Our schools are not teaching students to think. It is astonishing how many young people have difficulty in putting their brains definitely and systematically to work....
• I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing....
• Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
• Pretty much everything will come to him who hustles while he waits. I believe that restlessness is discontent, and discontent is merely the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
• Unfortunately, there seems to be  far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
• Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do in the first place doesn't mean it's useless.