Edison, Thomas Alva

Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931), inventor, b. Ohio, USA.

Edison made a bad start at school. So his mother kept him at home and taught him herself.

He was soon reading books for grown-ups and carrying out scientific experiments on his own.

At the age of twelve, he started work selling newspapers, fruit and candy on trains.

Next he became a telegraph operator. He moved from town to town and, in New York, he was put in charge of an important telegraph machine. This machine sent business news to all the leading firms in the city.

Edison spent most of his money trying to invent things and in 1870 he invented a better telegraph machine. It printed messages on a long strip of paper tape. With the money he received for this invention, he set up his own factory.

In 1876 he moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey and there opened the first large scientific workshop in the world.

Edison produced a stream of inventions, the total in his lifetime being 1,097. The most famous of them are the gramophone (1877) and the electric lamp (1879).

He also invented the kinetoscope or 'peepshow' for viewing small moving-pictures and a moving-picture camera.

In 1882 he put electric light in the streets and houses in a small area of New York City. It was the first time electric light had been used like this anywhere in the world.

In 1928 he was awarded a special gold medal by the Congress of the United States.

He kept on working right up to the time of his death at the age of eighty-four.

See Randall E. Stross The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World