Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. He was a prolific inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as patents in other countries. Edison married twice and fathered six children. He died in 1931 of complications of diabetes.
About Thomas Edison in brief
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman who has been described as America’s greatest inventor. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. He was a prolific inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as patents in other countries. Edison married twice and fathered six children. He died in 1931 of complications of diabetes. Edison was raised in the American Midwest; early in his career he worked as a telegraph operator, which inspired some of his earliest inventions. In 1876, he established his first laboratory facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where many of his early inventions were developed. He later established a botanic laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida in collaboration with businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone, and a laboratory in West Orange, New NJ that featured the world’s first film studio, the Black Maria. Edison developed hearing problems at the age of 12. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. It is alleged that Edison would listen to a music player or piano by clamping his teeth into the wood to absorb the sound waves into his skull. As he got older, Edison believed his hearing loss allowed him to avoid distraction and concentrate more easily on his work. Edison began his career selling candy, newspapers and vegetables on the trains running from Port Huron to Detroit.
He turned a USD 50 a week profit by age 13, most of which went to buying equipment for electric and chemical experiments. Edison obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers. This began Edison’s long streak of entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman. His first patent was for the electric recorder, which was granted on June 1, 1869. One night in 1867, he was working with a lead–acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the floorboards and onto his boss’s desk below. The next morning Edison was fired with little demand for the machine, and shortly thereafter he moved to New York City. He worked as an employee of the Associated Press bureau news bureau in Louisville, Kentucky, where he requested the night shift which allowed him plenty of time to spend at two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. He also worked for the Western Union Union, he worked at the pre-previously pre- pre-occupation cost him his job, the latter of which cost him $1,500 a year. He eventually moved to his first job as an electrician in New York, working at the Standard Oil Company in 1866. He went on to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world. His inventions include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb.
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This page is based on the article Thomas Edison published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
