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Who
Was Thomas Alva Edison?
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A curious
child sat over an egg after having observed a hen doing
it. What hatched from this experiment was obviously not a
chicken but the child's insatiable curiosity for knowing
and discovering new things. He went on to discover a great
many new things and the patents that he held on his
inventions numbered a whopping 1,093.
The
early years
This great
inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, was born on February
11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He was the youngest child
of Samuel Edison, Jr., and Nancy Elliot Edison. His
parents must have been devastated and worried about
the future of their youngest child who was partially
deaf. But that in itself was probably a boon as it
influenced his behavior and motivated him in his
work. The disability ensured that he did not do well
in school where performance depended on how much you
remembered of what you heard. He turned to books for
solace. |
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Turning point
In 1859 he finally left school and took up a job selling
newspapers along train routes. Once, while on the job, he
happened to save a child's life. The child's father was a
railway official and he rewarded Edison by teaching him
telegraphy. This was surely the most important turning
point in Edison's life. Many of his inventions happened
when he tried to improve upon the existing methods of
telegraphy. |
Thomas Alva Edison |
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The stepping stones
In 1863, he became an apprentice telegrapher. His
ever-resourceful mind used this opportunity to improve the
telegraph system and remove certain hindrances that he had
encountered due to his partial deafness. By 1869, he had
invented the duplex telegraph - that sent two messages
simultaneously and a printer that turned out the received
eclectic signals as text. It was in the same year that he
received his first patent for a vote-recording machine.
After this he devoted all his time to inventing things and
entrepreneurship.
The telegraph industry was highly competitive at the time
and he made his services available to the highest bidder.
The automatic telegraph and the quadruplex - transmitting
four messages at a time was the next invention to come out
of his laboratory. This brought in a lot of money, but
still the Edisons (Thomas was by then married Mary
Stilwell in 1871) were in financial trouble. He then
invested in building a laboratory and machine shop in
Menlo Park, N. J. and started work there in 1876 with two
associates Charles Batchelor and John Kruesi. The presence
of his associates compensated for his disability. His
finest work came from this lab.
Sound progress
The year 1877 brought forth the carbon button transmitter
that is still used in telephones and microphones. The
tinfoil phonograph, his most original invention was
unveiled to the world in 1877. Ridicule and criticism
followed. Some even accused him of ventriloquism. A decade
passed before the phonograph left the lab and entered the
market as a commercial product.
Light, at last
A microtasimeter was devised by him for scientists to
study a solar eclipse. This proved to be the groundwork
for his greatest gift to humanity - the electric light. He
was sponsored by leading financiers for the work. He was
aided by Francis, a fresh university graduate who brought
current mathematical and theoretical expertise into the
work. Edison is known to have conceded that when he was
experimenting on the incandescent lamp, he was not
familiar with Ohm's law. Joseph Wilson Swan, an English
physicist had invented an incandescent lamp and Edison
improved upon his version to come up with a practical
usable version. Many electric lighting systems had been
installed some even supervised by Edison himself, but they
were all plagued with problems. Gradually all these
problems were eliminated and the world got used to
electric illumination and Edison came to be known as the
world's greatest inventor.
In 1886, Edison then widowed married a second time and
moved to West Orange, New Jersey. A new laboratory was set
up here and was the site for many more fascinating
inventions. Love watching movies? Thank Edison for the
invention. In 1897 Edison along with an assistant William
Dickson invented the kinetoscope a machine that produced
motion pictures by transmitting pictures in rapid
succession. The alkaline storage battery, the mimeograph,
an electric pen, a wireless telegraphic method are a few
of the other inventions that Edison patented.
A break up of his patents:-
Electric light and power-389,
The phonograph -195
The telegraph -150
Storage batteries-141
The telephone- 34
Recognition
The Government of France honored Edison by appointing him
Chevalier and later Commander of the Legion of Honor.
Britain honored him by awarding him the Albert Medal of
the Society of Arts and also the Congressional Gold Medal
for his inventions and applications. The flow of electrons
from a heated filament, also called thermionic emission
has been named the Edison effect in his honor. The Edison
effect went on to become the basis of the electron tube
and thus the foundation for the electronics industry was
laid.
Edison breathed his last in West Orange on October 18,
1931. |
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