Thomas Alva Edison

EDISON DIES:
October 18, 1931

Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, dies in West
Orange, New Jersey, at the age of 84.Born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, Edison
received little formal schooling, which was customary for most Americans at the
time. He developed serious hearing problems at an early age, and this disability
provided the motivation for many of his inventions. At age 16, he found work as
a telegraph operator and soon was devoting much of his energy and natural
ingenuity toward improving the telegraph system itself. By 1869, he was pursuing
invention full-time and in 1876 moved into a laboratory and machine shop in
Menlo Park, New Jersey.Edison's experiments were guided by his remarkable
intuition, but he also took care to employ assistants who provided the
mathematical and technical expertise he lacked. At Menlo Park, Edison continued
his work on the telegraph, and in 1877 he stumbled on one of his great
inventions--the phonograph--while working on a way to record telephone
communication. Public demonstrations of the phonograph made the Yankee inventor
world famous, and he was dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park."Although the
discovery of a way to record and play back sound ensured him a place in the
annals of history, it was just the first of several Edison creations that would
transform late 19th-century life. Among other notable inventions, Edison and his
assistants developed the first practical incandescent lightbulb in 1879, and a
forerunner of the movie camera and projector in the late 1880s. In 1887, he
opened the world's first industrial research laboratory at West Orange, where he
employed dozens of workers to systematically investigate a given subject.Perhaps
his greatest contribution to the modern industrial world came from his work in
electricity. He developed a complete electrical distribution system for light
and power, set up the world's first power plant in New York City, and invented
the alkaline battery, the first electric railroad, and a host of other
inventions that laid the basis for the modern electric world. He continued to
work into his 80s and acquired 1,093 patents in his lifetime. He died at his
home in New Jersey on October 18, 1931.