Thomas Edison


Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
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 went into business and became wealthy. Edison used his fortune to further his passion for invention. This was realized in experimental mining operations, the first film studio, and 1,093 US patents.

Early life

Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, but grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, after the family moved there in 1854. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott. His patrilineal family line was Dutch by way of New Jersey.
His great-grandfather, loyalist John Edeson, fled New Jersey for Nova Scotia in 1784. The family moved to Middlesex County, Upper Canada, around 1811, and his grandfather, Capt. Samuel Edison Sr. served with the 1st Middlesex Militia during the War of 1812. His father, Samuel Edison Jr. moved to Vienna, Ontario, and fled to Ohio after his involvement in the Rebellion of 1837.
Edison was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, a former school teacher. He attended school for only a few months, but was a very curious child who learned most things by reading on his own. Inspired by A School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, a book given to him by his mother, the young Edison tinkered and learned about electricity. His parents also owned a set of books by Thomas Paine, whose work inspired Edison's thinking throughout his life.
Edison developed hearing problems at the age of 12. Historian Paul Israel attributed the cause of his deafness to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. He subsequently concocted elaborate fictitious stories about the cause of his deafness. He was completely deaf in one ear and barely hearing in the other. Edison later listened to a music player or piano by clamping his teeth into the wood to absorb the sound waves into his skull. As an adult, he believed his hearing loss allowed him to avoid distraction and concentrate more easily on his work.
Edison began his career as a news butcher, selling newspapers, candy, and vegetables on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit. He turned a $50-a-week profit by age 13, most of which went to buying equipment for electrical and chemical experiments. He founded the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers. The paper only ran twenty-four issues and was unique in its original coverage of local news. Five hundred people subscribed to the paper, and Edison was able to hire at least two assistants. Edison was proud of his work on the train, and he hung a frame with the first issue of the Grand Trunk Herald in his home until he died.
At age 15, in 1862, he saved a child from being struck by a runaway train. The father was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. He began working as a telegrapher in a local general store before moving to Stratford Junction, Ontario, where he worked as a night telegrapher for the Grand Trunk Railway. While on the job, he studied qualitative analysis, conducted chemical experiments, and negligently slept. This led to the near collision of two trains, after which he resigned.

Telegraphy

From 1863 to 1869, Edison worked several night shift telegraphy jobs in Ontario, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Massachusetts. As an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. In Cincinnati, he lived with Ezra Gilliland, who he remained friends with for 25 years. He joined the National Telegraph Union and wrote for their magazine. In addition to spending his time tinkering, he studied Spanish. He created a reputation among the other young, male telegraph operators for being bright and trying new things, but on several occasions his tinkering interfered with his work.
In Boston, from 1867 to 1869, Edison made some money from inventing a stock ticker for some local customers but lost it when he tried to expand the venture to New York without adoption. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder,, which was granted on June 1, 1869.
Edison moved to New York City in 1869. One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher, Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished young Edison to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey, home while Edison worked for Samuel Laws at the Gold Indicator Company. Pope and Edison founded their own company in October 1869, working as electrical engineers. Edison attracted wealthy and connected investors. With the money, they hired fifty employees within a few months and opened a larger shop in Newark, New Jersey. The company made money by renting out telegraph lines. To win business, they manufactured machines to record telegraphs and typewriters that printed directly to the wire. Edison strictly regulated his employees’ work and efficiency while trying many experiments.
Edison enrolled in a chemistry course at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art to support his work on a new telegraphy system with Charles Batchelor. This appears to have been his only enrollment in courses at an institution of higher learning. At the factory, Edison and Batchelor collaborated fervently; their notebooks jointly signed "E&B" contain near-constant experimentation with improvements to the telegraph.
Edison grew the company to a few hundred employees, and in 1874, received $30,000 for inventing the first telegraph that could simultaneously transmit four messages through a single wire. With the money, Edison invested in the Port Huron street railway, which was owned by his brother William Pitt. He expanded his own business, and he hired his young nephew and father.

Menlo Park laboratory

Research and development facility

In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application. It was built in 1876, a part of Raritan Township with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results. Edison's name is registered on 1,093 patents. As the leader of his laboratory, Edison was credited for inventions made in large part by those working under him. He worked extreme hours and expected those around him to follow suit. This often meant 18 hours per day Monday through Friday and additional work on Saturday and Sunday. One employee described the work as "the limits of human exhaustion." Edison often litigated and employed several patent lawyers. At times, this allowed him to challenge the intellectual property rights of many contemporaries.
For Edison, big business came with big publicity. He shut down public and reporter access to the laboratory at Menlo Park and tailored his image with interviews. He expanded his public involvement by funding the creation of Science, which published its first volume in 1880. Edison kept his publishing role anonymous, and the journal began as a mouthpiece for pro-Edison articles. He gave up the journal in 1883 due to its lack of profit. It was subsequently led by Alexander Graham Bell.
In just over a decade, Edison's Menlo Park laboratory had expanded to occupy two city blocks. Edison said he wanted the lab to have "a stock of almost every conceivable material". In 1887 the lab contained "eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels ... silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark's teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell ... cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock's tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores ..." and the list goes on.

Carbon telephone microphone

In 1876, Edison began work to improve the microphone for telephones by developing a carbon microphone, which consists of two metal plates separated by granules of carbon that would change resistance with the pressure of sound waves.
In 1877, Edison and his backers at Western Union wanted to compete with Alexander Graham Bell on telephone technology. Edison believed that the worst part of Bell's telephone was the microphone designed by Emile Berliner. Edison iterated many different designs and tested which gave the best sound while ensuring it was loud enough for his deaf ears. His core idea was to use a stronger current and vary it in proportion to the sound waves. The sound varied the current by applying pressure to a carbon pad, which in turn changed the resistance of the circuit. After testing 150 materials, Edison determined that parchment and tinfoil were best suited for constructing the diaphragm, while a specially coated rubber served as the semiconductor.
David Edward Hughes' also published a paper on the physics of loose-contact carbon microphones in 1878. He claimed, and at the time was credited for, discovering the semiconductor effect and presented a Hughes Telephone. This angered Edison and caused public controversy, particularly because Hughes acknowledged that he was advised by one of Edison's colleagues.