A Biography of Thomas Edison

A Biography of Thomas Edison

Born to Samuel Edison, Jr. and Nancy Elliot Edison in Milan, Ohio, on

February 11th, 1847, Thomas Edison was the youngest of 7 children.

Tom (one of Edison’s nicknames) was named “Thomas” after Samuel’s brother and “Alva” after a certain Captain Alva Bradley, a good friend of Thomas’ father.

Thomas Edison loved to read, just like me!

• When, in 1853, a railroad was built along the shore of Lake Erie, farmers started to deliver their grain and produce to local railroad stations. Samuel found it hard to support his family. So the Edisons moved to Port Huron, Michigan.

Thomas Alva Edison was homeschooled, just like me!

• At the age of 12, Edison became a candy and newspaper seller on the train from Port Huron to Detroit (Detroit to Port Huron). He even made the baggage car his very first, very own lab!

Thomas Edison’s Train

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device to record sound. It scratched grooves on a wax cylinder, which recorded the sound(s). Then, to replay what had just been recorded, a needle was run along the grooves. The first sound ever to be recorded was the nursery rhyme, “Mary had a Little Lamb”.

Edison’s laboratories used to be in Menlo Park, New Jersey, but when his wife Mary Stilwell died and he got remarried to Mina Miller, he rented a place in West Orange, New Jersey. He moved his labs there.

Mary Stilwell, Thomas Edison’s first wife

Mina Miller, Thomas Edison’s second wife

Menlo Park Lab

West Orange Lab

Thomas Edison was living around the same time as Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur, and Henry Ford!

Thomas Edison with Henry Ford

Edison and one of his comrades together made the kinetograph, a device that recorded motion, and the kinetoscope, a device that showed motion. But only one person could view it.

Thomas Armat had created a projector called the Phantascope. Edison

improved on the Phantascope and renamed it the Vitascope. So, the Vitascope became his invention. It

allowed movies to be viewed by many people at a time.

One of the famous Vitascope movies was The Great Train Robbery, a 10-minute movie that was everyone’s

favorite.

Thomas had gone on a trip to watch a solar eclipse with a scientist friend. His friend told him about a man in Connecticut who was using electricity to power arc bulbs, the common type of light bulbs for that time. Al wanted to see these 8 electric arc bulbs. When he did see them, he was very impressed. The only problem was that it was too bright. So what Edison did was to produce a softer light.

On the way back from the site of the eclipse, Edison made a promise to a reporter that within 6 weeks, he would produce electric light bulbs and install them on poles he would set in Menlo Park for a grand exhibition and some investors. He said he would even build a power station in Pearl Street, Manhattan that would bring light to a whole section of New York City!

With all his bragging about the electric light bulb, it seemed as if it was existing already. So now, Edison and his fellow scientists had to work very hard.

First, Edison had to make a bulb in which no oxygen could be left inside, called a vacuum bulb. A filament would give light much longer if it gets heated up in a vacuum bulb. So he hired a glassblower to make him a perfect hollow bulb.

But the hardest task was actually finding the right filament, or material that would glow for a long time inside the bulb. Edison went through a series of filament material including cotton, cardboard, paper, and fishing line. Finally he found what he needed.

On October 21st, 1879, Thomas Edison kneaded sewing thread that was made of cotton in a finely ground kind of soot called lampblack. He baked it and then mounted it onto a vacuum bulb.

It gave a lot of light. And the light didn’t go out until over one whole day!

Thomas Edison’s vacuum bulb with the baked sewing thread filament inside

In December, Edison set up electric light bulbs in Menlo Park. Over three thousand people came to see what he had done now. It was a beautiful sight. If you would be looking down at it from an airplane up in the sky, it would be very pretty with the 100 bulbs all lighted up.

Thomas Alva Edison died on October 18th, 1931, in West Orange, New Jersey.