thomas alva edison€¦ · Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in the small town of Milan, Ohio. He would have been the youngest of seven children, but three of his

Thomas Alva Edison Excerpts from the biography by Christopher Lampton

The Man Who Changed the World

The world into which Thomas Alva Edison was born

was very different from the one in which he died. It was a

world that you might find rather strange. If you were to

mysteriously wake up in 1847 somehow, you would be in

a world without radios or television. There would be no

cars, airplanes, or movies. A trip of 10 miles was a very

long distance. A trip across the United States took months.

There were no telephones on which you could call your

friends in other cities or states, and certainly no Internet

to help you find out what was going on in the world. News

from outside your immediate area could take months or

even years to arrive. But when Edison died 84 years later,

the world was very similar to the one we have today. There

were airplanes, cars, radios, and movies. Television was just

around the corner. With the help of radios, news from all

around the world was delivered very quickly.

Edison lived during a period when technology – the

Tools that we use to make the world a better place – was

changing and expanding faster than ever before. He lived

in the great age of invention, a time when determined and

talented individuals built devices that changed the way

people looked at the world around them. This was the age

during which we received important devices such as the

telephone, the automobile, and the radio.

Accepted by the people of his time as the greatest

of the inventors, he is responsible for a long list of inventions

that helped people get things done, and led to even more

innovations in technology. One of his inventions was the

phonograph, which allowed music to be captured and played

again later. From this technology, CD players were later

developed, and eventually mp3 players, like ipods. Edison

also made significant contributions to the development of

the telephone, the telegraph, the stock ticker, movies, and

so much more. But perhaps his most famous invention is the

incandescent light bulb, which lets us see and work at night.

The greatest of Edison’s inventions, however, is something that you probably

use every day, but don’t really think about. Yet without it, the world would be a very

different place, much like the world into which Edison was born. You probably don’t

pay much attention to the electric sockets you can find on the wall of almost any room

in any building. Thomas Edison is responsible for the system of wires, electric stations,

and power generators that bring electricity to those sockets. Without the electricity

that flows into those sockets, we would have no televisions, radios, refrigerators,

washing machines, air conditioners, computers, or any other appliances that need

electrical energy to work.

Thomas Edison helped bring electricity to the world. If the world changed while

Thomas Edison lived, it was at least in part because he helped to change it. Not many

people have the chance to change the world as much as Edison did. He lived at a time

when the world was ready for important technological changes, and he was the

perfect man to help make those changes happen. He had a sharp mind, a tremendous

amount of energy, and the patience to try something over and over and over again,

until he could find a way to make an invention work the way he wanted it to. Someone

else may have been able to invent some of the things that he did, but without his work

we would have waited a lot longer for the technology that we have.

The Birth of a Legend

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in the small town of Milan,

Ohio. He would have been the youngest of seven children, but three of his brothers

and sisters died before he was born. The three that survived were so much older than

he was, that it was almost like he was an only child. His mother, Nancy, gave him all

the love she had been longing to give her children who had died.

By all accounts, Al, as young Edison was known, was a happy child who was

prone to getting into mischief. He was often in trouble with his parents, especially his

father. The same curiosity that got him into so much trouble as a child served him well

as an inventor when he became an adult. The boy who would later become the

greatest inventor of all time was not a good student. His schoolteacher, Reverend G.B.

Engle, called him “addled.” His father agreed. Al himself was unsure about his own

intelligence. He said, “My father thought I was stupid, and I almost decided I must be a

dunce.” We know that Al wasn’t really stupid. Probably he was too bright. He had a

restless mind and did not want to concentrate on lessons designed for slower students.

When Edison was just seven years old, he contracted Scarlet Fever, a disease

that affected his ability to hear. For the rest of his life, he had trouble hearing. By the

time he died he was almost completely deaf. Because she recognized her son’s need

for a special education, his mother started teaching him at home after his illness. She

surrounded him with books that would have been much too difficult for the average

elementary student, but Al read them avidly and then found even more challenging

books to read on his own. The book that inspired him more than any other was The

School of Natural Philosophy by R. G. Parker. It was a book of scientific experiments

that youngsters like Edison could conduct at home. Edison soon began collecting

chemicals and scientific equipment, stowing them in his room so he could perform

Parker’s experiments as well as some of his own. His bedroom became more of a

laboratory than a bedroom, so his mother finally made him move all his scientific

equipment down to the basement, where his experiments continued.

Edison was fascinated by electricity, and the electrical device that fascinated him

the most was the telegraph. Although it has almost been forgotten today, the

telegraph was one of the greatest inventions of the mid-nineteenth century. It is the

ancestor of the communication devices that are now common: the telephone, radio,

television, and computer. It was invented in 1838 by Samuel F. B. Morse to transmit

messages over long distances by wire. A telegraph operator would translate the

message into Morse Code, a series of “dots” and “dashes” (clicking sounds that

represented the letters of the alphabet), and tap out the message on a telegraph

“key.” The message would be carried electrically to another city, where a second

operator would translate the message back into English and write it down on paper.

The telegraph greatly increased the speed at which news and information could travel

across the country.

Edison built his own system of mini telegraphs which he used to communicate

with his friends. These early telegraphs were only the first for Edison. His love of the

telegraph would later help him launch his career as an inventor. In the meantime,

Edison was struggling to pay the increasing expenses of his complicated experiments.

His family had fallen on hard times, and Edison had to find work. At just 12 years old, Al

Edison went off to work for the railroad.

Al’s job was to sell newspapers to passengers on the train from Port Huron to

Detroit, Michigan. The train left at 7:00 a.m., so young Al had to get up with the sun.

He did not arrive back home each day until 9:30 p.m. He had trouble sleeping, and

often spent his nights talking with his friends using his telegraph system. Although his

work hours were long, Edison had time on the train when he could think about his

experiments. Within a year, he convinced his boss to let him build a laboratory on the

train so he could perform experiments in the baggage car. The arrangement worked

well until fifteen-year-old Edison accidentally spilled some chemicals and caught some

of the baggage on fire. That was the end of his laboratory aboard the train.

In 1862 Edison began publishing his own newspaper, The Weekly Herald. His was

a one-man operation. He wrote, printed, and sold his paper on trains from Port Huron

to Detroit for eight cents a copy. This was a surprisingly high price at the time. But

Edison dreamed of being a railroad engineer and a telegraph operator.

Traveling Telegrapher

Much like typists, telegraphers were judged by the speed at which they could

type their single key to send messages. A fast telegrapher could send a message at 45

words per minute or more. Those who were much slower were called “plugs” because

they just “plugged along.” Edison started out as a plug. There were plenty of

telegraphing jobs, so Edison had no problem finding work. He went to work as a

railroad dispatcher in Ontario, Canada. However, he was prone to daydreaming about

his inventions, and that got him into trouble. He was supposed to send a message to a

train operator to let him know there was another train coming the other direction on

the same track, but he was daydreaming and didn’t send the message. Fortunately,

there was no accident, but Edison was afraid he would get sent to jail, so he ran away

to the United States. He worked for many different companies, often getting fired for

his daydreaming or practical jokes. He finally ended up working for Western Union. By

that time, he had become one of the fastest telegraph operators, able to both send

and receive messages at very fast speeds. In addition, he wrote his messages neatly,

which was a prized skill. However, his daydreaming continued to be a problem, and he

was running out of places to go when he got fired.

The Inventor

In 1867, Edison headed to Boston to begin a new career as an inventor. One of

the first inventions he worked on was the duplex telegraph, a device which would

allow telegraph messages to be sent in both directions on one wire at the same time.

This would double the amount of messages that could be sent in a day. Since the

telegraph was the only available way to send long distance messages, this would be an

important advancement. Edison struggled to make a device that worked well enough

for the major companies to be interested. He was also distracted by making other

inventions, such as an automatic voting machine and a stock ticker. He ultimately left

Boston as a poor man.

New York seemed like a better place to be an inventor, so that’s where Edison

moved. He was given a basement laboratory space by Franklin L. Pope, a businessman

who rented stock tickers such as those designed by Edison. He worked on

improvements to the telegraph and the stock ticker devices. His work brought him

millions of dollars, but he was not very good at managing his money. He often spent

more than he had on new equipment for his experiments.

Marriage and Family

In 1871, Edison married 16-year old Mary

Stilwell, one of his employees. His wife, who had

quit her job in the shop when they married, often

would not see him for days because of his work

habits. Edison loved her, but he also loved his work.

When the couple had their first children, a girl and

a boy, they were named Dot and Dash. They were

named in honor of his work on the telegraph.

The Invention Factory

In 1876 Edison opened an invention factory,

the first of its kind. In his laboratory at Menlo Park,

Edison could get away from the hectic world of the

city and do what he did best: build new things. While

working on some improvements to Alexander Graham

Bell’s telephone invention, Edison began to develop a way to record sounds. This work

led to the development of the phonograph. Today recording sounds seems quite

ordinary, but one hundred years ago it was nothing short of a miracle.

Let There Be Light

Electric lighting was not new. The arc lamp, which produced

light by jumping a bright arc of electricity between two electrically

charged rods, had been around for decades. But the arc lamp was

too bright to be used in homes and offices, and too expensive.

Edison saw the light bulb as an inexpensive device that could light

up a small room as easily as an auditorium. At that time, most

people used candles or gas lights in their homes.

In developing the light bulb, Edison and his associates tried

thousands of different materials before they found one that

worked. The search went on for many months, and it must have

been frustrating for Edison. He had put his reputation on the line in

advance by announcing that he was going to invent a working light bulb. He felt

pressure to continue at it until he succeeded.

His first success came in using ordinary cotton thread. He carbonized the thread

before putting it into the bulb. By this process of partially burning the thread, he

turned it into a thread of ashes. The bulb worked. A second bulb made in the same way

was able to burn for 40 hours. Edison was determined to make one that could burn for

100 hours. The filament he finally chose for his light bulbs was carbonized bamboo. But

having a working light bulb was only one half of the problem. He realized that he also

needed an effective way to supply the users of his new bulb with the power to make it

work.

Edison did not intend for light bulbs to be a toy for the rich. He wanted everyone

to have the opportunity to use them. It wasn’t enough to invent the light bulb, he had

to invent the electric power industry as well!

Although many people said he couldn’t do it,

Edison successfully designed a dynamo and

wire system capable of generating enough

electricity for hundreds of offices and homes.

By the 1880’s, Edison was one of the most

famous men in the world.

Goodbye, Edison

Thomas Alva Edison died on October

18, 1931 following a long illness that put him

into a coma. He was 84 years old. On October

21, the nation briefly turned off all lights to

honor his passing. Even the lights on the Statue

of Liberty were turned out. Thousands of

people came to visit his laboratory to pay

their respects to one of the greatest inventors

of all time.