Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous and prolific inventor of all time.
During
his life, over 1100 patents were issued to him or his associates; he
was known
as the wizard of Menlo Park, the town in New Jersey where he set up
his first
invention factory. Yet he was not really a scientist, having no
theory or
mathematics, and most of his success came from perfecting the ideas
of others or
already existing inventions by trial and error. He learned
telegraphy on the
railway, and his services as a telegrapher were in demand
during the Civil War,
when he traveled all over the country, incidentally
studying electricity. In
1868 came his first invention: a machine to
record votes in Congress. But
Congress turned it down, because they were
not interested in speeding up
matters. Edison then resolved to work only on
inventions that were commercially
viable. His first such invention was an
improvement on the ticker machine which
transmitted stock market prices. At
this particular time in U.S. history, when
Wall Street and big business
were more powerful than the government and an
enormous economic expansion was
under way, this invention was so successful that
Edison set up a small
manufacturing plant to build ticker-tape machines, which
he later sold at a
profit. This was the first instance of Edison's ability to
see what needed to
be invented before inventing it. Next he made improvements to
the telegraph,
culminating in a system that allowed four messages to be sent on
one wire. He
also made improvements to the typewriter. By 1876 Edison quit
manufacturing
and set up his first invention factory, with employees to help him
develop
ideas. Their first inventions were improvements to the telephone,
including a
microphone. At this moment Edison had invented the concept of
commercial
inventing, which has dominated twentieth-century technology. In
1877
Edison produced his most celebrated invention, certainly his own
favorite: the
phonograph. Edison's device used a tinfoil-covered drum which
was hand-cranked
while a stylus traced a groove on it. The first recording
ever made was of
Edison's own voice reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Typically, Edison had
written out a list of ten uses for a sound-recording
machine before he built it.
He saw it as a useful office machine, and did
not foresee the
multimillion-dollar record industry of today, which has
survived competition
from radio, TV, and Edison's own motion pictures. In
1878 Edison, using his
trial-and-error method, began research toward the
development of an incandescent
light bulb. He made thousands of experiments
before achieving success with a
charred cotton thread, sealed in a vacuum so
that it would glow without being
consumed. His team then worked out the
principles of the generating and
distributing system that made electric
lights for every home practicable. In
1882 the first generating plant was
opened at Pearl Street in New York City.
Edison used a direct-current
system; a former associate of his, the U.S.
scientist of Croatian origin,
Nikola Tesla, developed an alternating-current
system for the rival
Westinghouse company, which eventually prevailed. The
Edison Electric
Light Company, however, grew by mergers to become the General
Electric
Company. While working on the light bulb, Edison made his only
real
scientific discovery, the principle of the vacuum tube. At the time,
however,
there seemed to be no use for its properties; not until 1900 did the
British
electrical engineer, John A. Fleming, discover and develop its
potential for
radio. In 1887, Edison moved to a larger laboratory in West
Orange, New Jersey.
In 1889 he built a movie camera and later set up a
small studio for making short
movies for peep-show machines. "Once again,
however, the entertainment aspects
of his invention did not really appeal to
him, and it was finally left to others
to develop the movie industry."
"Electricity illuminates parts of New York
beginning September 4, 1982, as
Thomas Edison throws a switch in the offices of
financier J. P. Morgan to
light the offices and inaugurate commercial
transmission of electric power
from the Morgan-financed Edison Illuminating Co.
power plant on Pearl Street.
The company will soon supply current to all of
Manhattan and it will
develop into the Consolidated Edison Co., prototype of all
central-station
U.S. power companies. " This day marks one of the most
gigantic leaps of
technology as no longer would we have to depend on sunlight
and or candles to
work. This means our productivity time was doubled! Without
the invention of
the lightbulb, out lives would be incredibly different. Even in
the most
rural of places electricity is a must and is still depended on. It
is
something we use every day and its utility boosts Edison up to the 4th
position
in my mind. Also his invention of the phonograph revolutionized the
music
industry as is made listening to music at home possible for the first
time. Also
his invention of the vacuum tube helped not only the radio
invention but it was
one of the key instruments in the first computer,
another invention which I
cannot possibly imagine life without. Such an
inventor should not go unnoticed
in time and that’s why I ranked him 4th.