We are in Paris in 1889, where the great World Exhibition opened. In one corner of the exhibition, the birthplace of the famous Eiffel Tower, one of the pavilions was dedicated to Edison’s inventions and discoveries. On the opening day, Edison, who was among the guests, was greeted with great interest and respect. At a dinner given in his honor by scientists and engineers, someone raised a toast and said: We all know Edison, this great inventor. But I cannot fail to mention his greatest characteristic here. This characteristic is that he knew when to restrain himself. Indeed, Edison wanted to leave something for others to invent.
Yes, Edison is a scientist with the most discoveries and the highest number of inventions in technical history. Having started his experiments at the age of eleven, only death could stop Edison after seventy-three years of work.
Where and when was Thomas Edison born?
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, in the northern part of the USA. His father had tried various professions but failed to succeed in any of them. His mother was a teacher. Little Alva was a weak, delicate, meek, and thoughtful child.
What kind of childhood did Edison have?
Even from a young age, an insatiable curiosity was noticeable in him. Due to this curiosity, which never faded until his death, he always made those around him uneasy. He received his early education at home under his mother’s supervision. He was forced to enter the workforce at a young age. He started selling newspapers and caramels on the trains running between Port Huron and Detroit. A year later, he obtained permission from the station chief to set up a small chemical laboratory in one of the postal wagons. During the train journey, he spent his free time reading books, taking notes, and conducting experiments.
Edison’s first works
In early 1861, the American Civil War broke out between the North and the South. Everyone wanted to follow the military operations day by day. Edison thought of capitalizing on this situation. He started publishing the latest news he collected from telegraphers at every station he stopped at, in a newspaper he published. Thus, the weekly newspaper named **Weekly Herald** was born and quickly became known in wide circles.
What was Edison’s first job?
In 1862, a station chief taught Edison telegraphy. Young Alva soon became a skilled telegraph operator. Consequently, he took a night telegraphy job in Stratford. This was his first job. Thus, he was earning money on one hand and continuing his own experiments on the other. If he were to fall asleep at night, a device he invented would take over his duty and reply, “everything is fine.” Everything went well until this situation was noticed. When it was understood, Edison was fired from his job.
He wandered from one city to another. With his mind elsewhere, his eyes distant, thinking about the experiments he would conduct, years passed, but he eventually achieved success.
What were Edison’s first successes?
In 1868, Edison received a patent for a new calculating machine in Boston. The following year, he moved to New York, where he hoped to further develop his work. But it didn’t turn out as he had planned. After a period of terrible poverty, he finally found a job with a telegraph company. He worked 20 hours a day, saving money by scrimping and scraping. On October 1, 1869, he established a company with a friend. This was the first electrical company founded in the USA. A year later, Edison made a special electrical device to publish stock market figures and sold it to one of the major companies for 40 thousand dollars. Thus, he established a large laboratory in Menlo Park near New York. The year was 1876, and Edison had finally found his true path. This path would lead him to victory.
When did Edison invent the light bulb?
Inventions were spurting out of the red-brick villa as if from a fountain: Telegraph devices, new types of accumulators, dynamos, electric motors, metalworking machines… Edison, meanwhile, improved the telephone, created a primitive loudspeaker, and made a device called a kinetoscope, the grandfather of today’s cinema machine. In 1878, he invented the Phonograph.
In the same year, we see Edison starting work on his greatest invention, the electric light bulb. This work lasted for exactly two years, day and night. With dirty hands, wearing worker’s clothes, and his hair falling over his eyes, he was striving with all his might.
His whole goal was to find a filament that would emit light without quickly burning out. For this, he tried every kind of material he could think of, from his friends’ beard hairs to whatever came to mind. Platinum, cotton, paper, plant fibers—none of them gave the desired result. Finally, one day in October 1879, a special cotton thread he placed inside the light bulb continued to glow red-hot and emit light for 40 hours without catching fire. This result was a triumph. In 1882, one of the neighborhoods in New York was illuminated entirely by the light bulbs Edison had invented. That same year, he undertook the task of establishing the first power station in Milan and lighting the city with his light bulbs. For the next 49 years, Edison continued his work relentlessly.
He planned to realize talking motion pictures and operate it parallel with the gramophone; he made the dictaphone; he invented nickel-iron accumulators; he created paraffin paper. Making the wireless telegraph was one of his major projects. Separately, he tried to obtain rubber synthetically. He built a thermometer to measure the temperatures of stars in the sky. He found new methods for extracting iron ores. He improved cement production technology. He conducted countless experiments related to X-rays and, in the process, discovered 8,000 types of crystals. All this work earned him 16,000 patents. Although most of these were not entirely new inventions, they concerned important development methods.
When did Edison die?
Edison was 84 years old when he died on October 18, 1931. That day was a day of mourning for the entire technical world, as much as it was for America.
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