Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) - American inventor and entrepreneur who received 1,093 patents in America and about 3,000 in other countries of the world.
The creator of the phonograph, improved the telegraph, telephone, cinema equipment, developed one of the first commercially successful versions of an electric incandescent lamp, which was a refinement of other versions.
Edison received the highest US honor, the Congressional Gold Medal. Member of the US National Academy of Sciences and foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
There are many interesting facts in Edison's biography, which we will talk about in this article.
So, before you is a short biography of Thomas Edison.
Edison's biography
Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in the American town of Maylen (Ohio). He grew up and was brought up in a simple family with a modest income. His parents, Samuel Edison and Nancy Eliot, he was the youngest of 7 children.
Childhood and youth
As a child, Edison was shorter than his peers, and also did not have good health. After suffering scarlet fever, he became deaf in his left ear. Father and mother took care of him, since they had previously lost two (according to other sources, three) children.
Thomas was especially curious from an early age. He oversaw the steamers and the carpenters at the port. Also, the boy could hide for a long time in some secluded place, redrawing the inscriptions of certain signs.
However, when Edison went to school, he was considered almost the worst student. The teachers spoke of him as a "limited" child. This led to the fact that after 3 months, the parents were forced to take their son from the educational institution.
After that, the mother began to independently give Thomas an elementary education. It is worth noting that he helped his mother sell fruits and vegetables at the market.
Edison often went to the library, reading various scientific works. An interesting fact is that when the child was barely 9 years old, he mastered the book - "Natural and Experimental Philosophy", which contained almost all the scientific and technical information of that time.
It is no less interesting that in the subsequent years of his biography, Thomas Edison undertook virtually all the experiments that were mentioned in the book. As a rule, he was fond of chemical experiments, which required certain financial costs.
When Edison was about 12 years old, he started selling newspapers at the train station. It is curious that over time, the young man was allowed to conduct his experiments in the luggage car of the train.
After some time, Thomas becomes the publisher of the 1st train newspaper. Around the same time, he begins to get involved in electricity. In the summer of 1862, he manages to save the station master's son from the moving train, who, in gratitude, agreed to teach him telegraphic business.
This led to the fact that Edison was able to equip his first telegraph line, which connected his house with the house of a friend. Soon a fire broke out in the baggage car where he conducted his experiments. As a result, the conductor kicked the young chemist out of the train along with his laboratory.
As a teenager, Thomas Edison managed to visit many American cities, trying to arrange his life. During this time of his biography, he was often malnourished, since he spent most of his earnings on buying books and conducting experiments.
Inventions
The secret of the famous inventor's success can be described in a phrase authored by Edison himself: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% sweating." Thomas was truly a hard workaholic, spending all his time in the labs.
Thanks to his perseverance and determination to achieve this goal, Thomas was able to obtain 1,093 patents in the United States and three times as many patents in other countries. The first success came to him while working at the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company.
Edison was hired due to the fact that he was able to repair the telegraph apparatus, which was not possible for professional craftsmen. In 1870 the company gladly bought from the guy an improved system of telegraphing stock exchange bulletins on the gold and stock prices.
The received fee was enough for Thomas to open his workshop for the production of tickers for the exchanges. A year later, he owned three similar workshops.
In subsequent years, the biographies of Edison's affairs went even more successful. He formed Pope, Edison & Co. In 1873, a man presented an important invention - a four-way telegraph, through which it was possible to simultaneously send up to 4 messages over one wire.
To implement subsequent ideas, Thomas Edison needed a well-equipped laboratory. In 1876, not far from New York, construction began on a large complex designed for research and development.
Later, the laboratory brought together hundreds of promising scientists. After a long and intensive work, Edison created the phonograph (1877) - the first device for recording and reproducing sound. With the help of a needle and foil, he recorded a children's song, which surprised all his compatriots.
In 1879, Thomas Edison presented perhaps the most famous invention in his scientific biography - the carbon filament lamp. The service life of such a lamp was much longer, and its production required less cost.
An interesting fact is that the previous types of lamps burned for only a couple of hours, consumed a lot of electricity and were much more expensive. Equally fascinating, he tried up to 6,000 materials before choosing carbon as a filament.
Initially, Edison's lamp burned for 13-14 hours, but later its service life increased almost 100 times! He soon built a power plant in one of the New York boroughs, causing 400 lamps to flash. The number of electricity consumers has increased from 59 to about 500 people over several months.
In 1882 the so-called "war of currents" broke out, which lasted more than a century. Edison was an advocate of the use of direct current, which was transmitted without significant loss over short distances.
In turn, the world famous Nikola Tesla, who originally worked for Thomas Edison, argued that it is more efficient to use alternating current, which can be transmitted over great distances.
When Tesla, at the request of the employer, designed 24 AC machines, he did not receive the promised $ 50,000 for the job. In anger, Nikola resigned from Edison's enterprise and soon became his direct competitor. With financial support from the industrialist Westinghouse, he began to popularize alternating current.
The war of currents was ended only in 2007: the chief engineer of Consolidate Edison publicly cut the last cable through which direct current was supplied to New York.
Thomas Edison's most significant inventions include a carbon microphone, a magnetic separator, a fluoroscope - an X-ray device, a kinetoscope - an early cinematic technology for displaying a moving image, and a nickel-iron battery.
Personal life
Over the years of his personal biography, Edison was married twice. His first wife was a telegraph operator Mary Stillwell. An interesting fact is that immediately after the wedding, the man went to work, forgetting about the wedding night.
In this union, the couple had a daughter and two sons. The eldest children, Marriott and Thomas, received the nicknames "Point" and "Dash", in honor of Morse code, with the light hand of their father. Edison's wife died at the age of 29 from a brain tumor.
The second wife of the inventor was a girl named Mina Miller. Edison taught her Morse code by declaring his love for her in this language. This union also gave birth to two boys and one girl.
Death
The inventor was engaged in science until his death. Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931 at the age of 84. The cause of his death was diabetes, which has begun to progress more and more in recent years.
Edison Photos
