[112], Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. He turned a $50-a-week profit by age 13, most of which went to buying equipment for electrical and chemical experiments. The ship was decommissioned a few months after the end of World War II. A steady direct current is passed between the plates through the granules and the varying resistance results in a modulation of the current, creating a varying electric current that reproduces the varying pressure of the sound wave. Edison said he wanted the lab to have "a stock of almost every conceivable material". His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder. [166] The town has many Edison historical landmarks, including the graves of Edison's parents, and a monument along the St. Clair River. Edison preferred not to sell phenol for military uses. For insight, he corresponded with prominent academic and banking professionals. This turned into a media frenzy against high voltage alternating current and the seemingly greedy and callous lighting companies that used it. [38] Edison's name is registered on 1,093 patents. At the start of World War I, the American chemical industry was primitive. Harvey Firestone and naturalist John Burroughs also participated. [102] A street in Falconbridge, as well as the Edison Building, which served as the head office of Falconbridge Mines, are named for him. The situation became so bad that Thomas Sr. had to take his son to court to stop the practices, finally agreeing to pay Thomas Jr. an allowance of $35 (equivalent to $1,056 in 2021)[30] per week, in exchange for not using the Edison name; the son began using aliases, such as Burton Willard. Madeleine Edison (18881979), who married, In 1878, Edison was awarded an honorary PhD from, He was named an Honorable Consulting Engineer at the, In 1908, Edison received the American Association of Engineering Societies, In 1927, he was granted membership in the, Ohio Edison (merged with Centerior in 1997 to form, 14 minutes "instructional" film with fictional elements, This page was last edited on 26 July 2022, at 18:54. In 1901, Edison visited an industrial exhibition in the Sudbury area in Ontario, Canada and thought nickel and cobalt deposits there could be used in his production of electrical equipment. In 1883, the City Hotel in Sunbury, Pennsylvania was the first building to be lit with Edison's three-wire system. Edison did the majority of the research and planting, sending results and sample rubber residues to his West Orange Lab. Despite its limited sound quality and that the recordings could be played only a few times, the phonograph made Edison a celebrity. [43] Although Edison obtained a patent for the phonograph in 1878,[44] he did little to develop it until Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter produced a phonograph-like device in the 1880s that used wax-coated cardboard cylinders.
[143], In May 1922, he published a proposal, entitled "A Proposed Amendment to the Federal Reserve Banking System". [144] In it, he detailed an explanation of a commodity-backed currency, in which the Federal Reserve would issue interest-free currency to farmers, based on the value of commodities they produced. [39], Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him wider notice was the phonograph in 1877. However, one biographer described him as a very curious child who learned most things by reading on his own. [167] On the same night, The Edison Institute was dedicated in nearby Dearborn. [53] Edison continued trying to improve this design and on November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires". ", "Thomas Edison's First Wife May Have Died of a Morphine Overdose", "LOST IN HISTORY: Thomas A. Edison, Junior", "Theosophical Society Members 18751942 Historical membership list of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) 18751942", "Edison's Forgotten 'Invention': A Phone That Calls the Dead", "Edison Comes Out Unqalifiedly for Suffrage", "Edison, Harvey, Hughes and Other Leading Men Refute Senator Martine", Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America's Greatest Inventor, "Vegetarianism Quotes from Noteworthy People", "Review: Thomas Edison's life of ceaseless action", "Franklin Laureate Database Edward Longstreth Medal 1899 Laureates", "Proclamation 5013 National Inventors' Day, 1983", "The History & Technology of the Edison Bridge & Driscoll Bridge over the Raritan River, New Jersey", "5533.18 Thomas A. Edison memorial bridge", "Thomas Edison National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)", "Thomas Edison statue dedicated in U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall", "Nikola Tesla Wasn't God and Thomas Edison Wasn't the Devil", Learn how and when to remove this template message, Menlo Park Museum and Edison Memorial Tower, Edison exhibit and Menlo Park Laboratory at Henry Ford Museum, Edison's patent application for the light bulb, "The Invention Factory: Thomas Edison's Laboratories", Thomas Edison Personal Manuscripts and Letters, Edison Gower-Bell Telephone Company of Europe, Global telecommunications regulation bodies, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Components Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology, Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, Certified Software Development Professional, Computer-Aided Design Technical Committee, Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Edison&oldid=1100596227, American film production company founders, Hall of Fame for Great Americans inductees, Honorary Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Members of the American Philosophical Society, Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, Recipients of the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Wikipedia external links cleanup from January 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Marion Estelle Edison (18731965), nicknamed "Dot", Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (18761935), nicknamed "Dash". 139140, Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death, Bloomsbury Publishing US 2009, p. 268, Robert L. Bradley Jr., Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, John Wiley & Sons 2011, pp. That year, the financier J.P. Morgan engineered a merger of Edison General Electric with Thomson-Houston that put the board of Thomson-Houston in charge of the new company called General Electric. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park".[5]. [105] Most phenol had been imported from Britain, but with war, Parliament blocked exports and diverted most to production of ammonium picrate. Thomas Jr., experiencing alcoholism, depression and ill health, worked at several menial jobs, but by 1931 (towards the end of his life) he would obtain a role in the Edison company, thanks to the intervention of his half-brother Charles.[129][130]. It was built in Menlo Park, a part of Raritan Township (now named Edison Township in his honor) in Middlesex County, New Jersey, with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. [41] In April 1878, Edison traveled to Washington to demonstrate the phonograph before the National Academy of Sciences, Congressmen, Senators and US President Hayes. [173], On February 11, 2011, on what would have been Thomas Edison's 164th birthday, Google's homepage featured an animated Google Doodle commemorating his many inventions. Wartime shortages made these ventures profitable. The nickeliron battery was never very successful; by the time it was ready, electric cars were disappearing, and lead acid batteries had become the standard for turning over gas-powered car starter motors.[104]. He established the first industrial research laboratory.[6]. The outbreak of war in August 1914 resulted in an immediate shortage of imported chemicals. Edison was accused of being an atheist for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he clarified himself in a private letter: You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. In 1903, when the owners of Luna Park, Coney Island announced they would execute Topsy the elephant by strangulation, poisoning, and electrocution (with the electrocution part ultimately killing the elephant), Edison Manufacturing sent a crew to film it, releasing it that same year with the title Electrocuting an Elephant. "There isn't any good acting on the screen. Edison was active in business right up to the end. Bayer had acquired a plant to manufacture in the US in Rensselaer, New York, but struggled to find phenol to keep their plant running during the war. "[111] She also said that during one of his periodic "great scientific adventures", Edison would be up at 7:00, have breakfast at 8:00, and be rarely home for lunch or dinner, implying that he continued to have all three. In 1880, Lewis Latimer, a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation, began working for the United States Electric Lighting Company run by Edison's rival Hiram S. Bakelite, the original thermoset plastic, had been invented in 1909. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway. [164] In Beaumont, Texas, there is an Edison Museum, though Edison never visited there. Despite the common belief that Edison did not use mathematics, analysis of his notebooks reveal that he was an astute user of mathematical analysis conducted by his assistants such as Francis Robbins Upton, for example, determining the critical parameters of his electric lighting system including lamp resistance by an analysis of Ohm's Law, Joule's Law and economics. Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. Despite his frail condition, Edison was at the throttle of the first electric MU (Multiple-Unit) train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken in September 1930, driving the train the first mile through Hoboken yard on its way to South Orange. [15], It is known that early in his career he enrolled in a chemistry course at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, to support his work on a new telegraphy system with Charles Batchelor. With the development of transformers in Europe and by Westinghouse Electric in the US in 18851886, it became possible to transmit AC long distances over thinner and cheaper wires, and "step down" (reduce) the voltage at the destination for distribution to users. Pope and Edison founded their own company in October 1869, working as electrical engineers and inventors. In 1876, Edison began work to improve the microphone for telephones (at that time called a "transmitter") by developing a carbon microphone, which consists of two metal plates separated by granules of carbon that would change resistance with the pressure of sound waves. [81], Edison became concerned with America's reliance on foreign supply of rubber and was determined to find a native supply of rubber. The Edison Medal was created on February 11, 1904, by a group of Edison's friends and associates. Mann, Charles C. And Plummer, Mark L (1991). [90], Edison invented a highly sensitive device, that he named the tasimeter, which measured infrared radiation. Stephen J. Herben officiated at the funeral;[113] Edison is buried behind the home.[114][115]. His impetus for its creation was the desire to measure the heat from the solar corona during the total Solar eclipse of July 29, 1878. [63] On October 6, 1889, a judge ruled that Edison's electric light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid. Edison's philosophy of nonviolence extended to animals as well, about which he stated: "Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Modern-day historians and medical professionals have suggested he may have had ADHD. Ultimately, his entrepreneurship was central to the formation of some 14 companies, including General Electric, still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world. The Edison equipment was removed from Columbia in 1895.[58][59][60][61]. [163] The Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum is in the town of Edison, New Jersey. The DC supply system provided electricity supplies to street lamps and several private dwellings within a short distance of the station. By the end of 1887, Edison Electric was losing market share to Westinghouse, who had built 68 AC-based power stations to Edison's 121 DC-based stations. Thomas Edison State University, nationally known for adult learners, is in Trenton, New Jersey. When the cursor was hovered over the doodle, a series of mechanisms seemed to move, causing a light bulb to glow.[174]. [8] He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison Jr. (18041896, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (18101871, born in Chenango County, New York). He did the electromechanical design while his employee William Kennedy Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Starting in the 1890s, Thomas Jr. became involved in snake oil products and shady and fraudulent enterprises producing products being sold to the public as "The Latest Edison Discovery". [49] In 1840, British scientist Warren de la Rue developed an efficient light bulb using a coiled platinum filament but the high cost of platinum kept the bulb from becoming a commercial success.
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