Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931)

Abstract

THOMAS ALVA EDISON was born in the then village of Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, and died at West Orange, New Jersey, on October 18, 1931, at the age of eighty-four. Many years before Edison's death, Sir Richard Gregory wrote in his “Discovery, or the Spirit and Service of Science”, “Thomas A. Edison is the embodiment of the method of specialised research with a practical purpose. By quickness of perception, fertility of resource, and persistent trial of everything until the best means of achieving his end has been found, he has become the leading inventor in the world.” It is not far short of seventy years since the journalists of America raised him to the status of a sort of national hero. His first triumph was achieved when as a boy of fifteen he set up, printed and published a newspaper on a running train. By twenty-one he had secured the first of his thousands of patents and resigned an appointment with a telegraph company in order to bring out his inventions. From that time, patent followed patent, and in 1876 he founded the famous laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he employed both men of science and men of skill to carry out his ideas. In quick succession came a series of innovations in telegraphy and telephony, the phonograph, photography, and in all that appertained to the generation, distribution and utilization of electricity. All that he did has to be studied with a knowledge of what had been and was being done by others, for he always made the fullest use of contemporary discoveries.