Life Sketch Of Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was Born in Ohio in 1847 in the city of Milan and spent his childhood in Michigan, in the city of port Huron. His parents were Samuel Edison Jr & Nancy Elliott and he was the seventh child to his parents. Thomas attended school only for a few months in his life and was tutored at home by his mother. Most of his early knowledge came from studying R. G. Parker’s School of Natural Philosophy and from taking up chemistry courses at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He had developed a hearing problem since early childhood. This was said to be due to his getting scarlet fever and which affected his hearing and remained untreated till his youth.

The young Thomas sold newspapers and candy on trains and sometimes also sold vegetables. This developed his entrepreneurial powers at a very tender age. Even though he had limited formal education he read voraciously under his mother’s tutelage. His business endeavors made him earn a 50$ profit at the age of 13, from which he bought scientific equipment, mostly electric and chemical. These were his passion for the rest of his life. He also worked as a Telegraph operator for some time when he saved the life of a 3-year-old kid and then the kid’s father offer his that position. The kids father was so grateful for that incident that he trained Thomas personally. This introduced young Thomas to the electric aspect for which he would get many patents later on. . Thomas’s first telegraphy job was at Stratford Junction, Ontario for the Grand Trunk Railway company . During this period he also studied the fundamentals of qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments while on the train until he left the job.

Thomas obtained exclusive right to sell newspapers in the railway company and with the aid of four assistants, he set up the Grand Trunk Herald. This he sold along with other newspapers. Thus began Thomas’s long list of entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman. This eventually led him to found 14 companies, including GE (General Electric), one of the largest companies in the world.

At the age of 19 in 1866, he shifted to Louisville, Kentucky. While in an employee of Western Union, he worked at the Associated press Bureau. Here Thomas requested the night shift so that he could continue with his experiments and reading habits. His career as an inventor began in Newark, new Jersey. He built the automatic repeater and other such devices’ which improved the telegraphic equipment. The invention that first Garnered him with wider notice was the phonograph which he built in 1877. His first phonograph was recorded on a tinfoil around a cylinder groove. Even though it had limited sound capability and the recordings could be played for a limited number of times, the phonograph had made Thomas a celebrity..

His first patent was for the electric vote record, which was granted on June 1, 1869. When he found little demand for his machines he shifted to New York City for better prospects. At New York he was mentored by another inventor by the name of Leonard Pope. Pope allowed Thomas to work and live in the basement of his house. T this tie he also worked for the Gold Indicator Company under Samuel Laws. It ws in this company that he began work on the development of a Multiplex telegraph system that could sent two messages simultaneously. This was in 1874.

Thomas’ most prominent innovation was the starting of an Industrial research Lab in the tear 1876. This was in the town of Menlo Park.( now called Edison Township). This could be done by the money raised by selling his quadruplex Telegraph.

Almost all of Thomas’s patents were under the utility patents category, which was to be protected for a period of 17 years and included inventions that were electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. Also, some were design Patents which were to be protected for 14 years. The phonograph was his first uniquely devised patent described as the first device to record and reproduce sounds.

Thomas’s Menlo Park laboratory expanded to occupy two city blocks. Thomas Edison said he wanted the lab to have ‘a stock of almost every conceivable material’

Thomas began work on improvement of the microphone for telephones by constructing a carbon microphone in 1876. Thomas found ways of improvement of the Bell Telephone microphone that stared to be used in 1890 and was used in all telephones along with the Bell receiver even up to the 1980s.

Thomas began work on electric illumination in the year 1878, which was one of his biggest achievements for which he is widely known. He started by building an incandescent lamp which could be used for indoors and that lad a long life. Also the lamp that had to be produced should have had an affordable price. The bulbs that he built earlier had a very short life and thus was not commercially viable. After continuous experimentations, he chanced upon carbon filaments. He also conducted tests with other materials but stuck to carbon filaments due to their longevity and performance. On October 22, 1879 he conducted his first successful test with the incandescent lamp. The lap was performed for a period of 13.5 hours. After further test and refinements and improvements Thomas filed for a patent on November 4th, in the year 1879. The patent was granted on 27th January in the year 1880: for an electric lamp using ‘a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires’.

Thomas formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City in the year 1878. He conducted the first public display of his new invention, he incandescent lamp bulb in his Menlo park premises on the 31st of December in the year 1879. Here he is quoted to have said “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.’

His incandescent light bulb were first commercially used in the Oregon Railroad and Navigation company flagship steamer named as the Columbia. This was done in 1880. The Columbia sailed for England with the New Lamps of the Edison electric company. This marked the start of electric illumination on public transport commercially and placed Thomas Alva Edison on the journey from becoming an inventor to becoming an industrialist un-parallel in history .

Next Thomas turned his attention on Electrical Utilities in 1879 and founded the Edison Illuminating Company in 1980. From his work related to electricity and electrical equipment, he applied for the patent on a system of Electric distribution. The company produced the first utility based power generation system in 1882 in the city of New York. Thomas started the first steam-based power generation system and station at London in January of the year 1882. It was for the first time that street lights using power generated from electricity was to be used in the world. This marked as the foundation of the popularity of GE as a company.

Thomas Edison is also credited with the invention of a commercially produced fluoroscope, which used X rays to capture radiographs. He also invented the Tasimeter which was used to measure infrared radiation. The Solar eclipse of May 20, 1891 was his inspiration for building the above two devices.

Thomas Edison also built and patented the motion picture camera and named it Kinetograph. He also built the commercially successful kinetoscope commomly called the peephole in those days which was used even till the 1950s. Through this device people could watch short films. Both the kinetoscope and the Kinetoscope was first demonstrated by Thomas himself in Penny Arcade, New York in the year 1891.

He also had to his credit patents from the mining field. He devised a machine that could mine iron ore from low yielding ores. This machine could produce ores and refine Iron up to 10 tonnes which was a dramatic change to prevalent processes. He set up the Edison Ore Mining Company in 1901. In his factory he also experimented in refining cement. The mining company was a failure but from the learning he set up the Edison Storage battery company where in he invented the accumulator.

Thomas was active in business and his experimentation all through his life. Thomas Alva Edison died on October 18, 1931 at his home in New jersey.

Lessons Learned or Derived for Practice:

1. Nothing is IMPOSSIBLE: The life of Thomas Edison depicts the fact that nothing is impossible in life. One must try and try and it will be possible
2. Hard Work: Like Edison Said “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
3. Recognizing and building Self-Capability: Realizing ones own capability and working on it so that it becomes our strength. In Edison’s Words “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”
4. Working alone even if no one is with us: In Edison’s Words “The best thinking has been done in solitude.”
5. Restlessness: Thomas Edison has always worked on something and had said that if a man is not restless it would lead to decay and the ultimate downfall of man. He said “Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.”
6. Perspective is everything: Edison is known to have said, “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.” Everything has a positive and negative perspective. We should always look for the positive and move forward.
7. Common Sense: Like every inventor, Edison was blessed with common sense.

References:

1. Clark, Ronald William (1977). Edison: The man who made the future. London: Macdonald & Jane’s: Macdonald and Jane’s. ISBN 978-0-354-04093-8.
2. Israel, Paul (1998). Edison: A Life of Invention. New York: Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-52942-2.
3. Pretzer, William S. (ed). (1989). Working at Inventing: Thomas A. Edison and the Menlo Park Experience. Dearborn, Michigan: Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village. ISBN 978-0-933728-33-2.
4. Stross, Randall E. (2007). The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. Crown. ISBN 978-1-4000-4762-8.