THOMAS ALVA EDISON: BIOGRAPHY, FACTS, INVENTIONS, AWARDS - ARTE - 2025

Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) was one of the most famous inventors, creator of the first industrial research laboratory and distinguished himself as an entrepreneur with a great commercial vision that led him to register more than 1000 patents in his name.

He was one of those responsible for turning electricity into a revolutionary phenomenon that permeated the daily lives of people with creations such as the phonograph, the kinetoscope and the distribution that made electric light something common.

Thomas A. Edison, Inc., via Wikimedia Commons

His first patent was registered in 1869. From that moment, his creative vocation was unstoppable, despite the fact that the invention with which he debuted (the electric vote counter) was unsuccessful.

One of the projects that made the most money for Edison was a teleindicator of stock prices, whose patent he managed to sell for $ 40,000. Despite this, he was several times on the verge of bankruptcy.

Edison's genius was rooted in his vision to give a daily utility and get economic benefit from his or pre-existing ideas and inventions, but modified by him or his employees, such as the telephone, the typewriter or the light bulb..

Anecdotes and important data

Despite having no formal education, Edison was always curious. He took lessons with his mother, who had been a teacher for a time in his youth.

At some point in his early teens, he began to lose hearing, so he entertained himself by reading most of the time. At age 15 he obtained a job as a telegrapher. By 1876 he had established the first invention factory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

In those same years he served as an electrical engineer and specialized in telegraphs. In one of the many modifications that he created for that device, he got the idea that made him famous: the phonograph.

He worked with men like JP Morgan and Nikola Tesla, other minds who were of the utmost importance for the development of the new technologies of the time.

Biography

Early years

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, United States, on February 11, 1847. He was the son of Samuel Ogden Edison Jr., with Nancy Matthews Elliot. In addition to being the youngest, Thomas was the only American-born child to survive infancy.

Young Thomas was 14 years apart from his older sister. Three of his older brothers had died, in fact, one of those deaths occurred the same year the youngest of the Edison was born.

His father lived by carpentry, but like most of the inhabitants of Milan he could not prevent the importance of the train in the development of cities, so a time later the family fell into bankruptcy.

The Edisons seemed doomed to wander the world without finding the luck to settle in one place for long. In those years they decided once again to change their residence, at that time, to Port Huron in Michigan.

Samuel Edison's land in Ohio depreciated, 80% of the population emigrated from Milan, and in their new residence the Edisons were no longer owners but tenants.

Family

Samuel Odgen Edison Jr., came from a family that had come to the new continent from Holland and originally settled in New Jersey. Among his ancestors there was a singular mishap, since father and son were faced in the War of Independence.

While Thomas Edison allied himself with the American revolutionaries, his son John Edison sided with those loyal to the British crown, prompting the young man to seek refuge in Canada in 1783 and settle in Nova Scotia.

From this branch came the father of Thomas Alva Edison, Samuel Odgen Jr., who married in 1828 with Nancy Matthews Elliot, who was of Scots descent from New England.

The indomitable streak of the Edison was present once again, when Samuel became involved in the Mackenzie Rebellion in 1837 and then had to flee to the United States, where he was later joined by his family.

Brothers

Thomas Alva's parents settled in Vienna, Ontario, when they got married and that's where their first four children were born:

Marrion Wallace came into the family in 1829, two years later William Pitt was born and another couple of winters later the Edisons welcomed their third daughter: Harriet Ann. These were the only ones who survived to meet his brother Thomas. Also in Canada, Carlile Snow was born in 1836.

In Milan, Ohio, two brothers named Samuel Ogden III and Eliza Smith were born, who did not survive more than three years of life respectively. The last member of the Edison clan was Thomas Alva, born in 1847.

Port Huron

The Edison's new residence faced a Michigan military base known as Fort Gratiot.

The 10 acre home was beautiful and spacious. Thomas's youthful years spent there and it was in this space that he developed his interest in telegraphs, which opened the doors to his life as an inventor.

Samuel built a tower that had a telescope as an observer. It hoped to receive a fixed income for tourists who wanted to visit it. There Thomas Alva used to play and also worked as a goalkeeper, but the project failed when the initial furor ended.

Since then, Samuel Edison ceased to be the stable provider of the family. Nancy had to do all kinds of tasks to help with the family finances, especially sewing and ironing other people's clothes.

Although it is not the classic description of the Edison family, at that time they were poor and could not afford many luxuries.

They went from being owners to tenants due to bad luck in the choice of the place where they settled when they arrived in the United States of America.

However, it was expected that the train would soon complete its station in Port Huron and this should bring with it the wave of advances that had unfolded in other cities, as well as economic opportunities for the local inhabitants.

Education

Thomas Alva Edison was raised by his mother, Nancy, and that formed a lot of speculation. It was probably because they did not have the means to pay the tuition, perhaps they were looking for better quality or simply because the child did not get used to the traditional lessons.

It is known that he attended a school in Port Huron for three months in 1855. Some give credit to the anecdote in which it is said that Edison returned one afternoon in tears because his teacher told him that his brain was not working well and that he did not it was good for nothing.

Either way, the boy's education was taken over by his mother, who gave young Thomas basic instruction. He learned early to read and write, although he was not very interested in arithmetic except the basics.

Mother and son shared a couple of hours a day to work on the child's training, even on vacation. It is thought that it was because of her early deafness that Thomas took refuge in books and that is why she preferred to spend her time reading.

Experiments

RG Parker's School of Natural Philosophy was one of the titles that generated the greatest impact on the boy. After reading that book, he wanted to find out more about chemical reactions, which fascinated him from an early age.

He spent long hours in a cellar or cellar that he had set up as a laboratory. In addition, all the money she could get was spent buying cheap reagents to be able to do small experiments.

Then, Edison became fascinated by telegraphs and by the age of 11 he had already built his first homemade telegraph prototype, although he did not have much knowledge of how it works.

First jobs

Edison entered business life with a small farming project that he carried out under his mother's supervision. He made a garden thanks to which he obtained a few hundred dollars at the time of the harvest of the different vegetables that he had planted.

However, this work did not seem appropriate to the curious Edison. In 1859 the railroad arrived at Port Huron, the path would connect it with the terminal in Detroit.

Young Thomas Edison, age 14, Unknown,, via Wikimedia Commons

Thomas learned that they would find a young man to serve as a newsboy who would also be given the opportunity to sell candy. Samuel was essential for the boy to be able to stay with the position, since his mother was against the idea.

Not only did he begin to help with household expenses, he was also able to set aside an extra each day. However, his new position kept him vacant for many hours in the city.

Then the train manager let Thomas Edison set up a space inside one of the empty freight cars as a small laboratory.

Deafness

A story was popularized in which it was claimed that Thomas Alva Edison's hearing loss was due to the train conductor being upset by a small fire in the boy's chemical car.

According to this version, the young man was thrown out of the train along with his reagents where he was sore and deaf. However, Edison himself denied this: he said that at one point, when he tried to climb with his arms occupied, he almost fell and the driver to save him grabbed him by the ears.

The boy felt a noise inside his ear and from then on he assured that he could never hear normally again. At no time did he resent the man who pulled his ears by considering that the action was to save his life.

On the other hand, some think that Edison's deafness is the result of having suffered from scarlet fever at an early age and after several infections in the middle ear to which he was congenitally prone (mastoiditis).

It is well known that around 1862 there was a fire and the chemicals were disposed of in Thomas Edison's small laboratory. However, the rest of the elements remained in place for a time.

Consequences

Since that incident, Thomas Edison, who was about 12 years old, lost hope of returning to a formal education. He became withdrawn and shy, which caused him to spend much more time devoted to intellectual pursuits alone.

He soon became a member of the Reading Room of the Youth Association. He was 15 years old when he paid a commission of $ 2 to obtain his card, which certified him as associate number 33.

Since then, Edison claimed that one of the best things about being a train worker was that he could hear quite well over the noise of the machines, both conversations and his customers.

Innate merchant

One of the first genius ideas of Thomas Alva Edison in his youth was to develop a free service whereby telegraphers would publish a newsletter with the headlines a short time before the train arrived at the station.

Thanks to the expectation that this generated in users, the boy began to sell many more newspapers at each stop. From distributing nearly 200 units a day, Edison went on to sell nearly 1,000 newspapers each day.

With this system, he managed to amass an important capital for the time: about 2,000 dollars. He needed the assistance of another worker, since Edison no longer had enough to sell all the units.

Among his youthful ambitions were to become a train mechanic or telegrapher, a career that drew the attention of the youngest of the Edisons.

His closeness to journalism made him think for a moment about taking that activity as a profession. So much so that he invested his savings in an old printing press with some guys that helped him print The Weekly Herald, of which he sold about 400 copies at 8 cents.

Thomas Alva's publication, despite having many errors, was quite good for a young man without formal education.

The magic of the telegraph

When Edison was 15, there was an event that changed the course of his life. He was at the train station when he noticed a loose freight car was headed for a small three-year-old boy playing near the tracks.

Thomas ran to save the infant and handed him over to his father, who happened to be JU Mackenzie, the station chief. In gratitude he taught Edison the trade of telegrapher at no cost, because he knew that this was one of the young man's great interests.

A year later, Edison had already secured a position in Port Huron as a telegrapher, but his father did not allow him to sign a contract as an apprentice since they only offered him 20 dollars a month and Samuel considered that his son should not settle for less than 25.

For several years Thomas Edison was traveling the national territory thanks to the positions he found in the search for better working conditions. He took positions in different companies and preferred to practice the night shift.

First patent

When he was in Indianapolis, he created his first invention in 1864, although it was not patented. It was a repeater so that the telegrapher could adjust the speed at which he would copy the message according to his rhythm.

The device could scale between 25 and 50 words per minute. This revolutionary artifact only brought trouble to Edison since it was not legal to keep copies of the messages and he was eventually fired.

That did not stop Edison from continuing to exploit his ingenuity and four years later he applied for his first patent, when he was 21 years old. He was awarded the same in 1869 and thus obtained the rights to his automatic vote counter that he had developed.

In addition to counting the “yes” and “no” options, the machine automatically added up the votes cast. This idea was not well received because it could lead to electoral fraud, thus creating Edison's first failure.

Newark

Some time later he left his career as a telegrapher and moved to New York, where he offered his services as an electrical engineer, for which in October 1869 he formed a partnership with Frank L. Pope. However, this union only lasted a year and after that they took separate routes.

Thomas Alva Edison,, via Wikimedia Commons

Thomas created enhancements to the stock printer that became the Edison Universal Stock Printer, a patent that he sold for $ 40,000. With that money he was able to establish his first workshop in Newark, New Jersey.

There he began conducting research to improve the performance of some artifacts and to create others. He worked there between 1870 and 1876, with about 50 people in his charge whom he subjected, as well as himself, to harsh working conditions.

Due to his discipline, he managed to obtain about 120 patents during this time. It is said that he did not sleep at night, but divided his rest into short periods during the day.

First marriage

In 1871 Thomas Alva Edison married Mary Stilwell, who was 16 years old. That same year, the inventor's mother passed away. In 1873 the Edison couple received their first child, a daughter named Marion Estelle.

After managing to negotiate some patents, among which was the one for the quadruple telegraph (for $ 10,000 to Western Union), Edison acquired a lot and began building Menlo Park in New Jersey.

Samuel Edison was in charge of supervising the work of both the new house and the workshop. This commission was probably an attempt by Thomas Alva to find an activity in which his father occupied his mind to overcome the mourning of the death of his wife.

In 1876 Thomas Alva Jr. was born, the inventor's second child and the first son. Two years later the couple had another child who they baptized William Leslie, this was the last child that Mary and Thomas had.

Menlo Park

The Edison's new home was completed in 1876, as was the world's first technological research laboratory. The new "invention factory" ushered in an era of creations that rapidly changed many aspects of life as it was known.

Some of the early partners in this scientific and business venture for Thomas Edison were Charles Batchelor and John Kruesi.

Edison began experimenting with the telephone until around 1877 he succeeded in making a major breakthrough: the carbon microphone. Thanks to this device, the sound of the voice could be converted into an electrical signal through variations in the resistance of the carbon.

This increased the power and range that the phone could achieve and made it much more profitable and marketable to the general population.

Another of the great ideas that encouraged this discovery was one of the most revolutionary and that also led Edison to the peak of his fame and recognition: the phonograph.

The phonograph

With this device the inventor tried to make a simile of his automatic telegraph. He was looking for it to be able to make an automatic copy of what was transmitted by the telephone, since until then it was seen simply as a telegraph that could reproduce voice.

Thomas Alva Edison, by Levin C. Handy (per http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.04326), via Wikimedia Commons.

Introducing him to the public, the audience was amazed and Edison earned the nickname "the Wizard of Menlo Park." Inadvertently, Edison had created a device that went far beyond his projections.

In 1878 the American inventor was granted the patent for the phonograph. At that time, recording was done by creating grooves in a cylinder and to reproduce it the process was reversed, but a very advanced recording quality had not been achieved.

Electric light bulb

Also during his years at Menlo Park, Edison decided to work on an invention that had previously been in the public arena as the light bulb.

Up to that point, all the prototypes that had been developed were expensive, impractical and required a lot of current to run for a short time.

Thomas Alva Edison was able to optimize the idea with a light bulb that used little current and had high resistance thanks to a carbon filament connected to contact wires with which the desired lighting effect was produced.

With the Edison Light Company they began to develop a series of prototypes. JP Morgan, the future founder of General Electrics, participated among other collaborators. Most of the mathematics was developed by Francis Upton, who worked for Edison in that department.

Thomas Edison applied for a patent on this model of electric light bulb in 1879 and obtained it the following year.

Electrical distribution

Upon obtaining a light bulb that he deemed acceptable and marketable, Edison applied for a patent on his design. He also promoted the Edison Illuminating Company, with which he tried to win the market for gas lighting companies, much more popular at the time.

Edison had the idea of ​​creating parallel lighting circuits to give independence to each of the bulbs that were powered by it.

The first commercial electrical distribution system was installed in 1882 in New York, it consisted of 110 volts of direct current (DC) that fed 59 customers.

In August 1884, Mary Stilwell, Thomas Edison's wife and mother of their children, died of a brain congestion (it could have been a tumor or a hemorrhage). After the loss, Edison decided to move his laboratory to New York.

War of currents

Edison's commercial streak did not fail at that time and, thanks to his company, direct current began to become popular.

However, its direct commercial competition was alternating current (AC), which had also developed a lighting system at a much lower cost.

With the creation of the first transformers, alternating current reached various spaces in the US market as well as in European countries and those who led the advance of this model was Westinghouse Electric.

They got a cheaper model to light businesses, streets and houses, the same public that Edison tried to reach with an alternative. But the direct current had the problem that it only served large cities and could not supply service more than a mile from the generator.

Thomas Edison with the light bulb (1883), by unknown,, via Wikimedia Commons.

From the beginning Edison said that Westinghouse and his AC model could only lead to a misfortune in which a user was electrocuted by the high AC voltage and little experimentation done for that system.

The electric chair

Although in 1887 Thomas Edison had lost quite a market thanks to alternating current, it finally began to have the problems that Edison had anticipated and the public began to perceive it as unsafe.

At that moment began the ironclad advance against alternating current led by Thomas Edison and Harold P. Brown.

One of the elements of this war was the consultation that was made to Edison about the best method to provide power to the electric chair and he recommended alternating current and specifically a Westinghouse Electric generator.

The matter was tried to show how dangerous it was to have such high voltages in homes and businesses, as against some of the direct current that was much safer, despite being more expensive and limited.

Remarriage

In 1885 Thomas Edison traveled to Florida and purchased a lot in Fort Myers there. On that land he ordered the construction of two houses, a main one and a guest house. He then called the Seminole Lodge property.

The following year he married a young woman from Ohio named Mina Miller, who was 20 years old. They spent part of their honeymoon in a Florida hotel and then wrapped up that vacation at their newly completed Fort Myers property.

Also as a gift for his fiancée he bought a house in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, New Jersey. This became the official Edison residence and they named it Glenmont.

In West Orange, Thomas Edison added a laboratory that served for the commercial manufacture of the phonograph, the production of apparatus related to the cinema and many other projects of the American inventor.

Thomas Edison had his first daughter with Mina in 1888, being named Madeleine. Two years later she was followed by Charles, Edison's third son and fifth son. The youngest of the marriage was born in 1898 and was baptized Theodore.

In 1896 Thomas Alva's father, Samuel Odgen Edison Jr., passed away.

Edison and the cinema

Edison knew that he needed an expert to carry out the studies concerning the cinema so he hired WKL Dickson, a photographer who took care of everything related to optics and other technical matters.

Together they managed to create two revolutionary devices in 1891: the kinetoscope and the kinetograph. The latter managed to capture images on flexible celluloid film. He got the machine to record 40 frames per second thereby creating the illusion of movement.

On the other hand was the kinetoscope, which was an individual viewing device. He became very famous at trade shows and similar events where he was usually shown short.

The kinetophone was the germ of the sound film idea, since it was intended to be able to reproduce audio and video of an image in synchrony, but due to the complexity of the system it was not very successful.

In 1894 the film studio known as Black Maria was created. Although its location was later moved, the Edison Motion Pictures Studio recorded more than 1,200 films, especially short films, which was the ideal format for the kinetoscope.

In the same year that the first film studio was created, a film was screened for the first time in the United States commercially, which was one of Edison's productions.

Although the method reached Europe, this system was put aside when the inventions of the Lumière brothers appeared.

Other projects

In these years of work in West Orange, Edison completed the development of his project on alkaline batteries, as well as a synthetic rubber and other chemical research. In fact, it became the main battery dealer for submarines.

With the imminent explosion of the First World War, in the United States of North America a severe shortage of various chemical products began that were imported from the old continent and highly necessary for the booming American industry.

Thomas Edison recommended that a body for research in science and industry be created, which led to him being the head of the Naval Consulting Board, which was formed in 1915.

Last years

Henry Ford was one of his great friends towards the twilight of Thomas Edison's life. The auto industry entrepreneur had worked for Edison as an engineer for his laboratories.

From right to left Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, United States President Warren G. Harding, and Harvey S. Firestone, 1921, via Wikimedia Commons.

Edison and Ford were reunited as neighbors in Fort Myers in Florida and have since become very close.

The inventor is thought to have been active until his last days. His wife assured that he liked to eat correctly and it has been speculated that he used to follow the fad diets of the time. Likewise, it is well known that he was always a disciplined man dedicated to work.

Death

Thomas Alva Edison passed away on October 18, 1931, at his home in West Orange, Glenmont. It has been said that diabetes generated health complications and that was the reason for his death. He was buried on his property.

His wife Mina Miller survived him. She married Edward Everett in 1935 and was widowed once more in 1940. After the death of her second husband, she returned to adopt the surname Edison until his death in 1947.

Charles Edison, son of Thomas Alva, had assumed the reins of the company from his father in 1926 and was in charge of the company until 1950, although he had other projects in parallel.

Awards

- Officer of the French Legion of Honor (November 1881).

- Commander of the French Legion of Honor (1889).

- Matteucci Medal of Italy (1887).

- Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1890).

- John Scott Medal, awarded by the Philadelphia City Council (1889).

- Edward Longstreth Medal, awarded by the Franklin Institute (1899).

- John Fritz Medal, awarded by the American Association of Engineering Societies (1908).

- Franklin Medal, awarded by the Franklin Institute (1915), for his discoveries "that contributed to the founding of industries and the welfare of the human race."

- Medal of Distinguished Service of the Navy, awarded by the Navy of the United States of North America (1920).

- Edison Medal from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (1923), created in his honor and awarded to him in his first year.

- Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of North America (1927).

- Gold Medal of the Congress of the United States (May 1928).

Posthumous

- Thomas Alva Edison's birthday, February 11, was designated as Inventor's Day by the United States Congress in 1983.

- He received the first position in the list of the 100 most important people in the last 1000 years of Life magazine (1997).

- Member of the New Jersey Hall of Fame (2008).

- Awarded a Grammy Award for technical mention (2010).

- Walk of Fame for Entrepreneurs (2011).

Featured employees and collaborators

- Edward Goodrich Acheson was a chemist who worked with Edison in Menlo Park between 1880 and 1884. He then discovered a process to create synthetic graphite from carborundum.

- Charles Batchelor was in Edison's ranks for more than 30 years as his assistant and second in charge.

- John I. Beggs, manager of the Edison Illuminating Company in 1886, was also related to other electrical industries of the time in the United States of America.

- William Kennedy Dickson, an expert in photography and optics, contributed to the development of the kinetoscope, as well as the kinetoscope. Then he created his own mutoscope company.

- Reginald Fessenden worked as a manager directly for Edison in West Orange. Later he worked in the field of radio where he made great advances, such as the first radio audio transmission.

- Henry Ford was an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company for 8 years. Then he became one of the greatest industrial moguls with the automobile company Ford Motors.

- Nikola Tesla, served Edison's company as an electrical engineer and inventor for less than a year.

- Miller Reese Hutchison, worked between 1909 and 1918, reaching the position of chief engineer for several years. He was also the inventor of hearing aids or hearing aids.

Others

- Kunihiko Iwadare, worked as an assistant to Thomas Edison and then returned to Japan to become one of the pioneers of this industry in his native country.

- John Kruesi began working with Thomas Edison in 1872 and was one of his most important men in the different stages and projects of the laboratories.

- John W. Lieb worked at the Edison Machine Works. He was vice president of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company and president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

- Thomas Commerford Martin, worked for Edison in Menlo Park and later devoted himself to a publishing career, especially with topics related to electrical engineering.

- George F. Morrison was a close associate of Thomas Edison in the development of the incandescent light bulb and later a vice president of General Electrics.

-Edwin Stanton Porter was one of the pioneers of cinema since Edison's studios. He then continued to develop his talent for visual storytelling. He is the author of works such as The Great Robbery (1903).

- Frank J. Sprague worked in Menlo Park for a short time, but soon decided to find his own path that led to him being dubbed the "father of electric traction."

- Francis Robbins Upton worked for nearly two decades for Thomas Alva Edison's projects as a mathematician and physicist.

References

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2. En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Thomas Edison. Available at: en.wikipedia.org.
3. KENNELLY, A. (1934). Biographical Memoir of Thomas Alva Edison, 1847-1931. Available at: nasonline.org.
4. Edison.rutgers.edu. (2019). Chronology of Edison's Family - The Edison Papers. Available at: edison.rutgers.edu.
5. GARBIT, F. (2016). Phonograph and its inventor, Thomas Alva Edison. FORGOTTEN Books.
6. Edison.rutgers.edu. (2019). Detailed Biography - The Edison Papers. Available at: edison.rutgers.edu.