Thomas edison inventions
The success of his electric light brought Edison to new heights of fame and wealth, as electricity spread around the world. Edison's various electric companies continued to grow until in they were brought together to form Edison General Electric. Despite the use of Edison in the company title however, Edison never controlled this company.
The tremendous amount of capital needed to develop the incandescent lighting industry had necessitated the involvement of investment bankers such as J.P. Morgan. When Edison General Electric merged with its leading competitor Thompson-Houston in , Edison was dropped from the name, and the company became simply General Electric.
Thomas alva edison biography and inventions for kids New York: Random House. New York: Da Capo Press. Johnson and joined the Edison organization in In fact, Edison is recognized as one of the greatest inventors of all time.This period of success was marred by the death of Edison's wife Mary in Edison's involvement in the business end of the electric industry had caused Edison to spend less time in Menlo Park. After Mary's death, Edison was there even less, living instead in New York City with his three children. A year later, while vacationing at a friends house in New England, Edison met Mina Miller and fell in love.
The couple was married in February and moved to West Orange, New Jersey where Edison had purchased an estate, Glenmont, for his bride. Thomas Edison lived here with Mina until his death.
When Edison moved to West Orange, he was doing experimental work in makeshift facilities in his electric lamp factory in nearby Harrison, New Jersey. A few months after his marriage, however, Edison decided to build a new laboratory in West Orange itself, less than a mile from his home.
Edison possessed both the resources and experience by this time to build, "the best equipped and largest laboratory extant and the facilities superior to any other for rapid and cheap development of an invention ". The new laboratory complex consisting of five buildings opened in November A three story main laboratory building contained a power plant, machine shops, stock rooms, experimental rooms and a large library.
Thomas alva edison biography and inventions Morgan Elihu Thomson. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in Edison responded by undertaking production of phenol at his Silver Lake facility using processes developed by his chemists. You may accept or manage your choices by clicking below, including your right to object where legitimate interest is used, or at any time in the privacy policy page.Four smaller one story buildings built perpendicular to the main building contained a physics lab, chemistry lab, metallurgy lab, pattern shop, and chemical storage. The large size of the laboratory not only allowed Edison to work on any sort of project, but also allowed him to work on as many as ten or twenty projects at once.
Facilities were added to the laboratory or modified to meet Edison's changing needs as he continued to work in this complex until his death in Over the years, factories to manufacture Edison inventions were built around the laboratory. The entire laboratory and factory complex eventually covered more than twenty acres and employed 10, people at its peak during World War One ().
After opening the new laboratory, Edison began to work on the phonograph again, having set the project aside to develop the electric light in the late s.
By the s, Edison began to manufacture phonographs for both home, and business use. Like the electric light, Edison developed everything needed to have a phonograph work, including records to play, equipment to record the records, and equipment to manufacture the records and the machines. In the process of making the phonograph practical, Edison created the recording industry.
The development and improvement of the phonograph was an ongoing project, continuing almost until Edison's death.
While working on the phonograph, Edison began working on a device that, "does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear", this was to become motion pictures.
Thomas alva edison picture: He attended school for only a few months. At age 12, he developed hearing loss—he was reportedly deaf in one ear, and nearly deaf in the other—which was variously attributed to scarlet fever, mastoiditis or a blow to the head. Archived from the original on June 2, Preece coins the term the "Edison effect" on page
Edison first demonstrated motion pictures in , and began commercial production of "movies" two years later in a peculiar looking structure, built on the laboratory grounds, known as the Black Maria. Like the electric light and phonograph before it, Edison developed a complete system, developing everything needed to both film and show motion pictures.
Edison's initial work in motion pictures was pioneering and original. However, many people became interested in this third new industry Edison created, and worked to further improve on Edison's early motion picture work. There were therefore many contributors to the swift development of motion pictures beyond the early work of Edison. By the late s, a thriving new industry was firmly established, and by the industry had become so competitive that Edison got out of the movie business all together.
The success of the phonograph and motion pictures in the s helped offset the greatest failure of Edison's career.
Throughout the decade Edison worked in his laboratory and in the old iron mines of northwestern New Jersey to develop methods of mining iron ore to feed the insatiable demand of the Pennsylvania steel mills. To finance this work, Edison sold all his stock in General Electric. Despite ten years of work and millions of dollars spent on research and development, Edison was never able to make the process commercially practical, and lost all the money he had invested.
This would have meant financial ruin had not Edison continued to develop the phonograph and motion pictures at the same time. As it was, Edison entered the new century still financially secure and ready to take on another challenge.
Edison's new challenge was to develop a better storage battery for use in electric vehicles.
Edison very much enjoyed automobiles and owned a number of different types during his life, powered by gasoline, electricity, and steam. Edison thought that electric propulsion was clearly the best method of powering cars, but realized that conventional lead-acid storage batteries were inadequate for the job. Edison began to develop an alkaline battery in It proved to be Edison's most difficult project, taking ten years to develop a practical alkaline battery.
By the time Edison introduced his new alkaline battery, the gasoline powered car had so improved that electric vehicles were becoming increasingly less common, being used mainly as delivery vehicles in cities. However, the Edison alkaline battery proved useful for lighting railway cars and signals, maritime buoys, and miners lamps.
Unlike iron ore mining, the heavy investment Edison made over ten years was repaid handsomely, and the storage battery eventually became Edison's most profitable product. Further, Edison's work paved the way for the modern alkaline battery.
By , Thomas Edison had built a vast industrial operation in West Orange. Numerous factories had been built through the years around the original laboratory, and the staff of the entire complex had grown into the thousands.
To better manage operations, Edison brought all the companies he had started to make his inventions together into one corporation, Thomas A. Edison Incorporated, with Edison as president and chairman. Edison was sixty-four by this time and his role with his company and in life began to change. Edison left more of the daily operations of both the laboratory and the factories to others.
The laboratory itself did less original experimental work and instead worked more on refining existing Edison products such as the phonograph. Although Edison continued to file for and receive patents for new inventions, the days of developing new products that changed lives and created industries were behind him.
In the , Edison was asked to head the Naval Consulting Board.
Thomas alva edison biography and inventions list The Thomas Edison Birthplace Museum. Archived from the original on December 8, Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. Ultimately, his entrepreneurship was central to the formation of some 14 companies, including General Electric , formerly one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.With the United States inching closer towards the involvement in World War One, the Naval Consulting Board was an attempt to organize the talents of the leading scientists and inventors in the United States for the benefit of the American armed forces. Edison favored preparedness, and accepted the appointment.
The Board did not make a notable contribution to the final allied victory, but did serve as a precedent for future successful cooperation between scientists, inventors and the United States military. During the war, at age seventy, Edison spent several months on Long Island Sound in a borrowed navy vessel experimenting on techniques for detecting submarines.
Edison's role in life began to change from inventor and industrialist to cultural icon, a symbol of American ingenuity, and a real life Horatio Alger story.
In , in recognition of a lifetime of achievement, the United States Congress voted Edison a special Medal of Honor. In the nation celebrated the golden jubilee of the incandescent light. The celebration culminated at a banquet honoring Edison given by Henry Ford at Greenfield Village, Ford's new American history museum, which included a complete restoration of the Menlo Park Laboratory.
Attendees included President Herbert Hoover and many of the leading American scientists and inventors.
The last experimental work of Edison's life was done at the request of Edison's good friends Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone in the late s. They asked Edison to find an alternative source of rubber for use in automobile tires.
The natural rubber used for tires up to that time came from the rubber tree, which does not grow in the United States. Crude rubber had to be imported and was becoming increasingly expensive. With his customary energy and thoroughness, Edison tested thousands of different plants to find a suitable substitute, eventually finding a type of Goldenrod weed that could produce enough rubber to be feasible.
Edison was still working on this at the time of his death.
During the last two years of his life Edison was in increasingly poor health. Edison spent more time away from the laboratory, working instead at Glenmont. Trips to the family vacation home in Fort Myers, Florida became longer.
Edison was past eighty and suffering from a number of ailments. In August Edison collapsed at Glenmont. Essentially house bound from that point, Edison steadily declined until at am on October 18, the great man died.