Know the Genius – Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. In 1854, when he was just seven
years old, the family moved to Michigan where Edison spent the rest of his childhood….
Early life
Edison went to school for a brief period and was not good at studies. In fact, his mother, a former
teacher, had to teach him at home. However, Edison loved reading and also liked to conduct various
experiments at his home.
Edison was quite a hardworking boy. At the age of 12 he sold fruit, snacks and newspapers on a train. He even printed his own newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, on a moving train. At 15, Edison roamed the country as a tramp telegrapher; Using a kind of alphabet called Morse Code, he sent and received messages over the telegraph. Even though he was losing his hearing, he could still hear the clicks of the telegraph. In the next seven years, he worked taking messages for trains and even for the Union Army during the Civil War. When he had time on his hand, he would take things apart to see how they worked. Finally, he decided to invent things himself.
The Inventions
Edison moved from Newark to Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. There he built his most famous
laboratory. In fact, Edison is sometimes called the Wizard of Menlo Park; because he created two of his three greatest works there:
- The phonograph was the first machine that was invented by Edison that could record the sound of someonw’s voice and play it back. In 1877, Edison recorded the first words on a piece of tin foil. He recited the nursery rhyme;Mary Had a Little Lamb; and the phonograph played the words back to him.
- It was in 1878, that Edison worked on one of his greatest achievements – the electric light
system. Edison also designed a system of power plants that produce electrical power and the wiring that brings it to peoples homes.
- It was in 1887, Edison built a laboratory in West Orange that was 10 times larger than the one in Menlo Park. In fact, it was one of the largest laboratories in the world, almost as famous as Edison himself. It in West Orange that Edison earned half of his 1,093 patents.
Beyond Inventions
But Edison did more than invent. Not only did Edison improve the phonograph several times, but he
also worked on X-rays, storage batteries, and the first talking doll. At West Orange he also worked on one of his greatest ideas: motion pictures or movies. The inventions made here changed the way we live even today. He worked here until his death on October 18, 1931, at the age of 84.
-Dr Shobha Tawde
