Let There Be Light

The Story of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was born on Feb.11,1847 in Milan,Ohio.Thomas Edison

attented school for only three months,in Port Huron, Michigan. At the age of twelve

he started selling newspaper on the Grand Trunk Railway, spending most of his spare

time experimenting on electrical and mechanical apparatuses and printing presses. He

learned telegraphy for saving the life of a station official's son. It was then that he

made his first important invention, a telegraphic repeating instrument that allowed

messages to be sent automatically over a second line without an operator.

He moved to boston and there he invented a vote recorder,but was not

enough to warrant its adoption. Then he moved to New York City where he made

40,000 dollars selling telegraphy appliances. In 1876 he established his own laboratory.

Here he invented a telegraphy system that allowed for messages to be sent more

efficiently ,and after this, he invented a machine that enabled more than one message

to be sent over one line at a time,this was important for the telephone, which had

recently been invented by Alexander Graham Bell.

In 1887 he invented the phonograph by which sound could be recorded.

Two years later, in 1879, he publicly exhibited his most important invention, the

incandescent electric light bulb. Edison was always occupying himself with the im-

provement of the lightbulb. In 1882, he installed the world's first large electric-

power station in New York City.

In 1887 Edison moved from Menlo Park, New Jersey,to West Orange,

New Jersey, where he had a large laboratory built for experiments and research.

In 1888, he invented the kinetoscope, which was the first machine to produce motion

pictures by a rapid succession of individuals views. After this, one of his important

inventions was the Edison storage battery, an alkaline battery, which was the result

of thousands of experiments. He then invented the phonograph in which sound could

be impressed on a disk instead of a cylinder. By combining his phonograph and kine

toscope, in 1913, he produced the first talking, moving pictures. Edison had patented

1000 inventions.

In 1878, Edison was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France, and in

1889 he was made Commander Of The Legion of Honor.Britain awarded him the Albert

Medal of the Society of Arts of Great Britain in 1892. in 1928, he received the Congressional

Gold Medal"For development and application of inventions that have revolutionized civilization

in the last century,."

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