Thomas Edison
Edison's Patents
​Thomas Edison created 2,332 patents in the 83 years he lived!​
1,093 of these are patents in the United States of America.
Here are just a few:
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1877: Phonograph
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1879: Commercialized incandescent light bulb
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1884: Centralized generator for household energy
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1884: Mimeograph
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1889: Motion picture camera
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1891: Kinetograph and Kinetoscope
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1904: Alkaline battery
Edison's Childhood
Thomas Edison was born on February 11th, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He was born with an abnormally large head and a very wide forehead. His mother thought this was a sign of extreme intelligence! He grew up constantly asking questions about how things worked. Eventually, his first school teacher couldn’t stand the questioning anymore and Thomas was withdrawn from school. This occurred in the first 3 months of his formal schooling! From then on, his mother homeschooled Thomas.
He soon learned to read and fell in love. His parents taught him how to use the public library, where Thomas spent a majority of his time. He took particular interest in the sciences. When Thomas’ parents could no longer answer his questions, they hired a private tutor to help guide his studies. All throughout his childhood, Thomas was seen as incredibly driven and resilient. He was hard of hearing, which ruined the possibility of secondary schooling for him. Instead, Thomas enjoyed the freedom of self-teaching by way of questioning and reading.
Edison's Teenage Years
By the age of 14, Thomas was already tinkering with machinery. He used public news releases over a teletype machine to gain insights into what was happening in the debates between Lincoln and Douglas before the Civil War. He would write about what he learned in his own self-published newspaper. He sold these papers by the railroad and gained over 300 readers. His papers earned him an average of about $10 a day, enough to create a chemical laboratory in his parent’s basement!
One day, while Thomas was selling his papers by the railroad, a young boy climbed out onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train. Thomas jumped out and grabbed the boy just before the train sped by! They both escaped with minor injuries. As a reward, the young boys father told Thomas that he would teach him Morse code and how to use a telegraph. This knowledge would fuel Thomas’ career for a while, as he traveled by train working in several telegraph offices. Eventually, when the Edison’s began to face poverty, Thomas moved first to Boston and then to New York in order to establish a more stable income.
Edison in Adulthood
When Thomas arrived in New York, he was very poor and found himself begging in order to survive. Shortly after his arrival, he happened upon a brokerage firm whose owner was extremely distressed. Thomas soon discovered that this was a result of a broken stock ticker machine. He took a look at the machine and found what he believed to be the problem. Sure enough, after a short period of tinkering, Thomas was able to fix the machine. The firm owner was so impressed, he hired Thomas on the spot to be their company repair man.
Suddenly, now earning a salary of $300 a month, Thomas was living comfortably again. He spent his days working for this company and inventing on the side, learning more and more everyday. His experimentation eventually paid off. Thomas created a new stock ticker machine that would eventually be bought by a major corporation, earning him $40,000! After many more inventions and patents, Thomas earned enough to open a laboratory of his own in 1874! The laboratory resides in what is now Edison, New Jersey. Thomas continued his inventing until his death on October 18th, 1931. In 1962, his home and laboratory were declared National Historic Sites.
