All inventions of Thomas Edison. Edison Thomas - biography, facts from life, photographs, background information

Born February 11, 1847 great inventor Thomas Alva Edison. We remember ten technical achievements that immortalized the name of an American engineer

2014-02-11 10:05

This one was born legendary man in the USA in Ohio on February 11, 1847. Edison received his first patent at the age of 22. Over the course of 62 years, Thomas Edison received 1,033 patents in the United States alone and 1,200 patents in other countries. The researchers calculated that, on average, a scientist received a new patent every two weeks. Despite the fact that many of his inventions were not unique, he often sued other inventors whose ideas he was guided by. At the same time, marketing skills and its influence often helped to win.

Electric meter

Edison's first invention, for which he received a patent in 1869, was an electric election counter. The device was a vote counting machine on which deputies had to press “for” and “against” buttons. This is how the general vote count took place.

Edison's friend Dewitt Roberts showed interest in the device, bought it for $100 and took it to Washington. But, according to parliamentarians, his counter was absolutely useless for holding elections. So the device was sent to the political cemetery.

Currently, such devices are used in almost all countries and greatly facilitate the work of election commissions.

Electric chair

One of Edison's inventions that changed history was the electric chair.

There have been long discussions in government and society about the death penalty. Thomas Edison, with his speech, was able to convince everyone that the best and most humane punishment would be the electric chair.

Against all odds, Edison was able to buy alternating current generators. On January 1, 1889, the chair was ready. The first person on death row in the electric chair was William Kemmler, convicted of murdering his wife with an ax. Subsequently, since 1896, the death penalty by electric chair was adopted by a number of other states, where a similar method of punishment was also allowed.

Stencil pen

In 1876, Edison patented a pneumatic pen pistol. The device used a rod with a tip in the form of a steel needle to perforate printed paper. This pen was the first effective means for copying documents.

On its basis, in 1891, tattoo artist Samuel O'Reilly was the first to patent a tattoo machine. He made only one such device and used it for personal purposes.

After developing his own tattoo machine, many circus performers and representatives of the entertainment industry became regulars at his O’Reilly house. The machine worked faster than a normal tattooist's hand, and, as many thought, it gave a clean result. After O'Reilly's death in 1908, one of the master's students bought the machine and worked on Coney Island until the 50s.

Fruit preservation method

In 1881, Edison patented a method for preserving fruits, vegetables and other organic foods in glass containers. The products were placed in a container, after which the air had to be pumped out of it with a special pump. The tube was then closed with a piece of glass.

Edison's invention was inspired by experiments with glass vacuum tubes during the development of incandescent lamps.

Edison is also credited with another invention related to food products- wax paper. But in fact, it was created in France in 1851, when Edison was still a child.

Electric car

Edison was confident that the future belonged to electricity. In his opinion, everything should be equipped with it, even cars.

In 1899, he invents alkaline batteries, which were to form the basis of electric vehicles. In 1900, 28% of cars produced in America ran on electricity. But main goal The scientist was developing a battery that would allow him to travel more than 150 kilometers without recharging.

After 10 years, Edison abandoned his idea, as the abundance of gasoline minimized the need for electric vehicles.

Phonograph

On February 19, 1878, Edison received a patent for the phonograph. It was one of the first devices used to reproduce and record sound.

The first recordings were made with a moving needle on foil, which was located on a rotating cylinder. The cost of a phonograph at that time was $18. Having presented his invention to the public, Edison gained fame. It was also presented at the French Academy and at the White House.

The disc version of the phonograph was released in 1912 and became more popular than previous models.

Mimeograph

In 1876, Thomas Edison patented the mimeograph. The device was used for printing and duplicating books in small editions. But working with him was not easy.

The mimeograph consisted of an electric pen and a copy box. Inside the box were the necessary supplies: a rubber roller and cans of paint.

First, I had to write the text using an electric pen.

A pen, inside of which a thin needle was constantly moving, “stuffed” a dotted pattern onto special paper, creating a matrix. The resulting stencil was fixed in a lid frame and covered with printing ink. Under the frame there was a special box with a platform. By lifting the frame on its hinges and placing a sheet of paper on the platform, it was possible to roll the frame with a rubber roller and obtain a print. At the same time, the paint appeared through the matrix, leaving an autograph.

Edison's invention was actively used by Russian revolutionaries.

Incandescent lamp

Another great invention appeared during the development of the incandescent electric lamp. To create the filament, the most different materials, But for a long time attempts did not bring the desired results.

In April 1879, the inventor established the critical importance of vacuum in the manufacture of lamps. On October 21 of the same year the work was completed. The final version used a charred bamboo thread placed in an airless space to create light.

Similar experiments were carried out in parallel by scientists from many countries. But it was Edison who was able to create a source of electric light, the production of which did not require large expenses.

Kinetoscope

The Kinetoscope was patented on July 31, 1891. It was a large box with an eyepiece. Inside there was a system of reels with stretched film and lighting. Through the eyepiece, the viewer could watch a film lasting no more than half a minute.

Before the advent of film projectors, Edison's invention was in demand. In 1894, the inventor opened a special hall with ten kinetoscopes. Anyone could watch films there by paying 25 cents.

Unfortunately, only one person could watch the film using the Kinetoscope. Therefore, as soon as film projectors appeared, which made it possible for many people to watch a film at once, they quickly replaced kinetoscopes.

Telephone membrane

The carbon telephone membrane was one of Thomas Edison's many inventions that never gained popularity, but laid the foundation for the era of telephony.

Unfortunately, little is known about this invention. But you can imagine it based on modern analogues.

The device was enclosed in a kind of box, inside it there was a membrane itself and a carbon block, in which several cutouts were made and coal powder was poured into them. This design was connected to electrical circuit, one end was a carbon membrane, and the other was the same block and carbon powder was a component of this chain. A microphone and speaker were also connected to the circuit. When speaking into a microphone, the membrane either narrowed or expanded depending on the strength of the sound and changed the voltage, which in turn went to the speaker and reproduced the sounds just spoken.

Thomas Alva Edison. Born February 11, 1847, Mylene, Ohio - died October 18, 1931, West Orange, New Jersey. American inventor and entrepreneur. Edison received 1093 patents in the USA and about 3 thousand in other countries of the world. He improved the telegraph, telephone, and cinema equipment, developed one of the first commercially successful versions of the incandescent electric lamp, and invented the phonograph. It was he who suggested using the word “hello” at the beginning of a telephone conversation. In 1928 he was awarded the highest US award, the Congressional Gold Medal. Became foreign in 1930 honorary member Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Around 1730, the family of miller Edison moved from Holland to America. They were given a plot of land in the small village of Caldwell in New Jersey. The first accurate information about Edison's ancestors dates back to the period of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). John Edison, a wealthy landowner and great-grandfather of the inventor, took part in the war on the side of England. However, he was caught by the revolutionaries and convicted. Only thanks to his relatives was John able to avoid serious punishment; he was expelled from the United States and settled with his family in Canada.

In 1804, a son, Samuel Jr., was born into the family of John Samuel's eldest son. future father Thomas A. Edison.

In 1811, not far from what is now Port Barwell in Canada, the Edison family received a large plot of land and finally settled in the village of Vienna.

In 1812-1814, Captain Samuel Edison Sr., the future grandfather of Thomas Alva, took part in the Anglo-American War. In subsequent years, the Edison family prospered, and their hospitable manor on the river bank was known throughout the area.

In 1828, Samuel Jr. married Nancy Eliot, the daughter of a minister who received a good upbringing and education and worked as a teacher at the Vienna School.

In 1837 in Canada, under the influence economic crisis and a failed harvest, a rebellion broke out, in which Samuel Jr. took part. However, government troops suppressed the rebellion and Samuel was forced to flee to Mylan (Ohio, USA) to avoid punishment.

In 1839, he manages to transport Nancy and her children. Edison's business was going well. It was during this period of Edison's life in Mailan that his son Thomas Alva was born (February 11, 1847).

Al - what Thomas Alva was called as a child, was vertically challenged and looked a little frail. However, he was very interested in the life around him: he watched steamships and barges, carpenters at work, boats being lowered at the shipyard, or sat quietly for hours in a corner, copying the inscriptions on warehouse signs. At the age of five, Al visited Vienna with his parents and met his grandfather.

In 1854, the Edisons moved to Port Huron, Michigan, located at the bottom of Lake Huron. Here Alva during three months attended school. Teachers considered him “limited” because they did not try to understand and develop the child’s individuality. His mother took him out of school and gave him his first education.

Edison often visited the Port Huron People's Library. Before the age of twelve, he managed to read Gibbon's History of the Rise and Decline of the Roman Empire, Hume's History of Great Britain, and Burton's History of the Reformation. However, the future inventor read his first scientific book at the age of nine. It was "Natural and Experimental Philosophy" by Richard Greene Parker, which told almost all the scientific and technical information of the time. Over time, he carried out almost all the experiments mentioned in the book.

Since childhood, Edison helped his mother sell fruits and vegetables. However, the pocket money earned in this way was not enough for his experiments, especially chemical ones. Therefore, in 1859, Thomas got a job as a newspaperman on the railway line connecting Port Huron and Detroit. Young Edison's earnings reached 8-10 dollars a day. He continues to be interested in books and chemical experiments, for which he seeks permission to set up his laboratory in the baggage car of a train.

Edison took every opportunity to increase demand for the newspapers he sold. So, when in 1862 the commander-in-chief northern army suffered a serious defeat, Thomas asks the telegraph operator to transmit short message about the battle at Port Huron and all intermediate stations. As a result, he managed to increase newspaper sales at these stations several times. A little later he becomes the publisher of the first train newspaper. It was also during this time that Edison developed an interest in electricity.

In August 1862, Edison saved the son of the head of one of the stations from a moving carriage. The boss offered to teach him telegraphy in gratitude. This is how he became acquainted with the telegraph. He immediately sets up his first telegraph line between his house and his friend’s house. Soon there was a fire in Thomas's carriage, and the conductor threw Edison and his laboratory out.

In 1863, Edison became a night shift telegraph operator at the station with a salary of $25 a month. Here he manages to automate part of the work and sleep on the job, for which he soon receives a severe reprimand. Soon, due to his fault, two trains almost collided. Tom returned to Port Huron to live with his parents.

In 1864, Thomas went to work as a day shift telegraph operator in Fort Wayne. Within two months he moved to Indianapolis and found work at the Western Union telegraph company.

On February 11, 1865, Tom turned eighteen. By this time he had already moved to Cincinnati, where he also served as a telegraph operator for the Western Union company. Here he qualified as a first class operator with a salary of $125. From Cincinnati, Thomas moved to Nashville, from there to Memphis, and then to Louisville. In Louisville he continued his many experiments, ruined the manager's office with acid, and was forced to move again to Cincinnati and from there home to Port Huron. In the winter of 1868, Thomas got a job at the Boston branch of Western Union.

All this time, Edison cared little about clothing and everyday life, spending all his money on books and materials for experiments. It was in Boston that Edison first became acquainted with the works of Faraday, which were of great importance for all his future activities.

In addition, it was during these years that Edison tried to obtain his first patent from the Patent Office. He is developing an “electric voting machine” - a special device for counting “yes” and “no” votes cast. The demonstration of the apparatus before a special parliamentary commission ended unsuccessfully due to the reluctance of parliament to abandon paper counting.

In 1868, Edison went to New York to sell another of his inventions there - an apparatus for automatically recording stock exchange rates. However, these hopes were not justified. Edison returns to Boston.

In the spring of 1869, having arrived in New York, Edison went to the Western Union telegraph office, hoping to get a job. There is practically no money left. Thanks to his acquaintances, he manages to find a place to stay overnight in a company that produces mechanical gold price alarms. Edison studies alarm devices. Help in eliminating the breakdown provides him with constant work on technical operation devices. But very soon Edison is no longer satisfied with the position of an employee.

On October 1, 1869, he organized the Pop, Edison and Company society. He improved the system of telegraphing exchange bulletins about the rate of gold and shares through the use of a stock ticker. The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company bought his development for $40,000, while Edison's salary as an employee was only $300 a month.

With the money received, Edison buys equipment for making stock tickers and opens his own workshop in Newark, near New York.

In 1871, he opened two more new workshops. He devotes all his time to work. Edison subsequently said that until the age of fifty, he worked an average of 19.5 hours a day.

The New York Automatic Telegraph Society suggested that Edison improve an automatic telegraphy system based on paper perforation. The inventor solves the problem and gets, instead of the maximum transmission speed on a manual device, equal to 40-50 words per minute, the speed of automatic devices is about 200 words per minute, and later up to 3 thousand words per minute.

While working on this problem, Thomas meets his future wife Mary Stillwell. However, the wedding had to be postponed because Edison's mother died in April 1871. The wedding of Thomas and Mary took place in December 1871. In 1873, the couple had a daughter, who was named Marion after Tom's older sister. In 1876, a son was born, who was named Thomas Alva Edison Jr.

After short stay In England, Edison begins to work on duplex and quadruplex telegraphy. The principle of quadruplex (double duplex) was known earlier, but in practice the problem was solved by Edison in 1874 and is his greatest invention. In 1873, the Remington brothers bought an improved model of the Scholz typewriter from Edison and subsequently began to widely produce typewriters under the Remington brand.

In three years (1873-1876), Thomas applied for new patents for his inventions forty-five times. Also during these years, Edison's father moved in with him and took on the role of economic assistant to his son. For inventive activities, a large, well-equipped laboratory was needed, so in January 1876 its construction began in Menlo Park near New York.

Menlo Park, a small village where Edison moved in 1876, acquired world fame. Edison gets the opportunity to work in a real, equipped laboratory. From this moment on, invention becomes his main profession.

Edison's first work in Menlo Park included telephony. The Western Union Company, concerned about the threat of competition to the telegraph, turned to Edison. After trying many options, the inventor created the first practical telephone microphone, and also introduced an induction coil into the telephone, which significantly increased the sound of the telephone. For his invention, Edison received 100 thousand dollars from Western Union.

In 1877, Edison registered the phonograph with the Bureau of Inventions. The appearance of the phonograph caused general amazement. The demonstration of the first device was immediately carried out in the editorial office of Scientific American magazine. The inventor himself saw eleven promising areas for the use of the phonograph: recording letters, books, teaching eloquence, playing music, family notes, recording speeches, the area of ​​advertising and announcements, watches, learning foreign languages, recording lessons, connecting to the telephone.

In 1878, Edison visited Ansonia's William Walas, who was working on electric carbon arc lamps. Walas gave Edison a dynamo along with a set of arc lamps. After this, Thomas begins work towards improving the lamps. In April 1879, the inventor established the critical importance of vacuum in the manufacture of lamps. And already on October 21, 1879, Edison completed work on an incandescent light bulb with a carbon filament, which became one of the largest inventions of the 19th century. Edison's greatest achievement was not in developing the idea of ​​the incandescent lamp, but in creating a practical, widespread electric lighting system with a strong filament, a high and stable vacuum, and the ability to use many lamps simultaneously.

On the eve of 1878, giving a speech, Edison said: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”

In 1878, Edison, along with J.P. Morgan and other financiers, founded the Edison Electric Light Company in New York, which by the end of 1883 produced three-quarters of the incandescent light bulbs in the United States.

In 1882, Edison built New York City's first distribution substation, serving Pearl Street and 59 customers in Manhattan, and founded the Edison General Electric Company to manufacture electric generators, light bulbs, cables, and lighting fixtures. To conquer the market, Edison set the selling price of a light bulb at 40 cents when its cost was 110 cents. For four years, Edison increased the production of light bulbs, reducing their cost, but suffered losses. When the cost of the lamp dropped to 22 cents, and their production increased to 1 million units, he covered all costs in one year. In 1892, Edison's company merged with other companies to form General Electric.

In 1884, Edison hired a young Serbian engineer, whose responsibilities included the repair of electric motors and DC generators. Tesla proposed for generators and power plants use alternating current. Edison perceived Tesla's new ideas rather coldly, and disputes constantly arose. Tesla claims that in the spring of 1885 Edison promised him 50 thousand dollars (at that time an amount approximately equivalent to 1 million modern dollars) if he could constructively improve the direct current electric machines invented by Edison. Nikola actively got to work and soon introduced 24 varieties of Edison's alternating current machine, a new switch and regulator that significantly improved performance. Having approved all the improvements, in response to a question about the reward, Edison refused Tesla, noting that the emigrant still did not understand American humor well. Offended, Tesla immediately quit.

A couple of years later, Tesla opened his own Tesla Electric Light Company next door to Edison. Edison began a widespread information campaign against alternating current, claiming that it was dangerous to life.

Kinetoscope(from the Greek “kinetos” - moving and “skopio” - to look) - an optical device for displaying moving pictures, invented by Edison in 1888. The patent described the film format with perforations (35 mm wide with perforations along the edge - 8 holes per frame) and a frame-by-frame transport mechanism. One person could watch the film through a special eyepiece - it was a personal cinema. The cinematography of the Lumière brothers used the same type of film and a similar transport mechanism.

In the USA, Edison started a “patent war”, justifying his priority on perforated film and demanding royalties for its use. When Georges Méliès sent several copies of his film A Trip to the Moon to the United States, Edison's company remade the film and began selling copies by the dozen. Edison believed that in this way he was reimbursing the patent fee, since Méliès's films were shot on perforated film. "A Trip to the Moon" made it possible to open the first permanent movie theater in Los Angeles, one of the outskirts of which was called Hollywood.

Thomas Edison died of complications diabetes mellitus October 18, 1931, at his home in West Orange, New Jersey, which he purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina Miller. Edison was buried in the backyard of his home.

The end of the 19th century was a time of breakthrough discoveries and inventions, without which it is difficult to imagine the world today. Thomas Edison, who is called nothing less than the greatest American inventor, made a significant contribution to this. We have already talked about his “war of currents” with Tesla, but today we will focus on Edison’s personality and the inventions that brought him fame as the “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

Like many American inventors, Thomas Edison was a descendant of migrants. His ancestor, miller Edison, and his family moved to America from Holland sometime in the 1730s. The inventor's great-grandfather participated in the War of Independence on the side of England, as a result of which he was later exiled to Canada. The Edison family was not at all calm: the inventor's grandfather early XIX century he managed to fight in the Anglo-American conflict, and his father took part in the “hunger” uprising of 1837 in Canada. That rebellion was suppressed, and the head of the family was forced to flee to the USA, where Thomas Alva Edison was born in 1847.

Edison house in Milan, Ohio. Now and then

The future inventor was a frail boy, and his teachers considered him narrow-minded. As a result, his mother took Thomas out of school and homeschooled him. But the boy himself was drawn to knowledge: in the library of the town of Port Huron he read literature on the history of Great Britain, the Roman Empire and the Reformation, and the first scientific book, which contained all the scientific and technical information of the first half of the 19th century century, the boy read it at the age of nine.

The life of children of that time cannot be called a hothouse. Thomas helped his mother sell fruits and vegetables, and at the age of 12 he got a job as a newspaper seller at a railway station. The money earned was enough to conduct chemical experiments, which Thomas learned about from books. The guy even had his own laboratory in the baggage car of the train. True, Edison’s experiments were quite dangerous, and therefore the laboratory eventually burned down, for which the guy received a scolding.

Thomas Edison is already in mature age conducts experiments

The Edison offspring became a cunning fellow who spun as best he could. In 1862, he saved the son of the head of a railway station from a moving carriage and, as a reward, received from him the opportunity to learn the telegraph business. In fact, this became his main activity in the next seven years. Thomas moves from city to city, from station to station, and spends all the money he earns on books and experiments.

During the same period, Edison presented to the public his first invention - a device for counting votes in elections. But there were conservatives in parliament who did not dare to abandon paper counting. However, further affairs of the young inventor, whose flexible mind was 22 years old, went like clockwork. He got a job as a technical worker in a company producing mechanical gold price alarms. However, Edison no longer wanted to be a simple hired worker who served machines and other people’s interests.

The inventor improved a system for telegraphing exchange bulletins about the gold rate using a stock ticker and sold the development for $40,000, with an average salary of $300 for an employee. Big money paved the way for the implementation of Edison's most daring ideas. But he does not immediately spend all the funds on experiments and laboratory equipment. He opens several workshops for the production of stock tickers, sells quadruplex telegraph technology (transmitting two independent signals in both directions) and makes capital.

In 1876, Edison used the money he earned to open his own laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Very soon it will turn into a forge of inventions on a global scale, and Edison will receive the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”

On the ground floor there was a workshop with measuring instruments, and on the second floor there was a chemical laboratory

Many engineers worked for Edison. Thomas himself promised to release a minor invention every 10 days, a breakthrough - every six months

Sound recording

He was given this nickname for the invention of the phonograph - the “shaitan machine”, which recorded and reproduced a person’s voice. In those years, this was a real miracle that was difficult to believe. Thus, at a demonstration of the device at the French Academy of Sciences, Edison’s employee was almost beaten, accusing him of ventriloquism. In Russia, the owner of the “talking beast” was sentenced to three months in prison and a fine for fraud. The world was definitely shocked by Edison's invention.

The phonograph was the result of work to improve Alexander Bell's telephone. Edison developed a carbon microphone that improved the quality of voice transmission. There was coal powder between the metal plates. One of the plates was a diaphragm. When it oscillated from sound pressure, vibration was transmitted to the powder, which led to a change in the resistance of the powder.

The 30-year-old "Wizard of Menlo Park" shows off his invention

These experiments with the telephone led to the creation of the phonograph. It worked on the principle of mechanical vibrations from a diaphragm, which caused a moving needle to leave indentations on the surface of the foil. The foil was glued to the cylinder, and the needle ran along it in a spiral to increase the recording duration. The first sound recording on a phonograph was the American children's song “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” which Edison himself sang into the phonograph.

Phonograph and dozens of recording cylinders

He saw several areas where the phonograph could be used: secretarial work, recording music and speeches of great people, a kind of answering machine for the telephone, and even talking books for the blind. But the recordings of such a phonograph were short-lived and quickly wore out. And the author himself lost interest in him. However, other inventors took up the work on the device - they applied wax to the cylinders, proposed using disks instead of rollers, and conical horns to amplify the sound.

Some researchers believe that humanity could have invented phonographs back in ancient times: the level of technology allowed, and ignorance of the wave nature of sound was not an obstacle. But the phonograph, in fact, became a side invention - after a dozen experiments on other technologies. It would be great to hear the voice of Pushkin or Aristotle today.

Electric light

Thomas Edison did not originate the idea of ​​incandescent electric lamps. Long before him, experiments were carried out in this direction by American, Russian and British scientists. Lodygin, who emigrated to the USA, suggested using tungsten filament in light bulbs. Edison's greatest merit is that he really made electric light so cheap and practical that only the rich could burn candles.

Edison developed the lamp shape, screw base and socket, and much more that is used today for mass lighting. The inventor carried out serious research, selecting material for the filament. A total of 1,500 materials were tested, but Thomas settled on a carbon filament, which he patented for a light bulb in 1879. It was the first commercial incandescent lamp life cycle which could reach 1200 hours of glow.

Together with several financiers, Edison created a company, the first object of coverage for which was the steamship Columbia. It later transformed into General Electric. The light bulbs were sold below cost, but this allowed Edison to capture three-quarters of the US market. Light bulbs were constantly improved, the cost of their production decreased, production capacity and demand grew, and Edison managed to recoup all losses in just one year.

Just to give you an example, the first urban commercial lighting system was installed on a street in Manhattan in 1882. It consisted of 400 lamps. A year later, 10,300 lamps were already working there.

"Live" pictures

In the late 80s, Edison was impressed by the zoopraxiscope - a disk machine with pasted pictures that, when rotated, created the illusion of movement. " I am working on an instrument that will be to the eye what the phonograph was to the ear."- said the inventor in 1888. Edison shared this task with his employee William Dixon. The electromechanical design of the kinetoscope was ready, while Dixon began optical development.

The kinetoscope was a colossus into which film was loaded, and on the body there was an eyepiece for one single viewer. The film moved continuously on rollers, illuminated by a pulsed electric lamp. As a result, the viewer watched a very short video on perforated 35 mm film. It was Edison who made it the standard for future cinema.

Already in 1893, a patent was received for a kinetoscope, which turned into a kind of attraction in the States. The devices were sold to local entrepreneurs, who installed them in batches of 10 in special viewing rooms. For 25 cents you could watch five videos, moving from one kinetoscope to another.

"Only for men" .

Competition in the Kinetoscope market was fierce. When Dixon was caught helping competitors, Edison fired him without regret.

Death

By his 70th birthday in 1917, Thomas had already retired from direct company management and invention. He was already an elderly man, the business turned out to be huge and highly diversified, but they listened to Edison’s authoritative advice.

The entrepreneur's health was deteriorating. In the 20s, he began to spend more time at home with his wife, and his children moved away from him. The rumor became completely useless. In the newsreel “One Day with Thomas Edison” (1922), you can see how his employees get close to the maestro’s ear so that he can hear them.

Heart problems and the development of diabetes in the last two years of his life led to Thomas Edison falling into a coma on October 14, 1931, and four days later the newspapers published an obituary. Edison was buried behind the house. His good friend Henry Ford convinced his son to seal his father's last breath in a flask. The air from Edison's room is now kept in the Ford Museum as a memory of the inventor.

Thomas Alva Edison - who is he?

Beginning his career as a teenager in 1863 at the telegraph office, when virtually the only source of electricity was a primitive battery, he worked until his death in 1931 to usher in the era of electricity. From his laboratories and workshops came the phonograph, the carbon capsule of a microphone, incandescent lamps, a revolutionary generator of unprecedented efficiency, the first commercial lighting and power supply system, experimental basic elements of film equipment and many other inventions.

Brief biography of his youth

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milena, the son of Samuel Edison and Nancy Eliot. His parents fled to the United States from Canada after his father's participation in the Mackenzie Rebellion in 1837. When the boy turned 7, his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan. Thomas Alva Edison, the youngest of seven children, lived here until he began life on his own at the age of sixteen. He studied very little at school, only a few months. He was taught reading, writing and arithmetic by his mother, a teacher. He was always a very inquisitive child and was drawn to knowledge himself.

Thomas Alva Edison spent his childhood reading a lot, and his sources of inspiration were the books “The School of Natural Philosophy” by R. Parker and “Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and the Arts.” The desire for self-improvement remained with him throughout his life.

Alva started working at early age, like most children of that time. At 13, he got a job selling newspapers and candy at a local railway, connecting Port Huron with Detroit. He devoted most of his free time to reading scientific and technical books, and also took the opportunity to learn how to operate the telegraph. By the age of 16, Edison was already experienced enough to work full time as a telegraph operator.

First invention

The development of the telegraph was the first step in the communications revolution, and it grew at an enormous rate in the second half of the 19th century. This gave Edison and his colleagues the opportunity to travel, see the country and gain experience. Alva worked in a number of cities throughout the United States before arriving in Boston in 1868. Here Edison began to change his profession as a telegraph operator to an inventor. He patented an electrical vote recorder, a device intended for use in elected bodies such as Congress to speed up the process. The invention was a commercial failure. Edison decided that in the future he would only invent things that he was completely confident in the public demand for.

Thomas Alva Edison: biography of the inventor

In 1869, he moved to New York, where he continued to work on improvements to the telegraph and created his first successful device, the Universal Stock Printer. Thomas Alva Edison, whose inventions earned him $40,000, had the necessary funds in 1871 to open his first small laboratory and production facility in Newark, New Jersey. Over the next five years, he invented and made devices that greatly increased the speed and efficiency of the telegraph. Edison also found time to marry Mary Stilwell and start a family.

In 1876, he sold all his production in Newark and moved his wife, children and employees to the small village of Menlo Park, 40 km southwest of New York. Edison built a new facility that contained everything necessary for inventive work. This research laboratory was the first of its kind and became the model for later institutions such as Bell Laboratories. They say it was his greatest invention. Here Edison began to change the world.

The first phonograph

The first great invention in Menlo Park was the phonograph. The first machine that could record and reproduce sound created a sensation and brought Edison worldwide fame. With her he toured the country and in April 1878 was invited to The White house to demonstrate the phonograph to President Rutherford Hayes.

Electric light

Edison's next great endeavor was the development of a practical incandescent light bulb. The idea of ​​electric lighting was not new, and several people were already working on it, even developing some forms of it. But until this time, nothing had been created that could be practical for home use.

Edison's merit is the invention of not only the incandescent lamp, but also an electrical supply system that had everything necessary to be practical, safe and economical. After a year and a half of work, he achieved success when an incandescent lamp, which used a carbonized filament, shone for 13.5 hours.

The first public demonstration of the lighting system took place in December 1879, when the entire Menlo Park laboratory complex was equipped with it. The inventor devoted the next few years to creating electric power. In September 1882, the first commercial power plant, located on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, began operating, providing electricity and light to customers in an area of ​​one square mile. Thus began the era of electricity.

Edison General Electric

The success of electric lighting led the inventor to fame and fortune, as new technology quickly spread throughout the world. Electric companies continued to grow until they merged in 1889 to form Edison General Electric. Despite the use of the inventor's last name in the name of the corporation, he did not control it. The enormous amounts of capital required to develop the lighting industry required the involvement of investment banks such as J.P. Morgan. When Edison General Electric merged with its main competitor, Thompson-Houston, in 1892, the inventor's name was dropped from its name.

Widowhood and second marriage

Thomas Alva Edison, whose personal life was overshadowed by the death of his wife Mary in 1884, began to devote less time to Menlo Park. And because of his involvement in business, he began to visit there even less. Instead, he and his three children—Marion Estelle, Thomas Alva Edison, Jr., and William Leslie—lived in New York City. A year later, while vacationing at a friend's house in New England, Edison met twenty-year-old Mina Miller and fell in love with her. The marriage took place in February 1886, and the couple moved to West Orange, New Jersey, where the groom purchased the Glenmont estate for his bride. The couple lived here until their death.

Laboratory in West Orange

After the move, Thomas Alva Edison experimented in a makeshift workshop at a light bulb plant in nearby Harrison, New Jersey. A few months after his marriage, he decided to build a new laboratory in West Orange, a mile from his home. By that time, he had sufficient resources and experience to build the best equipped and largest laboratory, superior to all others, for the rapid and inexpensive development of inventions.

The new complex of five buildings opened in November 1887. The three-story main building housed a power plant, mechanical workshops, warehouses, experimental facilities, and a large library. Four smaller buildings, built perpendicular to the main one, housed physical, chemical and metallurgical laboratories, a sample workshop and storage chemical substances. Big size complex allowed Edison to work on not one, but ten or twenty projects at the same time. Buildings were added or rebuilt to meet the inventor's changing needs until his death in 1931. Over the years, factories were built around the laboratory to produce Edison's creations. The entire complex eventually covered more than 8 hectares, and 10,000 people worked there during the First World War.

Recording industry

After opening the new laboratory, Thomas Alva Edison continued work on the phonograph, but then put it aside to work on electric lighting in the late 1870s. By 1890, he began producing phonographs for home and commercial use. As with electric lights, he developed everything needed to make them work, including devices for playing and recording sound, as well as equipment for releasing them. At the same time, Edison created an entire recording industry. The development and improvement of the phonograph proceeded continuously and continued almost until the death of the inventor.

Cinema

At the same time, Edison set about creating a device that could do for the eyes what a phonograph does for the ears. Cinema became it. The inventor demonstrated it in 1891, and two years later industrial production of “films” began in a tiny film studio built in a laboratory known as “Black Maria.”

As with electric lighting and the phonograph, a complete system for making and exhibiting motion pictures had previously been developed. Edison's initial work in cinema was innovative and original. However, many people became interested in this new industry and wanted to improve on the inventor's early cinematic works. Therefore, many people contributed to the rapid development of cinema. The new industry was already thriving in the late 1890s, and by 1918 it had become so competitive that Edison left the business altogether.

Iron ore failure

Advances in phonographs and motion pictures in the 1890s helped offset the greatest failure of Edison's career. For ten years he worked in his laboratory and in old iron mines in northwestern New Jersey on methods for extracting iron ore to satisfy the insatiable demand of Pennsylvania iron and steel mills. To finance this work, Edison sold all his shares in General Electric.

Despite ten years of work and millions of dollars spent on research and development, he was unable to make the process commercially viable and lost all of his investment. This would have meant financial ruin if Edison had not continued to develop the phonograph and cinema simultaneously. Be that as it may, the inventor entered the new century still financially secure and ready to take on a new challenge.

Alkaline battery

Edison's new challenge was the development of a battery for use in electric vehicles. The inventor was very fond of cars, and throughout his life he was the owner of many types of them, working for different sources energy. Edison believed that electricity was the best fuel for them, but the capacity of conventional lead-acid batteries was not enough for this. In 1899 he began work on an alkaline battery. This project turned out to be the most difficult and took ten years. By the time the new alkaline batteries were ready, gasoline cars had improved so much that electric cars were being used less frequently, mostly as delivery vehicles in cities. However, alkaline batteries proved useful for lighting railroad cars and cabins, marine buoys, and Unlike iron ore, the significant investment paid off handsomely, and the battery eventually became Edison's most profitable product.

Thomas A. Edison Inc.

By 1911, Thomas Alva Edison had developed extensive industrial activities in West Orange. Numerous factories were built around the laboratory, and the complex's workforce grew to several thousand people. To better manage the work, Edison gathered all the companies he founded into one corporation, Thomas A. Edison Inc., of which he himself became president and chairman. He was 64 years old, and his role in the company and in his life was beginning to change. Edison delegated much of his daily work to others. The laboratory itself engaged in less original experiments and improved existing products. Although Edison continued to file and receive patents for new inventions, the days of creating new things that changed lives and created new industries were behind him.

Work for defense

In 1915, Edison was asked to chair the Naval Advisory Committee. The United States was approaching participation in World War I, and the creation of the committee was an attempt to organize the talents of the country's leading scientists and inventors for the benefit of the American military. Edison accepted the appointment. The council did not contribute significantly to the final victory, but it served as a precedent for future successful collaboration between scientists, inventors, and the US military. During the war, at the age of seventy, Edison spent several months on Long Island on a Navy ship experimenting with methods of detecting submarines.

Golden Jubilee

Thomas Alva Edison went from being an inventor and industrialist to a cultural icon, a symbol of American enterprise. In 1928, in recognition of his achievements, the US Congress awarded him a special Medal of Honor. In 1929, the country celebrated the golden anniversary of electric lighting. The celebration culminated with a banquet in honor of Edison, given by Henry Ford at Greenfield Village, a museum of new American history(It was a complete recreation of the Menlo Park laboratory). The honor was attended by the President and many presenters and inventors.

Replacement for rubber

Edison did his last experiments in life at the request of his good friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in the late 1920s. They wanted to find an alternative source of rubber for use in car tires. Until that time, tire production used natural rubber, extracted from the rubber tree, which does not grow in the United States. Raw rubber imported and became more and more expensive. With his characteristic energy and thoroughness, Edison tested thousands of various plants to find a suitable replacement, and eventually found that goldenrod could be a substitute for rubber. Work on this project continued until the death of the inventor.

Last years

During the last two years of Edison's life, his health deteriorated significantly. He spent a lot of time away from the laboratory, working instead from home in Glenmont. Trips to the family villa in Fort Myers, Florida, became longer. Edison was past eighty and suffering from a number of ailments. In August 1931 he became very ill. Edison's health steadily deteriorated, and at 3:21 a.m. on October 18, 1931, the great inventor died.

A city in New Jersey, two colleges and many schools are named in his honor.

Thomas Edison(full name - Thomas Alva (Alva) Edison) is one of the most inventive people in the history of America and the whole world. He owns more 1000 patents in the USA and about 3000 Worldwide.

Brief biography of Edison

Thomas Edison was born February 11, 1847 in the American town of Mylen, Ohio. His father - Samuel Edison, was a wheat merchant. His mother - Nancy Elliott Edison, daughter of a priest, school teacher.

Little Al was short and frail in build. But that didn't stop him from early childhood become a very inquisitive and independent child.

Thomas's studies

In 1854 the Edison family moved to Michigan, where Thomas Alva visited for 3 months primary school. He was hampered by deafness in his left ear, and school teachers considered him a “limited” child. After a scandal with the school management, Thomas's mother took him out of school.

He began to receive home education. Partly from his mother, since she was a teacher, partly from books bought for him on various subjects, including chemistry and physics.

capable boy

Thomas Edison was very independent from childhood. When he needed money was engaged in trade- sold candy, newspapers, fruits. Then he organized the boys into groups to sell, they traded and shared the proceeds with him.

However, the pocket money he managed to earn in this way was not enough for his experiments, especially in chemistry.

First hired job

In 1859, young Thomas got a job as a newspaper delivery boy. During this period, he manages to earn up to $10 a day thanks to his extraordinary inventive thinking abilities. In 1862 he became publisher of his own small newspaper for train passengers.

In August 1862 Edison saves the son of the head of one of the stations from a moving carriage. The boss offered to teach him telegraphy in gratitude. This is how he became acquainted with the telegraph. He immediately sets up his first telegraph line between his house and his friend’s house.

Successful inventor

At the age of 22 Edison decided to find another job. He had experience as a candy seller, newspaper delivery man, served as a telegraph operator on the railroad, and dealt with toxic chemicals. He wanted to find a well-paid job so as not to worry about his future.

He went to the center of New York and stopped at the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. Panic reigned there - the telegraph machine had broken down. Neither the invited master nor the telegraph operators themselves could do anything.

Thomas asked permission to look. They let him near the apparatus with great distrust. He disassembled the mechanism, quickly fixed the problem and turned on the button. The device started working immediately. The manager was delighted to hire him with a salary of $300 a month.

Watching from the window of this company the crisis Black Friday 1869 when crazed brokers sold on the stock exchange for pennies securities, Edison made a conclusion for himself: in order to buy gold or securities that are sometimes sold or not, you must have the necessary information and transmit it in a timely manner. Therefore, it makes sense to start improving telegraph devices!

First major success

In 1870, Edison managed to qualitatively improve the system of telegraphing exchange bulletins about the price of gold and shares. His employer became interested in this development and bought the invention for 40 thousand dollars.

With this money, Thomas Alva starts own business and opens a workshop in Newark where tickers are made for the needs of the exchange. By 1871, there were already three such workshops in his possession.

Laboratory in Menlo Park

In 1876, Edison, along with his wife Mary Stillwell and daughter Marion, moved to the small village of Menlo Park. Here he builds own laboratory and goes completely into invention. For his activities, he spares no expense on the most modern equipment.

During this period, Thomas Edison's path to world fame through inventions began. For the company "Western Union" he completes the first order in the new laboratory and receives a fee of 100 thousand dollars for improving the quality of telephone communications.

In 1877 he invented the phonograph- the progenitor of the gramophone. It was a real sensation! The idea of ​​recording human speech and playing it back came to Thomas after observing the operation of a telegraph - he heard sounds similar to human speech, pulled the tape harder and the “speech” accelerated. He decided to create a roller on which a sound could be recorded with a needle, and then reproduced with the same needle.

Incandescent lamp

When Edison learned about the appearance in Russia of an incandescent light bulb, which was invented by a Russian engineer Alexander Lodygin in 1874, he immediately purchased it and decided to improve it. He had an idea to start illuminating houses, streets, all of America.

Instead of a carbon thread, he inserted a twisted tungsten spiral and made a threaded base. The light bulb shone brighter and turned out to be longer lasting. He began to think about the switch, the wires, the power plant...

Soon the first power plant was built in New York, it provided current, and the city, as Edison had planned, began to be illuminated with a new incandescent light bulb.

In 1882, Edison built New York City's first distribution substation, serving Pearl Street and 59 customers in Manhattan, and founded a company manufacturing electric generators, light bulbs, cables, and lighting fixtures.

October 18, 1931 At the age of 84, Thomas Alva Edison died from complications of diabetes. He was buried in the backyard of his home in West Orange, New Jersey.