Life of Thomas Edison - Research Paper Example

?Thomas Edison Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio to Samuel Ogden Edison and Nancy Matthews Elliott. He was the youngest of the seven children in his family. Though he was born in Ohio, most of his young life was spent in Port Huron, Michigan. As a child, Edison was home-schooled by his mother. He had lasted for only three months in a public school when his teacher determined that Edison simply did not have the brain or attention fit for participating in a public school setting (Josephson, 1959). Edison obtained the majority of his educational materials from The Cooper Union, which specialized in supplying higher education materials and instruction for students. Through his education, Edison became interested in various branches of science, which played a role in his later career as an experimenter and inventor. Growing up, Edison held a variety of odd jobs to increase his income. While living in Michigan, he made a modest salary by selling candy and newspapers on the trains that ran through his city. He also sold vegetables to help his family with their expenses. Edison’s first stable job came after he saved a little boy from being hit by a runaway train. The station agent, J.U. MacKenzie, who was also the father of the little boy, was so appreciative of Edison’s actions that he trained Edison to be a telegraph operator. Edison spent many years in this position. When he was nineteen, he moved to Kentucky where he received a boost in his career by being given a job with the Associated Press news wire. During his career on the news wire, Edison made sure that he always received the night shift so that he would be able to work, read, and experiment. However, on one particular night, Edison’s attention on his experimenting ended up costing him his job when a lead-acid battery he was playing with spilled sulfuric acid onto the floor, which then leaked through the floorboards and spilled onto the desk of his boss below. Edison was immediately fired upon arriving at work the following morning. However, despite losing his job, one good thing came from Edison’s time as a telegraph operator. While working, he met Franklin Pope, another telegrapher and an inventor himself. Pope allowed Edison to work out of the basement of his home, which allowed Edison the space he needed for his first two inventions, a stock ticker and the electric vote recorder that was officially patented on June 1, 1869 (Pretzer, 1989). When Edison was twenty-four, he married Mary Stilwell. He met her while she was working at one of his shops. Together they had three children, Marion, Thomas Jr., and William. Mary died thirteen years later from a brain tumor; two years later, Edison married again, this time to Mina Miller, who was almost half of Edison’s age and the daughter of a famous inventor. They also had three children, including Charles and Theodore, both of whom went on to follow in their father’s footsteps as inventors. Mina outlived her husband, dying in 1947 from natural causes. Thomas Edison became most known for his numerous inventions, obtaining over one thousand patents in the United States during his lifetime, as well as many patents in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. As previously mentioned, among Edison’s first inventions were a stock ticker and an electric vote recorder. He also invented numerous telegraph machines and improved on telegraph machines that had already been invented, such as inventing the quadruplex telegraph, which made it possible to transmit four messages at once. He also invented the electric pen, which was a device used for copying. However, regardless of these first useful inventions, Edison first became known for his invention of the phonograph in 1877, which is the first record player. Even though the phonograph had very poor sound quality and could only be used a few times, the public was taken back by this surprising, wonderful invention, giving Edison the nickname of the Wizard of Menlo Park. Edison spent a few years perfecting his original phonograph, completing it entirely in 1880 with the help of Alexander Graham Bell. During the same time, using money that he received from his quadruplex telegraph, Edison built the first industrial research lab with the intentions of using it to continue to create more technological inventions and to improve on previous inventions. While other researchers used the facilities to create their own inventions, Edison was said to have contributed the most to what took place in the research lab. It was in this lab that the majority of Edison’s remaining inventions were thought up and developed. The same year that Edison invented the phonograph, he also joined ranks with Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, to develop the carbon transmitter, also known as the carbon microphone, which was a vital improvement to the current telephone technology. Though Edison did not intend this invention to be used outside of telephone communications, it also ended up being the first microphone (Clark, 1977), as well as a vital component to the steadily growing radio broadcast industry. The transmitter also found a place in the public addressing network, which helped with political announcements and emergency broadcasts. Edison spent the majority of 1879 working on numerous designs for lamps and lightbulbs. He created the first commercially practical incandescent electric lamp, which was officially released on October 21, 1879. The incandescent lightbulb that Edison created to go with this lamp was not only the first of its kind, but it was the first lightbulb with a decent amount of life to it, remaining lit for almost two full days (Baldwin, 2001). During the same year, Edison blueprinted and designed the first generator for the distribution of current for lighting. He also improved upon the systems of his time that acted as generators and distributors of electric currents and voltage. He invented sockets and switches, making it easier to access electric lighting. On December 31 of that year, Edison was able to give the first public demonstration of his lighting system by lighting, almost at once, the streets and buildings at Menlo Park in New Jersey. The following year, Edison accomplished creating the first incandescent lamp factory in New Jersey, allowing regular citizens and businessmen alike to purchase lamps and bulbs for their homes and businesses. He improved his previous systems, making the products more available and easily implemented for anyone who wanted to make use of them. Also in 1880, Edison successfully invented and installed an electric railway for freight and human passengers at the train station in Menlo Park. Edison’s name quickly grew due to his many successes in electric inventions, varying from lights, to railroads, and to other machines. The people of the United States and of Menlo Park were not the only ones feeling the growing success brought to them by Thomas Edison. Edison himself acknowledged his own accomplishments and decided to spread his inventions throughout the United States so that others may use his creations. During 1881, Edison opened offices in New York City, opened a second lamp factory at Harrison, New Jersey, and then opened a factory in New York that manufactured various objects for lighting, such as sockets, switches, and fixtures. During the years of 1882 and 1883, Edison created yet another invention that he became very well-known for. The “Edison effect,” though referred to as Etheric Force by Edison, is the phenomenon that “an independent wire, grid, or plate placed between the legs of the filament of an incandescent lamp acts as a valve to control the flow of current (Jonnes, 2003).” After discovering this phenomenon, Edison designed the first three-wire central station for “distributing electric light, power, and heat (Jonnes).” The basis for this invention had been around for many years, but it was not until Edison came along that it was turned into something that could be used in a variety of ways. Edison went on to invent this three-wire central system for electric lighting. This invention also inspired the later invention of the diode, which is still used in radio, computer, and television transistors. This made distributing electric currents to numerous places at once a fairly simple task, a concept that had astounded the people of Edison’s time. Though Edison created dozens of amazing inventions, the years between 1880 and 1887 were Edison’s most successful. He spent all of that time expanding on and improving his electric light, heat, and power systems. His goal with experimenting had long since involved making life as simple as possible, providing people with useful inventions that would greatly increase the quality of life. With electric light, heat, and power, people would no longer have to go without certain necessities for survival, such as heat. Furthermore, obtaining these inventions and using them was done with great ease for those that were able to afford them. By 1887, Edison had invented many smaller components to be used in previously invented machinery, but he was still creating objects and systems of his own. 1887 came with the invention of the wireless system of telegraphy, which was to be used on trains in motion to allow conductors to have contact with officials at railway stations. After this system spent a few years on the Lehigh Valleys, other companies began to pay for and install the systems for themselves. It gained such popularity that Edison had no choice but to enhance his design, creating an even better wireless system to be used between ships at sea, providing them with communication with other ships, people on the shore, and distant points of land. In 1891, Edison invented a machine that people still make use of on a daily basis: the motion picture camera. Edison created this mechanism that made it possible, by using continuous tape-like film, to take, reproduce, and project motion pictures in the same way that we still see them today. Edison combined the motion picture with his phonograph and was able to put a voice soundtrack to his moving images, thus creating the first talking movies. By 1896, Edison was hosting public movie screenings throughout New York City. Edison invented many more objects and wonderful machines until his dying day, but one of his later inventions stood out, which was the Telescribe. This machine combined the telephone and the dictating phonograph, creating the first recorder capable of recording both sides of a telephone conversation. Many other people have long since enhanced this invention, making it possible to easily record numerous conversations at once without being detected. This invention is now used to trace telephone calls or to record conversations on the government’s orders. The years of 1917 and 1918 saw Edison’s last surge of intellectual greatness. Due to the military actions of the day, Edison was called upon to work side-by-side with government officials from the United States to make products that would help them in combat. While some were just experiments, others were fully created for combat. Edison is recognized as having created the means to locate the positions of guns by sound ranging; guiding merchant ships out of mined harbors; camouflaging ships; detecting airplanes; and detecting the discharge of torpedoes by submarines (Stross, 2007), among many other useful creations. All of these inventions and those not mentioned are still being used today in combat, with many of them having been enhanced to also work on land. Thomas Edison spent the majority of his life inventing many objects and machines that were greatly beneficial to his time; many of them were so advanced in their technology that their creations were often considered to be magical or miraculous. They are also items that many of us have taken for granted today, such as electricity and motion picture cameras. Edison also opened up many opportunities for other inventors to work off of his original products, enhancing them for the more modern generation. The motion picture camera, for example, has seen so many changes to its structure that most cellular phones come complete with them. Numerous types are being used in the film and science industries, as well as for commercial and individual purposes. Many museums throughout the United States are home to Edison’s original inventions, as well as quite a few memorials that honor Edison and his contributions to science, technology, and society. The Thomas Edison Center and Memorial Tower at Menlo Park is located on the same property that Edison’s laboratory had once stood, which had originally burned to the ground in the early 1900s. The museum holds some of the original creations of Edison’s, including his famous phonograph and many of his lightbulb designs. Also on display are photographs of Edison with some of his other inventions, as well as his property. The remaining portion of Edison’s estate is now known as the Edison State Park, and the memorial tower is designed to resemble a lightbulb in honor of one of Edison’s finest creations. The Edison Museum is located in Beaumont, Texas, and consists of many displays dedicated to the inventions and innovations of Thomas Edison. The museum contains approximately 1,400 original artifacts that once belonged to Edison. These artifacts vary from original inventions, blueprints for his ideas, or journals where he would jot down thoughts to work off of. The majority of the inventions at the Edison Museum consist of Edison’s many lightbulb designs and bits and pieces from his phonograph conceptions. The museum also contains a vast library with many references and materials about Edison and his inventions. The Edison Institute, sometimes known as The Henry Ford, is a National Historical Landmark located in Dearborn, Michigan. While this museum is home to the inventions, recorded accomplishments, and rare personal items of many famous people, such as Henry Ford, Abraham Lincoln, and the Wright Brothers, there are also quite a few exhibits dedicated solely to Thomas Edison. One such exhibit is the laboratory that had once belonged to Edison, the same laboratory that housed most of Edison’s inventions as he developed and built them. There are also quite a few documentaries on Edison, his life, and his inventions that are played on the museum’s IMAX screen. Though there is speculation into the validity of it, the museum also claims to have Edison’s last breath in a sealed tube; regardless of whether or not the sealed tube truly contains this, it adds to the wonder that Edison’s exhibit presents to curious visitors and intellects alike. References Baldwin, N. (2001). Edison: Inventing the century (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Clark, R. W. (1977). Edison: The man who made the future. London: Macdonald and Jane's. Jonnes, J. (2003). Empires of light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the race to electrify the world. New York: Random House. Josephson, M. (1959). Edison. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pretzer, W. S. (1989). Working at inventing: Thomas A. Edison. Dearborn, MI: Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village. Stross, R. E. (2007). The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison invented the modern world. New York: Crown Publishers. Read More