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Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. Amazingly, during his childhood, he received only three months of schooling. When he was 12 years old, he got a job selling newspapers in Port Huron, Michigan. During his spare time as a paperboy, he would experiment with the printing press and other appliances. During this time, he learned how to operate a newspaper printing press, and in 1862, he published his own weekly paper.
In a strange twist of fate, Edison saved an officials child, and was rewarded by being taught telegraphy. Edison showed his engineering genius with telegraphy when he designed a telegraphic repeating instrument, which could automatically transport a message over a second line. This invention would later on make Edison very rich.
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Edison was now employed in Boston, but he devoted all of his spare time to doing research. He invented many things, including a vote recorder, a stock quote printer, a carbon telegraph transmitter, and he improved the telegraph-repeating machine that he invented previously. Through his inventions, Edison earned 40,000 U.S dollars. With this money, Edison established a lab. In 1876, he opened his new lab. From this lab, he made some of his most influential discoveries, including the phonograph in 1877, and the incandescent light bulb in 1879. After Edison invented the light bulb, he spent most of his time developing generators powerful enough to run light bulbs. In 1882, he built the first DC power plant in New York City. In 1887, he moved from Menlo Park, New Jersey to West Orange, New Jersey. In his new lab, Edison created even more inventions. He created a kinetoscope, a device used to play motion pictures in 1888, and he made his own battery, known as the Edison Storage Battery. He also made a phonograph, and using the phonograph and the kinetoscope together, he produced the first talking movie.
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Edison’s honors are almost as numerous as his inventions. In 1878, he was named chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In 1892, he was given the Albert Metal of the Society of Arts of Great Britain. In 1928, he was given the Congressional Gold Metal for “Development and application of inventions that have revolutionized civilization in the last century.” After a long and affluent life, Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey.
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Edison graced the world with over 1,000 inventions, including movies, light bulbs, record players, and numerous telephone devices. Thomas Edison took the usefulness of the new medium known as electricity to a new extreme, and the world is a different place for it.
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 Matt from United States contributed:
Thomas Edison helped Henrey Ford make the first ford car
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Jack King from United States contributed:
Volta did an experiment where he placed two electrodes (connected to a battery he developed) into both of his ear canals. He heard a loud bang, followed by an auditory sensation he reported to be like the boiling of thick soup.
This discovery would lead many researchers to investigate the use of electric current to stimulate the auditory system in hopes of providing a means of hearing for the deaf. Modern day technology, coupled with the research findings that resulted from spin-off studies following Volta's report of electrical auditory stimulation is arguably responsible for the development of the cochlear implant.
A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted prosthetic device that electrically stimulates the hearing part of the inner ear (cochlea) and produces auditory sensation sufficient enough to enable many users who were previously deaf to understand speech without lipreading. Today, there are in excess of 40,000 cochlear implant users worldwide.
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Marnie from United States contributed:
Edison was aware of the inventions of Volta, and was first inspired by the votaic jars that produced electrical current. It is also important to note that Edison began losing his hearing when he was 12 years old, and later became totally deaf.
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 | Thomas Edison.
Copyright © Lucidcafe. Permission obtained on August 13th 2000, by Email message. |
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