![Early life
• Edison was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, who
used to be a school teacher. He attended school for only a few
months. However, one biographer described him as a very curious
child who learned most things by reading on his own.[14] As a child,
he became fascinated with technology and spent hours working on
experiments at home.Edison developed hearing problems at the age
of 12. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of
scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear
infections. He subsequently concocted elaborate fictitious stories
about the cause of his deafness.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/presentation4-221214064029-cd3446a7/85/Presentation-4-pptx-4-320.jpg)
Presentation (4).pptx
- 2. Nikola Tesla • Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. • These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world.
- 3. About Thomas Edison He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.Edison was raised in the American Midwest. Early in his career he worked as a telegraph operator, which inspired some of his earliest inventions. In 1876, he established his first laboratory facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where many of his early inventions were developed. He later established a botanical laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida, in collaboration with businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone, and a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, that featured the world’s first film studio, the Black Maria. With 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as patents in other countries, Edison is regarded as the most prolific inventor in American history.
- 4. Early life • Edison was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, who used to be a school teacher. He attended school for only a few months. However, one biographer described him as a very curious child who learned most things by reading on his own.[14] As a child, he became fascinated with technology and spent hours working on experiments at home.Edison developed hearing problems at the age of 12. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. He subsequently concocted elaborate fictitious stories about the cause of his deafness.
- 5. Early career • Thomas Edison began his career as a news butcher, selling newspapers, candy and vegetables on the trains running from Port Huron to Detroit. He turned a $50-a-week profit by age 13, most of which went to buying equipment for electrical and chemical experiments. At age 15, in 1862, he saved 3-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train.Jimmie’s father, station agent J. U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison’s first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.He also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments until he left the job rather than be fired after being held responsible for a near collision of two trains.
- 6. Menlo Park laboratory (1876–1886) • Edison's major innovation was the establishment of an industrial research lab in 1876. It was built in Menlo Park, a part of Raritan Township (now named Edison Township in his honor) in Middlesex County, New Jersey, with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison was not sure that his original plan to sell it for $4,000 to $5,000 was right, so he asked Western Union to make a bid. He was surprised to hear them offer $10,000 ($239,500 in today's dollar), which he gratefully accepted.
- 7. Edison’s Menlo Park Lab, 1880 • Nearly all of Edison’s patents were utility patents, which were protected for 17 years and included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to 14 years. As in most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, in contrast, was unprecedented in describing the first device to record and reproduce sounds.
- 8. Phonograph Photograph of Edison with his phonograph (2nd model), taken in Mathew Brady's Washington, D.C. studio in April 1878 • Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices,but the invention that first gained him wider notice was the phonograph in 1877.This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park”.His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder.
Editor's Notes
- #9: Photograph of Edison with his phonograph (2nd model), taken in Mathew Brady's Washington, D.C. studio in April 1878