Thomas Edison : biography of the inventor of the incandescent bulb
BIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS Alva EDISON — American inventor, Thomas Edison has filed more than a thousand patents during his career. He commercialized the incandescent light bulb and participated in the development of electricity.
Short biography of Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, USA, to a modest family in this Ohio city. He is an early child, devouring many books and has, from the age of 10, his small chemistry laboratory. Interested in the telegraph and trains, he began his career in 1866, working as a telegraphist. In the same year, Edison invented a duplex telegraph which became a multiplex in 1869 and which he commercialized in the early 1870s to manage the stock market prices. With the money raised, he created his own research laboratory in 1874 and filed numerous patents. He invented the phonograph in 1877, which records and reproduces all sounds mechanically.
Thomas Edison’s inventions :
In 1878, Thomas Edison came up with the idea of introducing an electrically heated filament into a bulb to produce light. The concept of the light bulb, already invented in 1835 by Lindsay, is taken by Edison and his team who patented in 1879 a light bulb with a bamboo filament (which only takes 30 hours). One of his engineers produced in 1881 an incandescent bulb with carbon filament. Thomas Edison, who founded the Edison Electric Light Company in 1879, markets his light bulbs. It’s a revolution. In 1882, he founded the first power station in the world, and sought to make electricity accessible to all. The inventor is also the forerunner of the cinema since it creates in 1888 the first camera of history, the Kinetographic (to record) and the Kinetoscope (to reproduce the images). Thomas Edison continues his research until the end of his life and died October 18, 1931, in West Orange (United States), at the age of 84 years.
Thomas Edison’s quotes
- “To create, just have a great imagination and a pile of junk.”
- “I am not discouraged because any unsuccessful attempt left behind is another step forward.”
- “I did not fail, I just found 10,000 solutions that do not work.”
- “I will make electricity so cheap that only the rich can afford the luxury of using candles.”
- “Genius is made of one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
- “Never waste time inventing things that people would not be likely to buy.”
- “The value of an idea depends on its use.”
- “If we did everything we could, we would be stunned.”
THOMAS EDISON: Timeline
February 11, 1847: Birth of Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison, inventor and American industrialist, was born on February 11, 1847. He founded one of the world’s industrial empires, General Electric, and is behind 1093 patents. Among his main inventions are the telephones, the phonograph, the filament light bulb, the power station, and the alkaline battery. It has largely contributed to the worldwide democratization of electricity. He died at age 84 while still working on a synthetic gum project.
March 7, 1876: Invention of the telephone: Bell is ahead of Edison
The American inventor Thomas Edison is taken speed by Alexander Graham Bell, who filed before him his patent validating the invention of the phone. Green in rage, it immediately improves the initial capabilities, developing the microphone to torpedo its competitor. The man with 1,093 patents, 40 projects under the elbow at the same time, then leaves his research laboratories in Newark, sleeping only four hours per night, able, according to him, to toil in the workplace. Hours in a row. Out of it will come the teleprinters, the phonograph, the Kinetoscope, the duplex telegraph, the electric lamp ..
December 19, 1877: Edison invents the phonograph
The American inventor Thomas Edison files the patent for the first phonograph. Its device makes it possible to record sounds thanks to a stylus which engraves the sounds on a cylinder of tin according to the vibrations. Once the recording is finished, the engraved inscriptions are read by the stylus and transformed into sounds by a diaphragm. Only downside: the invention of Edison does not reproduce the vowels clearly.
1879: Thomas Edison created the Edison General Electric Company
In 1879, Thomas Edison, pioneer of electricity and inventor of the telephone, created the Edison General Electric Company. This company disappeared in 1892, becoming the General Electric Company, resulting from the merger with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, the main competitor of Edison at the end of the nineteenth century. This new company, one of the original twelves to enter the Dow Jones in 1896, is the only one still to be there today.
October 21, 1879: Edison markets the incandescent lamp
In his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Tomas Alva Edison manages to power his first incandescent bulb. As a filament, he uses a bamboo from Japan in a vacuum bulb powered by low voltages. By charring, the bamboo connected to two platinum wires conducting electricity, produces an electric light. The American inventor is only 29 years old. He presents his invention to the amazed American public on January 1, 1880.
October 18, 1931: Death of Thomas Edison
The Genius inventor, Thomas Edison dies on October 18, 1931.
