Thomas Edison
1847–1931 1 entry
Biography
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman, one of the most prolific inventors in history. Born in Milan, Ohio, he had only a few months of formal schooling and was taught mostly by his mother. As a boy he sold newspapers on trains, and later he worked as a telegraph operator, which led to his first inventions. In 1876 he set up a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, the first of its kind, where teams of workers developed inventions systematically.
There he invented the phonograph, the first machine to record and play back sound, and developed a long-lasting electric light bulb, together with a whole system for producing and distributing electricity. He also worked on the motion picture camera, the telephone and the storage battery. Over his life he held more than a thousand patents in the United States, and he died at his home in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1931.
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