Edison’s illuminated life
Inventor gave light, other inventions to the world
The youth shot across the railroad tracks and scooped up the
toddler an instant before the train roared by.
Edison’s illuminated life
Inventor gave light, other inventions to the world
The youth shot across the railroad tracks and scooped up the toddler an instant before the train roared by.
The stationmaster ran over and cradled his son in his arms before turning to his rescuer. “Anything I’ve got or can do for you is yours, Al. Just name it.”
Without hesitation, 16-year-old Thomas Alva Edison said, “Teach me telegraphy.”
Thus Edison, born Feb. 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio, embarked upon a journey of nearly seven decades that saw the lighting of the world among nearly 1,100 inventions in his name.
Edison did not speak until he was nearly four, then asked questions about everything of anyone he encountered. He had been in school only three months when his teacher told the boy’s mother, “He’s addled.” Her response was to take him out of school and teach him herself. She wisely directed his reading and the boy absorbed Shakespeare along with scientific journals. He sat up a chemistry laboratory in the basement and printed his own newspaper. By 12 he sold sandwiches, fruit and daily newspapers on trains running from Port Huron, Mich. to Detroit and back.
After mastering telegraphy he became a tramp telegrapher. Nearly deaf from a childhood disease and with his mind teeming with theories about electricity, he was a loner with few friends as he went from city to city.
Edison made improvements on the telegraph, and then patented an electric vote counter. When it did not get the reception he felt due it, he vowed to invent only what the public would want.
His own favorite invention was the phonograph, which people regarded as near magic, and dubbed him “The Wizard of Menlo Park” referring to his New Jersey home. Edison established a workshop and hired intelligent men to work under his direction.
For years he had considered a revolutionary invention, the incandescent lamp. But that meant that he also had to devise the means by which it would be viable, everything from a power plant to transformers, lines and even sockets and wall switches. That did not daunt him.
For months, then years, he and his crew experimented with all components required before achieving success. One detractor charged that Edison was perpetrating a fraud upon the world.
On the evening of Sept. 4, 1882, Edison threw a switch at his station in lower Manhattan, and a square mile of homes and businesses was illuminated with a dazzling light never before seen. Within a few years thousands of communities here and abroad had instant light at the flick of a switch.
Edison became intrigued with the idea of motion pictures. His first motion film was of an employee pretending to sneeze. Edison’s projector was used for the first copyrighted motion picture in a New York City theater on April 23, 1896.
Edison died on Oct. 18, 1931 and the world mourned. Inventors’ Day is observed every Feb. 11. An honor he might have appreciated more followed his death by three days when streetlights throughout the nation were dimmed for one minute in memoriam.
