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🙂 Hello friends! The topic “Thomas Edison: A Biography” provides information about the greatest inventor of the XNUMXth century and his works.
Thomas Edison is an American inventor. Some of his inventions were improvements to those that already existed. But he turned them into instruments that could be widely used.
His achievements included: a phonograph (the earliest sound recording device), a vastly improved telephone, and a light bulb that worked better.
The resourceful inventor has founded 14 commercial companies, including the one now known as General Electric, one of the largest companies in the world. He received his first patent for the invention of the automatic voice meter in 1868, when he was 21 years old. The inventor received 1093 patents in the USA and about 3 thousand in other countries of the world.
Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas was born in Mylan, Ohio in 1847 and was the 7th child in the family. The doctor, giving birth, noted that the baby has a large head, suggesting that the baby suffers from a “brain fever”. Al, as the boy was often called, often played alone, as his sisters and brother were older than him.
Curiosity and some absent-mindedness gave reason to his school teacher to declare that the boy was completely incapable of learning. However, Nancy did not agree with this verdict and, having taken the boy out of school, began to study with him herself.
During these years, the village flourished. In 1839, a canal was built here, and Mylan became a busy port on the Great Lakes. Local farms and timber were shipped across Lake Erie to the New York market. The column of carts stretched for several miles. The Edison house stood next to the canal, and Thomas was always aware of all the events.
An inquisitive boy often got into trouble. Once I almost drowned in a canal. Then, falling into the funnel of the elevator, he barely managed to get out of the huge pile of grain. While playing in his father’s barn, Al accidentally set it on fire. Samuel could not restrain himself and, as an edification for the future, whipped him.
The father loved his little son, but his constant, never interrupted questions, often pissed him off.
In 1954, Mylan’s well-being ended: a railway appeared and the canal lost its significance. The family sold the house and moved to Port Huron, Michigan. Samuel went into business: he sold grain, timber and houses.
He made a staircase 30 meters high and for 1/4 dollar he allowed the townspeople to admire the picturesque panorama of the city and its environs. Many made fun of his idea. Al was collecting money for using the stairs and realized that people were willing to pay not only for necessary things, but also for entertainment.
Al helped his father grow fruits and vegetables. When the harvest was ripe, he and a friend drove around the neighborhood, knocking on doors and offering goods.
The most stupid student
In those years, laws on the compulsory education of children were already passed. The first such law was passed in Massachusetts in 1852. But it took another 60 years for this law to become effective in all states. Many children only went to school in winter.
Nancy was the daughter of a priest, had an education and worked as a teacher for some time. She taught her son to read, write and draw, and after the move she enrolled him in school. Al was often ill and fell ill with scarlet fever in August. There were no antibiotics then and the boy fell ill for several months, so he went to school only the next year.
The headmaster of the school was George Ingle. He and his wife were strict teachers. Their technique involved memorizing the text and telling it to the class.
If the student made mistakes, talked in the lesson, then the teachers used a lash or a leather belt “for the purpose of education”. Al was not an assiduous child, he was constantly distracted or asked questions. Ingle once, unable to restrain himself, called him “stupid.”
Al burst into tears and ran home, begging his mother to pick him up from school. So schooling for Alva ended in three months. Nancy took over his education.
The mother’s act that changed the fate of her son (video). “Thomas Edison: biography”
Although, we can say that the boy studied himself. His mother bought books that were interesting to him. At the age of eight, Alva enthusiastically read books on world history, the works of Shakespeare and Dickens.
Commercial vein
Alva became a businessman while still a teenager. At 12, he sold snacks and sweets on the railroad. By the age of 14, he offered his own newspaper, Bolshoi Magistralny Vestnik, on trains.
With the money he earned, he set up a chemical laboratory. After asking Nancy to put away the “dangerous toys,” he moved some of his chemicals to the baggage car where he worked.
The young chemist was about to set the train on fire when a stick of phosphorus fell to the floor, causing the train conductor to hit him on the head. Edison believed that this was the cause of his deafness in his left ear.
Telegraph operator
In 1862, fifteen-year-old Thomas worked full-time as a telegraph operator that quickly covered the entire United States. At the time, the telegraph was the fastest way to send messages.
It worked by sending electrical impulses representing Morse code letters. In 1868 he joined the Western Union telegraph company in Boston. There he patented his first invention: an automatic vote counting system, which was not very successful.
Thomas Edison’s inventions
In those years, telephones had a separate mouthpiece and butterstamps.
Phone
Edison’s early success as an inventor meant that he was able to establish a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. There he developed a way to improve the sound of A. Bell’s invention – a telephone that worked using a parchment (paper) membrane vibrating in response to sound.
This caused the attached steel strip to vibrate in turn, and these vibrations were converted into electrical signals that propagated along the wire. At the receiving end, the signals have been converted back to sound.
But this sound was not clear. Early phone users needed to shout loudly to be heard.
Edison found that a carbon disk mounted between metal plates worked much better than parchment. He later replaced solid carbon with carbon pellets, an idea pioneered by British inventor David Hughes (1831-1900) in his microphone design.
It worked much better than anything previously used and remained a staple of the phone for the next 100 years.
Phonograph
The inventor adapted parts of an improved telephone that he invented to produce the first recording machine. His phonograph was like a telephone, only with vibrating parts connected to a steel needle.
When Thomas spoke into the horn, the needle “wrote” (etched out) a vibration pattern on a piece of foil wrapped around a drum that was simultaneously rotated. When the needle returned to the beginning of the written message and the drum turned again, the pattern cut in the foil made it vibrate in the same way.
Parts of the phone also vibrated and the sound came out of the horn again. Edison called this invention, patented in 1877, a phonograph. The first sound he recorded was in 1878, when he read the poem “Mary had a lamb.”
Electric light
Edison did not invent electric lighting, but his improvements made his version a commercial success. Around the same time he was working on his version, British inventor Joseph Swan (1828–1914) produced a working light bulb.
Swan’s light was created by passing an electric current through a carbon filament in a glass vacuum. The carbon filament became so hot that it glowed (known as incandescence) – although it required a lot of electricity.
Edison’s version, which he demonstrated in 1879, used a thin bamboo thread. This required much less electricity. He also improved the vacuum space.
Power
The speculator went on to use Michael Faraday’s discovery of how to generate electricity to build a powerful generator. In 1882, Pearl Street Station, the first power plant in the United States, began supplying electricity to illuminate nearly 100 buildings in Manhattan.
The equipment, including six huge generators, was designed and installed by Edison and his team.
Other inventions
Edison then founded a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887, worked on many inventions almost to the end of his life. He improved the phonograph, invented the practical dictaphone, the Kinetoscope mimeograph, the type of battery, and even an early form of motion picture.
He received over a thousand patents (exclusive rights granted by the government to develop his inventions). Thomas Edison is one of the most famous businessmen in the world.
Personal life
Thomas Edison has been married twice. His first wife, Maria, died in 1884, leaving him with three children. The second wife, Mina, with whom he also had three children, lived until 1947. Edison passed away in October 1931.
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