Thomas alva edison small biography of benjamin franklin

Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor and savvy businessman who acquired a record number of 1, patents singly or jointly and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb, the alkaline battery and one of the earliest motion picture cameras. In addition to his talent for invention, Edison was also a successful manufacturer who was highly skilled at marketing his inventions—and himself—to the public.

He was the seventh and last child born to Samuel Edison Jr. At age 12, he developed hearing loss—he was reportedly deaf in one ear, and nearly deaf in the other—which was variously attributed to scarlet fever, mastoiditis or a blow to the head. Thomas Edison received little formal education, and left school in to begin working on the railroad between Detroit and Port Huron, Michigan, where his family then lived.

Did you know? By the time he died at age 84 on October 18, , Thomas Edison had amassed a record 1, patents: for electric light and power, for the phonograph, for the telegraph, for storage batteries and 34 for the telephone. During the Civil War , Edison learned the emerging technology of telegraphy, and traveled around the country working as a telegrapher.

But with the development of auditory signals for the telegraph, he was soon at a disadvantage as a telegrapher. To address this problem, Edison began to work on inventing devices that would help make things possible for him despite his deafness including a printer that would convert electrical telegraph signals to letters.

Thomas edison inventions

In early , he quit telegraphy to pursue invention full time. From to , Edison worked out of Newark, New Jersey, where he developed telegraph-related products for both Western Union Telegraph Company then the industry leader and its rivals. Despite his prolific telegraph work, Edison encountered financial difficulties by late , but one year later—with the help of his father—Edison was able to build a laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey, 12 miles south of Newark.

In , Edison developed the carbon transmitter, a device that improved the audibility of the telephone by making it possible to transmit voices at higher volume and with more clarity. That same year, his work with the telegraph and telephone led him to invent the phonograph, which recorded sound as indentations on a sheet of paraffin-coated paper; when the paper was moved beneath a stylus, the sounds were reproduced.

The device made an immediate splash, though it took years before it could be produced and sold commercially. In , Edison focused on inventing a safe, inexpensive electric light to replace the gaslight—a challenge that scientists had been grappling with for the last 50 years.