What Thomas Edison Discovered. Thomas Alva Edison: The Life of an Inventor. Moving to New York

06.03.2020

Date of birth: February 11, 1847
Date of death: October 18, 1931
Place of birth: United States of America

Thomas Alva Edison is a famous businessman. Same way Thomas Edison became famous as an inventor. It was he who created the well-known lamp, made radical changes to the already existing telephone and telegraph.

Thomas first saw the light in a poor family. His father, Samuel, originally lived in Canada, but after participating in an act of defiance of the authorities, he fled to the United States. Mother, Nancy, was born in the family of a priest, in her youth she worked at a school as a teacher. Thomas, who was born into the Edison family, had poor health in early childhood, but was noted for his powers of observation. At school, he did not demonstrate much success, however, like many outstanding scientists. After a short stay at school, his mother transferred him to home schooling.

The inventor never received primary school education. At home, the boy read a lot, at a very young age he mastered the book, which described the main scientific and technological achievements of that time. The boy also created an experimental site in the basement of the parental home.

For experiments, Thomas needs money - to buy consumables, reagents. He earned them on his own, working as a fruit and vegetable seller, and then as a newspaper seller. With the money received, the young scientist managed to equip the laboratory no longer at home, but in one of the unnecessary cars. A little later, Thomas is assigned to create a train-related newspaper himself.

Once Edison managed to save the life of the stationmaster's son. The grateful father of the saved offspring taught the rescuer how to work with the telegraph. After training, Thomas immediately applied his new knowledge - he built a telegraph line for himself. It took five years to meticulously study the work of a telegraph operator. In parallel, the young man read a lot. One of the books he read, authored by Faraday, prompted Thomas to think about his own inventions.

The result was not long in coming - a year later he patented a voice recorder powered by electricity. It was not possible to monetize the invention, and from that time on, Edison invested his efforts only in those inventions that promised income. One of the most profitable inventions was the telegraph machine. The patent for it allowed the inventor to gain several tens of thousands of dollars - an astronomical amount for 1870.

This money went to the equipment of a more modern workshop, where he began work on improving the telegraph. After a short time, the modernized device could already transmit up to four messages at the same time.

Soon, Edison's laboratory grows even more and is staffed with qualified personnel. Everything was aimed at the commercial component of scientific work. It was probably the first technopark in history. It was there that a novelty was presented - a microphone with a carbon element. The innovation was that such a device worked much better than the previous ones. Then the phonograph was born.

But the peak of the inventive career was, of course, the incandescent lamp. Lamps existed before Edison, but assembly line production and lower operating costs led to widespread use. Without exaggeration, it was Edison who stood at the origins of the electrification of America. His name is also associated with the formation of the General Electric company.

In 1931, Thomas Edison died at the age of 84. It happened in the USA, in the state of New Jersey, in the inventor's own house.

Achievements of Thomas Edison:

Received more than a thousand patents for various inventions
Received recognition from the US Congress by receiving the Gold Medal
Brought the electric lamp to the commercial market
Solved the problem of synthetic rubber
Established technologies for the synthesis of phenol, benzene

Dates from the biography of Thomas Edison:

1847 born in USA
1854 moved to Michigan
1857 founded the first laboratory
1862 founded a newspaper for circulation on trains
1863 became a telegraph operator
1869 received the first patent
1870 received an astronomical $40,000 for one of his patents
1877 introduced the phonograph
1878 commercialized incandescent lamps
1882 commissioned a power station
1887 became the founder of the laboratory in West Orange
1931 Thomas Edison dies

Interesting Thomas Edison Facts:

Never graduated from elementary school
Planned to invent a helicopter that used gunpowder as fuel
Distinguished by efficiency - could work more than 15 hours daily
Had hearing problems
He was an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
Suggested at least 10 uses for the phonograph, including in advertising
During the work on the lamp, he used more than 5,000 materials in turn
Asteroid named after Edison
There is a feature film based on the biography of the inventor

To make a life with whom?
From comrade Dzerzhinsky?
Taken off the per-sono pedestal...
Make life with Edison!

G. Bell's telephone improved by Edison.

Edison's first phonograph.

Edison incandescent lamp.

Edison's life is a vivid example of an all-consuming passion for one of the most interesting areas of human activity - invention. Fascinated by the verification of some technical idea, he could work for several days without sleep and rest, and when there was no strength left at all, he would fall asleep right there, in the laboratory, wrapped in a raincoat and placing a stack of books under his head.

Interest in technology awakened in Thomas very early. At the age of nine, he read the first scientific book - "Natural and Experimental Philosophy" by R.-G. Parker, published in 1856. This book was a kind of scientific and technical encyclopedia containing descriptions of almost all the mechanisms of that time - from steam engines to balloons and information on chemistry with a description of numerous experiments. Over time, Thomas did them all in the basement of his parents' house, turned into a chemical laboratory. Then he decided to make sure that light gases, rising up, make it possible for heavy objects to fly, and persuaded his friend to take a horse dose of powder for making soda. The gullible boy, instead of flying, felt severe pain in his stomach, and Thomas earned his first "fee" - a good spanking.

Growing up, Edison changed his place of work and occupation several times, and at the age of sixteen he became a telegraph operator. He still reads a lot and continues to educate himself. Having perfectly mastered electrical engineering, in 1869 he designed an "electric voting apparatus". Instead of a long counting of ballots, this device immediately showed on two dials the number of votes "for" and "against". But the parliamentary commission rejected the invention, apparently considering that the mechanism works too accurately. Having received 40 thousand dollars for an improved model of a device for transmitting information about exchange rates (the so-called ticker), Addison came to grips with inventive activity.

In 1876, he improved the telephone, just patented by G. Bell: he invented a carbon microphone and put a step-up transformer at the output of the device. These and a number of other inventions made it possible to increase the length of telephone lines hundreds of times, and also to construct a methophone - a device that made it possible for a large number of people to listen to the transmitted speech and music - the prototype of modern radio broadcasting.

A year later, thirty-year-old Edison registered one of his most remarkable inventions - the phonograph. This mechanical device for recording and reproducing sound made a real sensation. Few people believed that a small cylinder with grooves on which a needle slides could reproduce a human voice. During a demonstration of the phonograph at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, the indignant academician Buyo exclaimed: "We will not allow some ventriloquist to cheat us!" In Russia, the owner of the "talking mechanical beast" was sentenced to a large fine and three months in prison...

Nevertheless, phonographs very quickly became widespread. They recorded arias from operas, concert numbers, speeches of prominent people. Edison sent one of the first phonographs as a gift to Leo Tolstoy, preserving the writer's voice for posterity. In the business world, under the name "dictaphone" (!) they were used as "automatic stenographers" for recording and subsequent playback by a typist. And all this time, Edison continuously improved his beloved brainchild: by 1910, the number of patents related to the recorder exceeded one hundred.

Encouraged by the first successes of the phonograph, Edison set about solving another urgent problem - the creation of a reliable and durable electric incandescent lamp.

They tried to get light using electricity for a long time: in 1808, V.V. Petrov ignited an arc discharge from a galvanic battery built two years earlier by Alessandro Volta. In 1846, Pierre Goebel built the first lamp in which an electric current heated a carbon filament, and in 1872 A. N. Lodygin created an incandescent lamp with a piece of coal placed in a flask with evacuated air. Coal was not chosen by chance: it retains its structure up to a temperature of about 3300 o C and, moreover, glows very brightly when heated. But at high temperatures, coal actively combines with oxygen in the air, that is, it simply burns out. Consequently, air must be removed from the glass bulb of an incandescent lamp, which was not easy for the technology of that time. And the question still remained open: how to achieve "crushing of electric light"? After all, each group of lamps required its own current source - a galvanic battery or generator. There was an opinion among specialists that this task was unsolvable.

Edison, with his characteristic ability to give himself without limit to the idea that captured him, in 1879 set about solving this technical problem. he immediately realized that the main reason for the failures that befell numerous inventors was that they were all engaged in designing only lamps and did not pay attention to the issues of the entire electric lighting system as a whole.

First of all, he thought and assembled an ingenious combination of vacuum pumps, obtaining a vacuum of one millionth of an atmosphere - a record value for that time. Then began the search for the best material for the lamp filament. The first was tried charred cotton thread, which worked, glowing quite brightly, for two days. Thus, on October 21, 1879, the incandescent electric light bulb was born, one of the most important inventions of the 19th century. However, it took another 13 months of hard work to make it suitable for practical use and mass production. Simultaneously, Edison continued to experiment with different materials for the filament. Its employees charred wool, silk, various types of cardboard and paper, celluloid, walnut shells and much more in laboratory ovens, simultaneously studying their structure under a microscope. It turned out that charred bamboo fibers give the best results. And Edison employees go on difficult and dangerous expeditions for samples of different varieties of cane, bamboo and palm wood to China, Japan, South America, Cuba, Ceylon and Jamaica. They brought about six thousand samples, which were carefully tested in the laboratory. Of all this huge amount, one was chosen - Japanese bamboo, which for ten years became the main material for the manufacture of carbon thread.

In 1880, Edison outlines a program of work to create an integrated power supply system. According to the inventor, electrical wires should have been laid mainly underground, making it possible to connect to them. The electrical network must be designed so that in the event of an accident on one line, the current to consumers can pass uninterruptedly through the other. It is necessary to invent a safety device that limits the maximum current strength, a switch and an electric energy meter, and develop an internal wiring diagram for residential and industrial premises. It is necessary to design an efficient generator of electric current and electric motors for machine tools, printing machines, conveyors, to develop a detailed diagram of a power plant with steam engines, protection equipment, current distribution and voltage regulation, designed for continuous operation.

Edison fulfilled everything planned in the program in the shortest possible time. It was he who equipped the light bulb with a base and a screw-threaded cartridge, designed a rotary switch that existed forty years ago, created a fuse that is still used today. His electricity meter worked on the principle of electrolysis - the precipitation of copper from a solution of its salt (see "Science and Life" No. 3, 1996). In September 1882, New York, the first city in the world, was completely lit by incandescent lamps. The current for them was supplied by a power plant built by Edison.

But, despite the overwhelming success of his activities, Edison did not consider what was achieved as the end result. 36 years after the creation of the first lamp with a carbon filament, in 1915, he wrote: “No invention can be recognized as perfect. And in this respect, the modern incandescent lamp is no exception. Light that is not due to the action of heat is that ideal , which you need to strive for ... "And indeed, after a short time, "daylight" lamps appeared, working on a completely different principle, and today they are being replaced by even more economical and durable LEDs.

Working on the improvement of carbon lamps, Edison discovered that an electric current flows between a hot filament and an electrode soldered into an evacuated flask. This phenomenon was later called the "Edison effect". So in 1883, thermal emission was discovered - the release of electrons (which, however, they did not suspect then) from a heated conductor, the process underlying the operation of all radio tubes.

Edison's versatility was amazing. It seemed that there was no such technical problem that he could not solve. Suffering from neuralgia, which patent remedies could not cure, he created a medicine according to his own recipe. When supplies of phenol and benzene from Europe, used in the production of rollers for phonographs, stopped during the war, Edison built a phenol plant in 18 days and a benzene plant in two months. He developed ink for the blind, a method for long-term storage of butter and fruits, a method for magnetic separation of iron ore, designed a railway brake and a movie camera, invented an iron-nickel alkaline battery, and much, much more.

The last task that completely captivated Edison was the work on the study of natural rubber of plant origin. The electrical and automotive industries required more and more high-quality rubber, which could not be made from synthetic raw materials. There were rubber plantations in Africa, but Edison began to look for suitable plants in his country. He examined over 14 thousand plants and found that 1240 of them contain rubber, and more than 600 - in sufficient quantities for industrial breeding. Edison was not destined to complete this work. His strength diminished, his memory weakened, he could no longer work, and life lost all meaning for him. On October 18, 1931, Thomas Alva Edison died. His last words were: "How good it is here ..."

S. TRANKOVSKY.

LITERATURE

Lapirov-Skoblo M. Ya. Edison. - M., 1960.

Belkind L. D. Thomas Alva Edison. - M., 1964.

It is hard to believe that Thomas Edison, who patented more than two thousand of the most diverse inventions in his entire life, did not even finish elementary school. And all because the teachers were angry with the boy’s constant questions “Why?” - and he was kicked home with a note to his parents saying that their son was simply "restricted". The mother made a scandal about this at school, but she took the boy from the educational institution and gave him his first education at home.

Already at the age of nine, Thomas read his first scientific book - "Natural and Experimental Philosophy", written by Richard Greene Parker, which talked about almost all the scientific and technical inventions of that time. Moreover, the boy was so interested in the book that over time he did absolutely all the experiments described in it on his own.

In his entire life (and Edison lived for 84 years), only in America he patented 1093 devices. Among them are a phonograph, a telephone, an electric voice box, a pneumatic stencil pen, even an electric meter and batteries for an electric car. True, it should be noted that in fact most of his discoveries were not unique, and therefore he constantly sued various inventors. The only creation, one hundred percent belonging to him, was the phonograph, because before him no one simply worked in this direction.

Naturally, the first phonographs were not of high recording quality, and the sounds they made were not very similar to the human voice, but everyone who heard it was delighted. Moreover, Edison himself considered his invention a toy that was not suitable for serious practical use. True, he tried to make talking dolls with his help, but the sounds they made frightened the children so much that the idea had to be abandoned.

The inventions of Thomas Edison are so numerous that they can be divided into the following areas:

Electric lamps and power supply to them;
Batteries - Edison created batteries for electric vehicles, which later turned out to be his most profitable invention;
Records and sound recording;
Cement - the inventor was fond of developing concrete houses and furniture - one of his most failed projects, which brought him absolutely no profit;
Mining;
Cinema - for example, a kinetoscope - a camera for reproducing moving pictures;
Telegraph - improved the exchange telegraph apparatus;
Telephone - adding a carbon microphone and an induction coil to the invention of his competitor Bell, Edison proved to the patent office that his device was an original design. Moreover, it should be noted that such an improvement in the phone brought him 300 thousand dollars.

Edison iron-nickel battery

electric lamps

Today, Thomas Edison is best known for his invention of the electric lamp. Actually this is not true. The Englishman Humphrey Davy created the prototype of the light bulb seventy years before him. Edison's merit is that he came up with a standard base and improved the spiral in the lamp, so that it began to serve much longer.

As we can see, Edison's light bulb is far from the first

In addition, in this case, it is necessary to note the entrepreneurial streak of the American. For example, the Russian economist Yasin compared Edison's actions with Yablochkov, who invented the electric light bulb almost simultaneously with him. The first one found the money, built a power plant, lit up two blocks, and eventually brought everything to a marketable appearance, while independently inventing a transformer and the equipment necessary for the system. And Yablochkov put his development on the shelf.

The Deadly Inventions of Thomas Edison

Not everyone knows that at least two of Edison's inventions were fatal. It is he who is considered the creator of the first electric chair. True, the first victim of this invention was an enraged elephant who killed three people.

Another development of his directly entailed human death. After the discovery of X-rays, Edison commissioned employee Clarence Delley to develop a device for fluoroscopy. Since no one then knew how harmful these rays were, the employee did the tests on his own hands. After that, first one arm was amputated, then the other, and then his condition worsened even more and as a result he died of cancer. After that, Edison got scared and stopped working on the apparatus.

Edison principles at work

Unlike many fellow inventors, fame and fortune came to Thomas Edison during his lifetime. His biographers claim that this happened due to the fact that in his work he was guided by the following principles:

Never forget the entrepreneurial side of things. Having experienced first hand what it means to engage in projects that do not promise commercial benefits (for example, the development of houses and furniture from concrete), he came to the conclusion that every invention should bring money;
To achieve success, you must use all available means. Edison in his activities easily used the developments of other researchers, using "black PR" against competitors;
He skillfully chose employees - they were mostly young talented people, while the American parted with those disloyal to him without regrets;
Work comes first. Even having become rich, Edison did not stop working;
Don't give up in the face of difficulties. Many pundits of that time laughed at his undertakings, knowing that they contradicted the scientific laws known to them. Edison, on the other hand, did not have a serious education, therefore, when making new discoveries, he often did not even know that it was impossible to make them in theory.

Thomas Edison said: "Discontent is the first condition of progress." The degree of "dissatisfaction" of the great inventor is evidenced by 1093 patents for inventions, which were issued to him by the Patent Office. This amount has never been received by any person in the United States. To make the world more comfortable, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, built the world's first public power station, perfected the telegraph and telephone, the incandescent lamp... Thanks to his discontent, the world became more comfortable.

Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847, the son of a carpentry shop owner. However, when Thomas was 7 years old, his father went bankrupt, and the future inventor tasted all the inconveniences of the world of poverty. But from an early age, Edison showed himself to be an irrepressible fighter with circumstances, not wanting to come to terms with the fall of his family. Edison plunged into his studies. True, he had to say goodbye to school already at the age of 8 - the school environment turned out to be too limited for him. His mother, a former school teacher, continued his education at home. At the age of 10, Thomas immersed himself in chemical experiments and created his first laboratory in the basement of his house.

At the age of 12, Edison went to earn money. He sold newspapers, fruit, and candy on trains. In order not to waste time, he transferred the chemical laboratory to the baggage car provided at his disposal and conducted experiments on the train. At the age of 15, with the money saved, Thomas bought a printing press and began to publish his own newspaper right in the baggage car of the train in which he worked, and sell it to passengers.

However, Edison was attracted by everything innovative, so in 1861 he changed the railway to a more progressive telegraph. From the very first days of his work as a telegraph operator, he thought about how to improve the telegraph apparatus. In 1868, Edison's inventive genius produced an electric vote recorder. True, there were no buyers for the patent of the invention, and then Thomas decided for himself that he would work only on inventions with guaranteed demand.

The next invention provided a welcome boost for Edison. Thomas expanded the capabilities of the telegraph machine: now it could transmit not only SOS signals, but also information about exchange rates. On this invention, Edison earned 40 thousand dollars and soon organized a workshop where he made automatic telegraph machines and other electrical equipment.

In 1877, Thomas Edison patented his new invention, the phonograph. Until the end of his life, he will consider this his favorite invention and the main rise in his own inventive career. The idea of a phonograph was suggested to him by sounds similar to unintelligible speech, which once came from a telegraph repeater. The press called the phonograph “the greatest discovery of the century,” and Edison himself suggested many ways to use it: dictating letters and documents without the help of a stenographer, playing music, recording conversations (in combination with a telephone), etc.

In 1891, Edison shocked the world with a new breakthrough invention, without which modern civilization cannot be imagined. He created an apparatus for demonstrating successive photographs of moving objects - a kinescope. On April 23, 1896, Edison held the first public screening of a movie in New York, and in 1913 he showed a movie with synchronous sound accompaniment.

Until the end of his life, Thomas Edison was engaged in the improvement of this world. At the age of 85, dying, he said to his wife: “If there is anything after death, that's good. If not, that's fine too. I lived my life and did the best that I could ... ".

Thomas Alva Edison (eng. Thomas Alva Edison; 02/11/1847 - 10/18/1931) is a famous American inventor and businessman, co-founder of General Electric Corporation. At the age of 23, he became the founder of a unique research laboratory.

During his professional career, Thomas received 1,093 patents in his homeland and about 3,000 outside the United States.

A talented organizer, with his discoveries, Edison put highbrow science on a commercial footing and linked the results of experiments with production. He improved the telegraph and telephone, designed the phonograph. Thanks to his perseverance, millions of incandescent bulbs lit up in the world.

Edison did not become a "mad scientist" vegetating in his declining years in obscurity and poverty, but achieved recognition. But he did not have a higher or even primary education: he was expelled from school with the stigma of "brainless". The biography of Thomas Edison will tell about what qualities lead to success.

Edison's childhood

NEWBORN WITH "BRAIN FEVER"

The future genius was born in the American city of Meilen (Ohio) on February 11, 1847. The newborn Thomas Alva Edison surprised the doctor who delivered the baby: the obstetrician suggested that the baby had a “brain fever”, because the baby’s head exceeded the standard dimensions. The doctor was not mistaken in one thing - the baby was definitely not “standard”.

LONG-LIFE FATHERS

Thomas was born into a family of descendants of Dutch millers. In the 18th century, part of the family emigrated to the United States, where it took root. Both Edison's great-grandfather and grandfather were centenarians: the first lived to be 102 years old, the second to 103.

Samuel Edison, Thomas's father, was a general businessman: he traded in timber, real estate, and wheat. In his backyard, he built a 30-meter staircase and collected a quarter of a dollar from anyone who wanted to enjoy the panorama from above. People laughed, but the money paid. From his father, Thomas will inherit business acumen.

Reread the previous paragraph again, a quarter dollar per view from a 30-meter ladder. It's practically money out of thin air. The idea is elementary, but there was a daredevil and embodied it. This distinguishes successful people from ordinary people, their brain generates ideas of various kinds, and their hands bring them to life. It is easy to come up with an idea, but for many people it becomes an impossible task to implement it. If you want to succeed, learn how to act. And the sooner the better. Take the first step immediately after reading this article.

Nancy Eliot, the mother of the future genius, grew up in the family of a priest, was a highly educated woman, worked as a teacher before her marriage.

Thomas' parents are Samuel Edison and Nancy Eliot

Thomas' parents married in 1837 in Canada. Soon, a rebellion began in the country due to economic decline, Samuel, who took part in the riots, fled from government troops to America. In 1839 his wife and children also joined him.

Thomas was the youngest child of the couple, the seventh in a row. The family called the boy Alva, Al or El. He often played alone as a child. Even before his birth, the Edisons had three children, older brothers and sisters were older than Thomas and did not share his games with him.

CHILDHOOD WITHOUT TOYS

In 1847, Edison's hometown was a prosperous center on the Huron River, and all thanks to the water channel, through which farm crops and timber were delivered to the industrial centers.

Al grew up as an inquisitive child who got into trouble: somehow he fell into a canal and miraculously survived; fell into the elevator and almost suffocated in the grain; set fire to his father's barn. According to the memoirs of Edison Sr., his son "did not know children's games, his amusements were steam engines and mechanical crafts." The little boy loved to "build" on the river bank: he laid roads, designed toy windmills.

SCATTERED FROM THE HURON RIVER

Once Thomas went with a friend to the river. While he was sitting on the bank in thought, his friend drowned. Alva woke up from his thoughts and thought that his friend had returned home without him. Later, when the body of a friend was discovered, an inattentive Thomas was blamed for the accident. This event was deeply imprinted in the mind of the boy.

RESETTLING TO THE GREAT LAKES STATE

In 1854 the family moved to Michigan, the city of Port Huron. Meilen, native to Thomas, where he spent the first 7 years of his life, began to decline: the city canal lost its commercial importance, as a railway line was laid nearby.

In the new location, the family occupies a beautiful house with a large garden and river views. Alve works on a farm, picks fruits and vegetables, sells crops, driving around the area.

RUMORS ABOUT HEARING LOST

Thomas begins to hear worse, sources indicate different reasons for this:

The version is "prosaic": the boy had been ill with scarlet fever;
“Romantic”: the conductor “hit” the young inventor in the ear with a composter;
"Believable": heredity is to blame (dad and brother Alya had a similar problem).

His deafness increased throughout his life. When films with sound appeared, Edison complained that the actors began to play worse, concentrating on the voice: I feel it more than you because I am deaf.

Inventor Education

SCHOOL: "HELLO AND FAREWELL"

In 1852, a law was passed requiring children to attend school. However, most continued to help their parents on family farms and did not go to school. Thomas' mother taught him to read and write, and placed the grown son in an elementary school.

In an educational institution, schoolchildren were punished with a belt, Alya also fell. The little boy was hard of hearing, distracted, with difficulty crammed the material. The teacher more than once ridiculed a negligent student in front of schoolchildren, and somehow called him "stupid".

CREATOR OF GENIUS

Mother took Thomas from school, where he managed to suffer for 2 months. A tutor was hired for home education, the boy learned a lot on his own. Mom did not demand to cram uninteresting subjects. Later Edison will say: My mother was my creator. She understood me, she gave me the opportunity to follow my inclinations.

In this matter, I share the opinion of Edison's mother. My eldest daughter will start school in a year, but she already reads perfectly, which we taught her on our own. And when she goes to school, I will never demand fours and fives from her, as it was with me in childhood, I will not force her to cram what she is not interested in. I'll even let her skip boring subjects. This does not mean that she will sit back, instead of boring lessons, she will do what she is interested in (creativity, sports, other subjects). The task of the parent is to reveal the creative abilities of the child and direct all his energy in this direction, cutting off all unnecessary. note by editor Roman Kozhin

There is a beautiful instructive story.

Once, little Thomas returned from class and gave his mother a note from the school teacher. Mrs. Edison read the message aloud: “Your son is a genius. There are no suitable teachers in this school who can teach him something. Please teach it yourself."

Being a famous inventor, when his mother had already died, Edison found this note in the family archive, its text read: “Your son is mentally retarded. We can't teach it at school with everyone else. Please teach it yourself."

Thomas Edison as a child (about 12 years old)

BOOKWORM

Just as a sculptor needs a block of marble, so does the soul need knowledge.

By the age of 9, Alva read books on history, the works of Shakespeare and Dickens, and visits the local library. In the parental basement, he equips the laboratory and makes experiments from the book "Natural and Experimental Philosophy" by Richard Parker. So that no one touches his reagents, the young alchemist signs all the bottles "poison".

The track record of Thomas Edison

12 YEARS OLD WORKER

In 1859, Alya's father finds a job as a "train boy" - the duties of a "trainboy" included selling newspapers and sweets on the train. The former book lover shuttles between Port Huron and Detroit, and quickly catches on to the trade. He expands the business, hires 4 assistants and annually brings $ 500 to the family.

PRINTING ON WHEELS

Businesslike and savvy from a young age, Al organizes a couple of streams of income. In the composition where he traded, there was an abandoned car - the former "smoking room". In it, Al equips a printing house and publishes the first travel newspaper Grand Trunk Herald (“Herald of the big connecting branch”). He does everything himself - typeset text, edits articles. "Bulletin ..." informed about local news and military events (there was a civil war between the North and the South). The train leaflet received a positive comment from the English edition of the Times!

WORKING FORWARD

Al comes up with the idea of telegraphing newspaper headlines at the station of his railway line. Upon the arrival of the composition, the public quickly buys fresh press from the boy, wanting to know the details. The telegraph helped Thomas increase newspaper sales. The guy will continue to seek to benefit from scientific inventions in the future.

LABORATORY ON WHEELS

You wonder how much energy fit in the little boy. In the same former smoking car, Thomas equips a laboratory. But during the movement of the train, due to shaking, a container with phosphorus breaks and a fire starts. Al is fired from work, his enterprises "burn out" in every sense.

IN THE UNDERGROUND

The guy transfers his ebullient activity to the basement of his father's house. He designs a steam engine, arranges telegraphic communication, using bottles for insulators. Typographic work also returns: Al publishes the newspaper "Paul Pro". In one note, he managed to offend a subscriber. The offended reader ambushed Thomas by the river and threw him into the water. It’s good that the teenager swam well, otherwise the world would have lost hundreds of his inventions.

SAVE A CHILD

At the Mont Clemens station, Edison had to save a 2-year-old kid when he climbed onto the rails. Thomas rushed to the track and managed to grab the child almost from under the locomotive. The noble act made Thomas popular in the city. The baby's dad, stationmaster James Mackenzie, in gratitude offered Thomas to teach him how to work with the telegraph machine.

In 1863, 5 months after the start of training, 16-year-old Edison received a position as a telegraph operator in a railway office with a salary of $ 25 and an additional payment for working at night.

PROGRESS IS MOVED BY LABYS

Thomas loved the night shifts, no one interfered with inventing, reading or sleeping. But the head of the office demanded that the given word be telegraphed twice an hour to make sure that the employee was awake. The resourceful Thomas designed an "answering machine" by adapting a Morse code wheel. The order of the chief was carried out, and he himself went about his business.

ALMOST A CRIMINAL CASE

Soon, the enterprising worker is fired with a scandal: two trains miraculously avoided a collision, and all because of Edison's oversight. Thomas was almost prosecuted.

VERY LONG SUMMARY

From Port Huron, Thomas leaves for Adriana, where he finds a job as a telegraph operator. The following years he worked in the subsidiaries of Western Union in the states of Indianapolis and Cincinnati.

Then Thomas moved to Nashville, from there to Memphis, and finally to Louisville. Working there for the Associated Press telegraph office, Thomas in 1867 again becomes the culprit of the state of emergency. For his chemical experiments, the guy kept sulfuric acid on hand, and one day he broke a jar. The liquid burned the floor and ruined the valuable property of the banking firm on the floor below. The restless "telegraph operator-alchemist" was fired.

Thomas's main troubles were because he couldn't just perform routine operations, it was too boring for him.

FIRST PANCAKE Lump

The first patent received by Edison in 1869 for an "electric ballot apparatus" did not bring him success. Presented before Congress in Washington, the machine received a verdict of "slow": congressmen manually recorded their votes faster.

The beginning of a successful career

BIG CITY LIGHTS

In 1869, Edison came to New York with a desire to find a permanent job. Luck smiled at Thomas, arranging a fateful meeting: in one of the firms, he found the owner repairing the apparatus for sending reports on the rate of gold and securities. Edison himself quickly repairs the device and gets a job as a telegraph operator. Through the use of a ticker, Thomas improves the design of the device, and the entire office where he works switches to his updated machines.

INCREDIBLE CAPITAL

Most people believe that one day they will wake up rich.They are half right. Someday they will really wake up.

In 1870, Mr. Lefferts, head of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company, offered to buy Edison's development. He hesitated how much to request: 3 thousand dollars? Or maybe 5? Edison confesses that for the first time he almost fainted - at the moment when the head of the company wrote him a check for $ 40,000.

Edison received money with adventures. At the bank, the teller returned the check to him to sign, but Thomas didn't hear it and thought the check was bad. Edison returned to Lefferts, who sent an employee to the bank to accompany the deaf inventor. The check was cashed in small bills, and Edison was afraid of a police patrol on the way home: what if he was mistaken for a robber? At night, the inventor did not sleep, guarding the fallen treasure. He calmed down only when he got rid of a large amount of cash by opening a bank account the next day.

FIRST WORKSHOPS

In the city of Newark, New Jersey, a young man opens a workshop where he launches the production of ticker devices. With telegraph firms, he concludes contracts for the supply and repair of devices, employs over a hundred workers.

In letters home, the 23-year-old Edison reported: "I have now become what you Democrats call a bloated Eastern entrepreneur."

Smiling Edison and Henry Ford as Sheriff

The Two Muses of Thomas Edison

PICKUP LESSONS FROM EDison

The personal life of Thomas Edison did not take much of his time, he won over not by long courtship, but by his determination. Among his employees worked a pretty girl Mary Stillwell. Somehow the head of the workshop pulled up near her workplace and asked:

"What do you think of me, little one?" Do you like me?

- What are you, Mr. Edison, you scare me.

- Do not rush to answer. Yes, it is not so important if you agree to marry me.

Seeing that the young lady was not serious, the inventor insisted:

- I am not kidding. But you are not in a hurry, think carefully, talk to your mother and give me an answer when it is convenient - even on Tuesday.

The date of their wedding had to be postponed due to the death of Edison's mother in April 1871. Thomas and Mary were married in December 71, the groom "turned" 24 years old, the bride - 16. After the solemn ceremony, the newlywed went to work and stayed late, forgetting about the first wedding night.

The couple settled with Mary's sister Alice, she kept her company while her husband spent the day and night at work. The couple had three children: daughter Marion (1873), son Thomas (1876) and another son William (1878). Edison jokingly called his daughter "Point", and his middle son - "Dash", in Morse code. Mary, Edison's wife, died at the age of 29 in 1884, presumably from a brain tumor.

SECOND CHANCE FOR PERSONAL HAPPINESS

In 1886, 39-year-old Edison married 21-year-old Mina Miller. He taught his beloved the rules of Morse coding, which made it possible to secretly communicate in the presence of Mina's parents by tapping long and short characters on the palm of her hand.

Mina Miller - Edison's second wife

In the second marriage, the inventor also had three heirs: daughter Madeleine (1888) and sons Charles (1890) and Theodore (1898).

Thomas Edison was the father of six children, Charles (pictured with Edison) was one of four sons

Inventions and principles of work of Edison

QUADRUPLEX

In 1874, Western Union acquires Thomas' invention, the 4-channel telegraph (aka quadruplex). The quadruplex allowed the transmission of 2 messages in two directions. This principle was formulated earlier, but Edison was the first to put it into practice. The scientist estimated the development at 4-5 thousand dollars, but again "cheapened": Western Union paid 10. The chairman of the company will write in the report that Edison's invention brought annual savings of half a million dollars.

By the age of 29, Edison managed to become familiar with the Patent Office: over the past 3 years, he came to register developments 45 times. The head of the office even commented: "The road to me does not have time to cool off from the steps of young Edison."

ATHLETIC JUMP

In 1875, his father moved to Edison in Newark, with whose arrival a funny story is connected. The ferry departed from the embankment. Suddenly, some old man of about 70, who was late for him, suddenly ran up and covered the distance between the embankment and the ferry with a huge jump. This old man turned out to be Edison Sr., heading towards his son. Reporters trumpeted in a note about the bouncy parent of the inventor.

Friends Henry Ford and Thomas Edison - icons of the era

"DO NOT ENTER! SCIENTIFIC WORK IS GOING ON"

Edison sends the funds received for the quadruplex to the construction of a laboratory in the town of Menlo Park.

I understood what the world needs. ok i'll invent it

In March 1876, the construction of the research center was completed. Journalists and idle onlookers were denied access to the territory. Laboratory experiments were carried out under the cloak of secrecy, and the scientific genius himself was nicknamed the "Wizard of Menlo Park." From 1876 to 1886, the laboratory expanded, Edison managed to organize its branches outside the United States.

SYMBOL OF PERSISTENCE

The biggest mistake is that we give up quickly. Sometimes, to get what you want, you just have to try one more time.

Edison's workaholism was not amenable to treatment; he spent 16-19 hours a day at work. Once a great worker worked for 2.5 days in a row, and then slept for 3 days.

Healthy genes and love for his work helped him cope with such a load. The inventor stated that he did not divide the week into "workdays" and weekends, he just worked and enjoyed it. His famous quote is:

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Thomas became a living example of perseverance and determination.

EDISON TEAM

The workday was irregular not only for the head, but also for the employees of the center. The scientist selected in the team the same enthusiastic and hardworking people as he himself. His workshop was a real "forge of personnel." Among the “graduates” of the scientific center are Sigmund Bergman (later the head of the Bergman companies) and Johann Schukkert, the founder of the company, after which it merged with Siemens.

MERCANTILE INVENTOR

The strategy of the center was determined by the rule: "Invent only what will be in demand." The center functioned not for the sake of scientific publications, but for the mass introduction of developments.

In 1877, Thomas invented the phonograph, the first apparatus for reproducing and recording sound.

The development, demonstrated at the White House and the French Academy of Sciences, made a splash. During its demonstration in France in 1878, a philologist attacked Edison's commissioner with accusations of ventriloquism. Even after an expert opinion, the humanist could not believe that the "talking machine" reproduced the "noble voice of a man."

The phonograph records were short-lived, which did not prevent the device from glorifying the name of Edison. The scientist did not expect such popularity and stated that he did not trust things that worked the first time.

Thanks to the invention of Edison, the living speech of Leo Tolstoy has come down to us. The writer, having ordered the device, received it as a gift. Edison, having learned who the device was intended for, sent it to Yasnaya Polyana free of charge with an engraving - "A gift to Count Leo Tolstoy from Thomas Alva Edison."

When the inventor was asked if it would be possible to record human thoughts on the phonograph in the future, he replied that most likely it would be possible, but he warned that then "all people will hide from each other."

Edison didn't mind using ready-made ideas: "you can borrow the best of them." In 1878 he took up the improvement of the incandescent light bulb, the idea of which had been proposed before him.

- Do you know why you created an incandescent lamp?

- No, but I think that the government will soon figure out how to take money from people for this.

The lamps that existed at that time quickly burned out, consumed a lot of current and were expensive. The inventor promised: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles." This is perhaps called "vision" or the art of goal setting. "I'm looking ahead," said the sorcerer from Menlo Park.

The shape of the lamp known to us, the cartridge and base, the plug and the socket - all this was invented by Edison.

Having finalized the prototype of the lamp, the scientist made it suitable for industrial production and mass use. Nobody could do this before Edison.

Edison with his product - an incandescent lamp

FACTS ABOUT PERSISTENCE

In order to find the right filament material, the specifications of some 6,000 materials were analyzed. Good performance during the experiments was shown by the carbon fiber of Japanese bamboo, on which the choice was made: the thread burned for 13.5 hours (later the duration was increased to 1200);
9999 experiments were carried out, and the prototype lamp did not light up. Colleagues urged Edison to leave the experiments, but he did not give up: "I have 9999 experiments, how not to do it." On the 10,000th try, the light came on.

SHINE CLEARLY

The year 1878 was fruitful: the scientist invented the carbon microphone, which was used in telephone sets until the 1980s, and in the same year he co-founded Edison Electric Light (since 1892 - General Electric). Then the company produced lamps, cable products and power generators, now GE is a diversified corporation, in the Forbes "Most Valuable Brands" ranking at 7th position (2017), at a cost ($ 34.2 billion) it is second only to IBM, Google and McDonald's.

In 1882, having found investors, Edison built a distribution substation and launched a power supply system in Manhattan, New York.

The lamp was 110 cents, and the market price was 40. Edison suffered losses for four years, and when the price of the lamp reached $ 0.22, and their production increased to a million pieces, he covered the costs for the year.

Fact: Incandescent lamps have reduced the average sleep duration by 1-2 hours.

THE MEETING OF TWO GENIUS

In 1884, Edison hired an engineer from Serbia, Nikola Tesla, to repair electrical machines. The new employee turned out to be a supporter of AC, while his supervisor was sympathetic to the "permanent". Tesla claimed that Edison promised him $50,000 for a significant improvement in the performance of electrical machines. Tesla presented 24 options at the break with improved performance, and when reminded of the award, Edison replied that the employee did not understand the joke. Tesla retired from the workshop and founded his own company.

AC vs. DC: battle of currents

Edison argued the dangers of alternating current and even participated in an information campaign against the "change". In 1903, he took part in organizing the execution by alternating current of a circus elephant who trampled three people.

INVENTING MAN

In 1886, for the wedding of his second wife, Edison presented the estate in Llewellyn Park, West Orange (New Jersey), where he moved his research center.