What device did edison invent. All the great inventions of thomas alva edison. Electric vote counter in elections

EDISON (Edison) Thomas Alva (1847-1931), American inventor and entrepreneur, organizer and head of the first American industrial research laboratory (1872, Menlo Park), foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1930). Edison's activities are characterized by practical orientation, versatility, direct connection with industry. The author of St. 1000 inventions, mainly in various fields of electrical engineering. He improved the telegraph and telephone, the incandescent lamp (1879), invented the phonograph (1877), etc., built the world's first public power station (1882), discovered the phenomenon of thermionic emission (1883), and many others. others

Edison (Edison) Thomas Alva (February 11, 1847, Mylan, Ohio - October 18, 1931, West Orange, New Jersey), American electrical engineer, inventor, founder of large electrical enterprises and companies.

Family, education

Edison was the seventh and last child of a successful shingle merchant. However, when Thomas was 7 years old, his father went bankrupt and the family moved to the town of Port Huron (Michigan) near Lake Michigan, where he lived more modestly.

Edison entered elementary school, studied eagerly, bombarding teachers with questions, but, unable to adapt to the school environment, left after three months when the teacher spoke rudely about him. His mother, a former school teacher, continued his education at home. Already at the age of 10, the boy became interested in chemical experiments and created his first laboratory in the basement of the house.

First job

Needing money to experiment, Edison became a newspaper and candy seller on the train at the age of 12. 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, he bought a printing press on occasion and published his own newspaper in the baggage car, which he sold to passengers.

In 1863 he mastered telegraphy and worked as a telegraph operator for 5 years. In 1868, he read M. Faraday's "Experimental Investigations of Electricity", and he had thoughts about invention.

First inventions

Edison received the first patent for an invention - an electric vote recorder during ballots - in 1869. There were no buyers for the patent, and since then Edison has made it a rule to work only on inventions with guaranteed demand. By the end of 1870, he received a large sum (40 thousand dollars) for the invention of the stock ticker - a telegraph machine that transmits stock quotes.

Multiple telegraphy

With the money received, Edison created a workshop in Newark (New Jersey) and began to produce tickers. In 1873, he first invented a diplex telegraphy scheme - a variant of duplex (two-way), which made it possible to simultaneously transmit messages in opposite directions over one wire, and then in 1873, after combining diplex with duplex and receiving a quadruplex, it became possible to simultaneously transmit four messages over one wire.

Menlopark Laboratory

Moving in 1876 to the town of Menlo Park (New Jersey), Edison created a well-equipped laboratory staffed with capable employees for testing, improving and inventing practical technical products for commercial purposes. This prototype of modern industrial laboratories and research institutes is considered by many to be Edison's greatest invention. The first product of this enterprise was a carbon telephone microphone (1877-78), which significantly increased the clarity and volume of Bell's existing telephone.

Phonograph

The second product of the Menlo Park lab was the phonograph (1877), Edison's favorite invention and considered the only completely original one. The idea of ​​a phonograph was suggested to him by sounds similar to unintelligible speech, which once came from a telegraph repeater. The first phonographs produced rather sharp and rough sounds, but to numerous listeners speech reproduction seemed like magic.

Industrial electric lighting

In 1878, Edison took up the industrial introduction of the incandescent lamp, which brought him the greatest fame. The lamp was not his invention (here the priority belonged to A.N. Lodygin and P.N. Yablochkov), but he became the creator of such a type of lamp and such an electrical distribution system, which for the first time could economically work together. The Edison lighting system could and was able to compete with the gas lighting of the time. For the expansion of the practical application of electricity, this was no less important than the invention of the lamp itself. In 1873, after thousands of experiments, he created a lamp (with a carbon filament) that burned for 40 hours. He designed DC generators, power lines, and electrical networks, and later a three-wire system. In 1882, Edison opened his first central power plant in New York. This was the beginning of the lighting industry in America.

Creation of joint-stock companies

While designing the lamps and hardware for his lighting system, Edison organized numerous companies to make them. In 1889, these companies, together with the patented Edison Electric Light Company and the Spray Electric Railroad and Motor Company, merged to form the Edison General Electric Company. In 1892, this firm and its biggest rival, the Thomson Houston Electric Company, merged to form the General Electric Company. Thus, Edison contributed to the formation of the world's largest industrial concern.

Edison effect

In 1883, while experimenting with a lamp, Edison made a discovery in the field of "pure" science - he discovered thermionic emission, which was later used in a vacuum diode to detect radio waves.

Westoringe period

In 1887, Edison moved to West Orange, where he built a larger and more modern laboratory for collective inventions. Here he improved the phonograph, created a voice recorder, a fluoroscope, a prototype of a movie camera and a device for individual observation of moving images (kinescope), a ferronickel alkaline battery. In the United States alone, Edison received about 1,200 patents.

Circumstances of personal life

Edison was married twice and had three children by each wife. Edison had an early onset of deafness, which increased throughout his life. She limited his personal contacts, but contributed to the concentration at work.

Traits

Edison was distinguished by rare diligence and perseverance in experiments. In 1879, together with an assistant, he sat for 45 hours in a row at the world's first carbon filament inserted into an electric lamp, and during the First World War, almost 70-year-old Edison, setting himself the goal of creating a synthetic carbolic acid plant in an exceptionally short time, worked continuously for 168 hours without leaving the laboratory. From Edison's handwritten notes, you can find out that, for example, about 59 thousand experiments were done on an alkaline battery; Edison tried 6 thousand specimens of various kinds of plants, mainly reeds, as a material for the incandescent filament of a coal lamp, settling on Japanese bamboo.

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was an American self-taught inventor, businessman, and electrical engineer. Despite his fragile physique, short stature and hearing problems, he patented more than four thousand inventions in his life. It was this man who invented the incandescent lamp and the phonograph. He also founded the world's first research center, made a contribution to the development of cinema. Edison's inventions are still used by people around the world.

Family and childhood

The future inventor was born on February 11, 1847 in the city of Mylen, Ohio. His father Samuel was a successful wheat merchant, but soon after the birth of his youngest son, he went bankrupt. Thomas was barely seven years old when he and his family were forced to move to Michigan.

Edison didn't do well in school. He was distracted, often distracted. The situation was aggravated by hearing problems that began in childhood. Thomas claimed that the reason for their appearance was the impact of the composter. But scientists have found that the inventor's hearing was impaired due to an untreated infection.

Thomas was only three months in an educational institution. After that, the teacher called him "brainless and limited", and the parents took their son out of school. His mother, Nancy Elliott Edison, began teaching him at home. She was a school teacher, so there were no difficulties in choosing a program.

First experiments

After switching to home schooling, the boy became interested in chemistry. He began to conduct experiments and at the age of ten he founded his first laboratory in the basement of the house. The experiments required money, so Thomas used every opportunity to earn money. He sold fruits, vegetables and other goods in the square. Later, the young man began to trade on trains.

Edison didn't want to waste time, so he moved his lab to a baggage car. The editorial office of the newspaper, which was published by an enterprising teenager, was also located there. Thanks to his ingenuity, he received $ 10 a day even at that age.

In 1962, Thomas found his first serious job. It happened by accident when he took a three-year-old boy off the rails. His father was grateful for saving his son, so he offered the young man to earn extra money as a telegraph operator. This occupation captivated Edison, later he built a telegraph line between the houses of his parents and a friend.

For five years, the scientist worked as a telegraph operator. In 1868 he read Michael Faraday's Experimental Investigations in Electricity and decided to try his hand at being an inventor. A few months later, Edison received his first patent. He developed a system for electrical registration of votes for ballots. But this invention was not in demand, no one bought a patent.

Opening of the laboratory

After a debut that did not bring him profit, Thomas decided to develop only things people needed. At the end of 1870, he received $40,000 for inventing a stock ticker that transmitted stock quotes. With this money, the scientist opened his first workshop in Newark. He purchased only the best equipment for his experiments, even if he had to skimp on everything else.

Three years later, Edison developed a special telegraphy scheme that allowed up to four messages to be transmitted simultaneously. In 1874, he sold this invention to Western Union for $10,000. Thomas used them to open an industrial research laboratory in the village of Menklo. At the same time, he invented the carbon microphone, which greatly improved the quality of telephone communications.

In 1877, the world saw one of Edison's best inventions - the phonograph. The scientist was able to record and reproduce the children's song "Mary had a lamb", after which they began to call him a wizard. Phonographs sold for $18 apiece and remained popular until the invention of the gramophone.

Back in 1874, Russian engineer Alexander Lodygin invented the first incandescent lamp. Edison became interested in this device, he soon bought the scientist's invention. He dreamed of lighting up all the houses and streets, so he spent a lot of time perfecting the light bulb. Thomas made a threaded plinth, and also inserted a twisted tungsten spiral inside. Later, he thought about creating a switch, developed a wiring diagram. Soon, the first power plant, illuminated by an incandescent lamp, was built in New York.

In 1882, the first distribution substation for residents of Manhattan appeared. At the same time, Edison founded a company that made electrical generators, cables, and light bulbs.

last years of life

In 1887 Thomas moved to West Orange. There he founded a modern laboratory in which several dozen people could work simultaneously. In the new place, the inventor improved the phonograph, created a voice recorder and a movie camera.

Edison stuck to the principle he described in his catchphrase, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% sweat." Some scholars have criticized this approach. For example, Nikola Tesla stated that an inventor could achieve much more by spending time studying books. But Thomas preferred to be guided by instinct and work hard, not looking for easy ways. He was also not ashamed to ask for help from more qualified people who worked in the laboratory. At work, the scientist spent 16-18 hours a day.

Despite his busy schedule, Thomas was married twice. He met his first wife back in 1871, her name was Mary Stillwell. The girl was a telegraph operator, she gave birth to her husband a daughter and two sons. When she was 29, Mary died of brain cancer.

In 1886, the inventor married a second time to Mina Miller. In marriage, they also had three children - two sons and a daughter. The woman died a few years after her husband.

Edison spent the last years of his life quietly. He lived in his own house with his wife, children and grandchildren. The scientist died on October 18, 1931 due to a long struggle with diabetes. He had complications, which led to his death. The inventor was buried in the backyard of his home in West Orange.

February 11, 1847 in the town of Milan, Ohio, Thomas Alva Edison was born - an incredibly successful inventor, scientist and businessman who received 1093 patents in his life.

Edison filed his first patent at the age of 22. Later, in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, he was so productive as "hot cakes" creating revolutionary new products that he once promised to release one small invention every 10 days and one large one every six months. And although many of the discoveries attributed to him were created by other people, in any case, Edison played a significant role in shaping the modern world. And today we recall the most important technical achievements of the American engineer, which had the greatest impact on the modern world.

This was Edison's first patent. The device allowed voters to press "yes" or "no" buttons instead of writing on paper. Unfortunately, there was no demand for this device - as it turned out, when using it, politicians could no longer so shamelessly deceive those present and, with the help of juggling the results, persuade colleagues to change their minds. Parliament abandoned the invention in favor of the usual written account.

2. Automatic telegraph.

To improve the telegraph, Edison created another - based on the perforated bur invented by him - which did not need a person to type a message on the other end. This new technology has increased the number of words transmitted per minute from 25-40 to 1000! Edison also became the inventor of the "talking telegraph".

3. Elektrobor.

The forerunner of the perforated bur, which made holes in telegraphs, was the electric bur, which created a stencil for the writer that could be used to stamp ink on paper and make duplicates.

4. Phonograph.

The phonograph recorded and reproduced audible sounds first with paraffin paper and then with metal foil on a cylinder. Edison created many versions over several years, improving each of the models more and more.

5. Carbon phone.

Edison improved the weak point of Alexander Bell's phone - the microphone. The original version used a carbon rod, but Edison decided to use a carbon battery, which significantly increased the stability and range of the signal.

6. Incandescent lamp with carbon filament.

The Edison carbon filament incandescent light bulb was the first commercially viable source of electric light. Previous versions were not as powerful and were made using expensive materials such as platinum.

7. Electric lighting system.

Edison designed his electrical lighting system to maintain the same amount of electricity throughout the device. He established his first permanent station in Lower Manhattan.

8. Electric generator.

Edison designed a device to control the flow of electricity between devices, an idea used in many of his creations such as the incandescent light bulb.

9. Motograph (loud-speaking telephone).

This device lowered electric currents from high to low, which made it possible to transmit voice sounds over long distances and at higher volumes. Another Edison invention, the carbon rheostat, helped create the motorograph. Edison's loud-speaking telephone was used in England for several years.

10. Technology of using fuel cells.

Edison was one of many in a long line of inventors trying to create the modern fuel cell, a device that would produce energy from the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, leaving only water as a by-product.

Although Edison did not invent the stock telegraph machine, he improved his own telegraph technology to create a universal printer that was faster than the existing version.

Edison designed a device that separated magnetic and non-magnetic materials. In this way, it was possible to separate iron ore from unsuitable low-grade ores. This development later formed the basis of milling technology.

Edison was looking for a way to create "an instrument that would do to the eye what the phonograph does to the ear". The kinetoscope showed photographs in rapid succession, making it appear as if the image was moving.

Experimenting with an iron-nickel battery, Edison used an alkaline solution, which made it possible to obtain a more "long-lasting" battery. This product subsequently became one of the best-selling.

Although cement already existed, Edison perfected its production with a rotary kiln. The invention of the inventor, as well as his own company, Edison Portland Cement, made this product commercially available.

This man could become a world-famous scientist, because for some time he worked with Nikola Tesla himself. However, if the latter was more attracted by intractable scientific problems, then this person was more interested in things of an applied nature, which primarily provide material benefits. Nevertheless, the whole world knows about him, and his name to some extent has become a household name. This is Thomas Alva Edison.

Thomas Edison short biography

He was born in the small provincial town of Milan in northern Ohio on February 11, 1847. His father, Samuel Edison, was the son of Dutch settlers, who first lived in the Canadian province of Ontario. The war in Canada forced Edison Sr. to move from the United States, where he married a Milanese teacher Nancy Elliot. Thomas was the fifth child in the family.

At birth, the boy's head was irregularly shaped (exorbitantly large), and the doctor even decided that the child had inflammation of the brain. However, the baby, contrary to the opinion of the doctor, survived and became a family favorite. For a very long time, strangers paid attention to his big head. The child himself did not react to this in any way. He was distinguished by hooligan antics and great curiosity.

A few years later, the Edison family moved from Milan to Port Huron near Detroit, where Thomas went to school. Alas, he did not achieve great results at school, because he was considered a difficult child and even a brainless dumbass for his non-standard solutions to simple questions.

One amusing moment can serve as an example, when when asked how much one plus one will be, instead of answering “two”, he gave an example of two cups of water, which, poured together, you can also get one, but a larger cup. This manner of answers was picked up by his classmates, and Thomas was expelled from school three months later. In addition, the effects of the incompletely cured scarlet fever had left him with a part of his hearing, and he had difficulty understanding the teachers' explanations.

Edison's mother considered her son absolutely normal, and gave him the opportunity to study on his own. Very soon he got access to very serious books, in which there were descriptions of various experiments with detailed explanations. To confirm what he read, Thomas got his own laboratory, equipped in the basement of the house where he conducted his experiments. Later, Edison would claim that he became an inventor because he was not forced to go to school, and was grateful to his mother for this. And everything that was useful to him later in life, he learned on his own.

Edison inherited his inventive vein from his father, who, according to the then concepts, was a very eccentric person who was constantly trying to come up with something new. Thomas also tried to put his ideas into practice.

When Edison grew up, he got a job. Helped him in this case. The young man saved a three-year-old boy from under the wheels of the train, for which his grateful father helped Thomas get a job as a telegraph operator. In further work, Edison's knowledge of the telegraph came in handy. Later, he moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he began working in a news agency, agreeing to work in night shifts, during which, in addition to his main activities, he was engaged in various experiments. These classes and subsequently deprived Edison of work. During one of the experiments, the spilled hydrochloric acid leaked through the ceiling and hit the boss's desk.

Inventions of Thomas Edison

At the age of 22, Edison became unemployed, and began to think about what to do next. Having a great craving for invention, he decided to try his hand in this direction. The first invention for which he even received a patent was an electric vote meter during elections. However, the device, which now stands in almost every parliament, was then simply ridiculed, calling it absolutely useless. After that, Edison decided to create things that are in great demand.

The next work brought Edison both success and wealth, and the opportunity to engage in invention at a new level. They became a quadruplex telegraph (remember his first job as a telegraph operator). And it happened like this. After the complete failure of his electric vote counter, he left for New York, where he got into the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, a gold trading company. The director suggested to Thomas to improve the company's already existing telegraph. Literally a couple of days later, the order was ready, and Edison brought an exchange telegraph to his leader, after checking the reliability of which he received a fabulous sum for those times - $ 40,000.

Having received the money, Edison built his own research laboratory, where he worked himself, attracting other talented people to his activities. At the same time, he invented a ticker machine that printed out the current stock price on a paper tape.

Then came just a stream of discoveries, the loudest of which were the phonograph (patent from 1878), the incandescent lamp (1879), which led to the invention of the electric meter, the threaded base and the switch. In 1880, Edison patented an electricity distribution system, and at the end of that year he founded the Edison Illuminating Company, which laid the foundation for the construction of power plants. The first of these, which supplied a current of 110 volts, began operating in lower Manhattan in 1882.

Around the same time, a fierce competition broke out between Edison and Westinghouse over the type of current used. The first defended direct current, while the second advocated alternating current. The fight was very tough. Westinghouse won, and now alternating current is used everywhere. But in the course of this struggle, Edison won in another. For the punishment system, he created the infamous electric chair.

Edison stood at the origins of modern cinema, creating his own kinetoscope. For some time it was popular, in the United States there were even a number of cinemas. Over time, however, Edison's Kinetoscope replaced the more practical cinematograph.

Alkaline batteries are also the work of an inventor. The first working models of them were made in 1898, and a patent was received in February 1901. His batteries were much better and more durable than the acid counterparts that already existed at that time.
Among Edison's other, less well-known inventions now, one can name the mimeograph, which was actively used by Russian revolutionaries for printing leaflets; an aerophone that made it possible to make the voice of a person audible at a distance of several kilometers; carbon telephone membrane - the predecessor.

To a ripe old age, Thomas Edison was engaged in inventive activity, along the way becoming the author of many aphorisms and various stories. He died in 1931, when he was 84 years old.

Thomas Edison is known to the world as the inventor who managed to improve the electric light bulb, as well as the author of the phonograph, the electric chair and the telephone greeting. However, unlike many geniuses, the man was distinguished by a bright talent for entrepreneurship.

Childhood and youth

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in the American town of Meilen, in a family of immigrants from Holland. Al, as the future inventor was called in childhood, did not differ in good health - short, frail (although Thomas looks well-fed in childhood photos). In addition, the transferred scarlet fever affected his hearing - the boy became deaf in his left ear. Parents surrounded their son with care, because before that they had lost two children.

Thomas did not manage to settle down at school, the teachers were enough for a “limited” child for three months, after which his parents with a scandal took him out of the educational institution and put him in home schooling. Edison was introduced to the basics of school sciences by his mother, Nancy Eliot, the daughter of a priest with a brilliant upbringing and education.

Thomas grew up as an inquisitive child; Another unusual occupation to which he devoted hours was copying the inscriptions on the signs of warehouses.

With the Edisons moving to Porto Huron, seven-year-old Thomas was introduced to the fascinating world of reading and tried his hand at inventing for the first time. At that time, the boy, along with his mother, was selling fruits and vegetables, and in his free time he ran to the People's Library of the town for books.

By the age of 12, the teenager got acquainted with the works of Edward Gibbon, David Hume, Richard Burton, but the first scientific book was read and put into practice at the age of 9. Natural and Experimental Philosophy by Richard Greene Parker brought together scientific and technological advances and examples of experiments that Thomas repeated.

Chemical experiments required investments, in the hope of earning more money, young Edison got a job as a newspaper seller at a railway station. The young man was even allowed to set up a laboratory in the baggage car of the train, where he conducted experiments. However, not for long - because of the fire, Thomas was expelled along with the laboratory.

While working at the station, an event happened that helped to enrich the working biography of the novice inventor. Edison saved the son of the head of the station from death under the wheels of a moving car, for which he received the position of a telegraph operator, where he worked for several years.

At the end of his youth, Thomas wandered around America in search of a place in life: he lived in Indianapolis, Nashville, Cincinnati, returned to his native state, but in 1868 ended up in Boston, and then in New York. All this time he barely made ends meet, because he spent the lion's share of his income on books and experiments.

inventions

The secret of the great self-taught inventor is simple and lies in a quote from Thomas Edison himself, which over time has become a catch phrase:

"Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."

He proved the validity of the statement more than once, day and night in laboratories. As he himself admitted, sometimes he was so carried away that he spent up to 19 hours a day on work. In the piggy bank of Edison - 1093 patents received in the United States, and 3 thousand documents on the authorship of inventions that were issued in other countries. At the same time, they did not buy the first creations from a man. For example, compatriots considered the vote counter in the elections useless.

Luck smiled while working at the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. Thomas got a job in the state due to the fact that he repaired the telegraph machine - no one could cope with this task, even the invited masters. And in 1870, the company gladly bought out the system of telegraphing exchange bulletins about the exchange rate of gold and shares, improved by him. The inventor spent the money on opening his own workshop for the production of tickers for exchanges, a year later Edison already owned three such workshops.

Soon things got even better. Thomas founded the Pope, Edison & Co company, the next five years were fruitful, in particular, the greatest invention appeared - the quadruplex telegraph, with which it became possible to transmit up to four messages simultaneously on one wire. Inventive activity required a well-equipped laboratory, and in 1876, near New York, in the town of Menlo Park, the construction of an industrial complex for research work began. The laboratory later united hundreds of bright minds and skillful hands.

Attempts to convert telegraphic messages into sound resulted in the advent of the phonograph. In 1877, Edison recorded the children's song "Mary Had a Lamb" using a needle and foil. The innovation was considered to be on the verge of fantasy, and Thomas was nicknamed the Wizard of Menlo Park.

Two years later, the world adopted the most famous invention of Thomas Edison - he managed to improve the electric light bulb, extending its life and simplifying production. Existing lamps burned out after a couple of hours, consumed a lot of current or were expensive. Edison announced that soon all of New York would be lit by fireproof light bulbs, and the price of electricity would become affordable, and set about experimenting. For the filament, I tried 6000 materials and finally settled on carbon fiber, which burned for 13.5 hours. Later, the service life increased to 1200 hours.

Edison demonstrated the possibility of using light bulbs, as well as the developed system for the production and consumption of electricity, by creating a power plant in one of the New York districts: 400 lamps flashed. The number of electricity consumers has increased from 59 to 500 in a few months.

In 1882, the "war of the currents" broke out, which lasted until the beginning of the second millennium. Edison was proud of the use of direct current, which, however, was transmitted without loss only over short distances. , who came to work in Thomas' laboratory, tried to prove that alternating current was more efficient - it was transmitted hundreds of kilometers. The future legendary inventor suggested using it for power plants and generators, but did not find support.

Tesla, at the request of the owner, created 24 alternating current machines, but did not receive the promised 50 thousand dollars for work from Edison, was offended and became a competitor. Together with industrialist George Westinghouse, Nicola began to introduce alternating current everywhere. Thomas sued and even conducted black PR campaigns, proving the danger of this type of current by killing animals. The apogee was the invention of the electric chair for the execution of criminals.

An end to the war was put only in 2007: the chief engineer of Consolidate Edison solemnly cut the last cable through which direct current flowed to New York.

The prolific inventor also patented an X-ray instrument called a fluoroscope, and a carbon microphone that increased the volume of telephone calls. In 1887, Thomas Edison built a new laboratory in West Orange, larger than the previous one and equipped with the latest technology. A voice recorder and an alkaline battery appeared here.

Edison left a mark on the history of cinematography. In the laboratory of Thomas, he saw the light of a kinetoscope - a device capable of showing moving images. In fact, the invention was a personal cinema - a person watched a movie through a special eyepiece. A little later, Edison opened the Parlor Kinetoscope room and equipped it with ten boxes.

Personal life

Thomas's personal life also turned out well - he managed to get married twice and have six children. With his first wife, telegraph operator Mary Stillwell, the inventor almost went down the aisle two months after they met. However, the marriage had to be postponed due to the death of Edison's mother. The wedding was played in December 1871. A funny event is connected with the celebration: immediately after the festivities, Thomas went to work and forgot about the wedding night.

In this union, a daughter and two sons were born, the eldest children - Maryot and Thomas - with the light hand of their father at home were nicknamed Dot and Dash, in honor of Morse code. Mary died at the age of 29 from a brain tumor.

Soon Edison remarried, according to historians, out of great love. The chosen one was 20-year-old Mina Miller, whom the inventor taught Morse code, and in this language he even offered his hand and heart. Edison from Mina also had two sons and a daughter - the only heiress who gave her father grandchildren.

Death

The great inventor did not live to see his 85th birthday for four months, but he did business until the last. Thomas Edison suffered from diabetes, a terrible disease gave complications incompatible with life.

He died in the fall of 1931, in a house in West Orange, which he bought 45 years ago as a gift for his bride, future wife Mina Miller. Edison's grave is located in the backyard of this house.

• Edison is credited with inventing the simplest tattoo machine. The reason was the five dots on Thomas's left forearm, and then the Stencil-Pens engraving tool, which was patented in 1876. However, the parent of the tattoo machine is Samuel O'Reilly.
• On the conscience of the inventor is the death of the elephant Topsy. Through the fault of the animal, three people died, so they decided to kill him. Hoping to win the "current war", Edison proposed to execute the elephant with 6000 volt alternating current, and recorded the "performance" on film.

• In the biography of the American genius, there is a failed project, for the implementation of which they even built a whole plant - to extract iron from low-grade ore. Compatriots laughed at the inventor, arguing that it was easier and cheaper to invest in ore deposits. And they turned out to be right.
• In 1911, Edison built an uninhabitable house made of concrete, including window sills and electric pipes. At the same time, the man tried himself as a furniture designer, presenting concrete interior items to the judgment of future buyers. And failed again.

• One of the wild ideas was the creation of a helicopter powered by gunpowder.
• The invention of a lamp with a long working life did a disservice to mankind - people's sleep was reduced by 2 hours. By the way, with the improvement of the light bulb, the calculations took 40,000 pages of notebooks.
• The word "hello" that starts a telephone conversation is also Edison's idea.

Discoveries

• 1860 - aerophone
• 1868 - electric vote counter in elections
• 1869 - ticker machine
• 1870 - carbon telephone membrane
• 1873 - quadruplex telegraph
• 1876 ​​- mimeographer
• 1877 - phonograph
• 1877 - carbon microphone
• 1879 - incandescent lamp with carbon filament
• 1880 – iron ore magnetic separator
• 1889 - Kinetoscope
• 1889 - electric chair
• 1908 - iron-nickel battery