Little boy Edison.
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel "The Iron Shovel" Edison, Jr. (1804–1896)
and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871). He considered himself to be of Dutch ancestry.
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel "The Iron Shovel" Edison, Jr. (1804–1896)
and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871). He considered himself to be of Dutch ancestry.
Edison's Birth place...
Edison, the addled.
In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint."
In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint."
Edison in 1878
On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, whom he had met two months earlier as she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children
Photograph of Edison with his phonograph.
Around the middle of his career Edison attributed the hearing loss to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Greek and Michigan along with his apparatus and chemicals.
Around the middle of his career Edison attributed the hearing loss to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Greek and Michigan along with his apparatus and chemicals.
U.S. Patent #223898: Electric-Lamp. Issued January 27, 1880.
Thomas Edison's first successful light bulb model, used in public demonstration at Menlo Park, December 1879.
The lamp, made by the American physicist, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), has a single loop of carbon which glowed when a current flowed through it.
"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." - Thomas Alva Edison.
Thomas Alva Edison 1901.
Thomas Alva Edison using his dictating machine.
Edison's Band making Phonographic record.
The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. Edison patented the sound recording and reproducing phonograph in 1878. Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or "Kinetograph".
American Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph. He recorded sounds on to a wax cylinder. When the cylinder is put on the phonograph the sound can be played back. A stylus follows the grooves cut on the cylinder and sound comes from the horn.
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone—the fathers of modernity. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.
Extravagant displays of electric lights quickly became a feature of public events, as this picture from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition shows.
Thomas A. Edison Industries Exhibit, Primary Battery section, 1915.
His writings.
Historical marker of Edison's birthplace in Milan, Ohio.
Edison's Last Breath, Vintage 1931.
Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a memento. A plaster death mask was also made.
Edison's Last Breath, Vintage 1931.
Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a memento. A plaster death mask was also made.
Seminole Lodge, Edison's winter home in Fort Myers, Florida
Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, removed to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications.
Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's Age of Reason. Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism," saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity." In an October 2, 1910 interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated:
"Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me—the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love—He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us—nature did it all—not the gods of the religions."
Edison was accused of atheism for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he defended himself in a private letter: "You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made."
Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's Age of Reason. Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism," saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity." In an October 2, 1910 interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated:
"Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me—the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love—He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us—nature did it all—not the gods of the religions."
Edison was accused of atheism for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he defended himself in a private letter: "You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made."
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1 comment:
man, that single loop carbon lightbulb plus hardware and way way cool stand is georgeous... if i knew where that thing was i would steal it.
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