Thomas Edison Date of Birth

American inventor Thomas Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio.

Thomas Edison Inventor

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman, who has been described as America’s greatest inventor.

Soon he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He is often credited with establishing the first industrial research laboratory.

Thomas Edison Inventions

Later people credited him with development of many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures.

These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb, had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world.

Thomas Edison Biography

Thomas Edison was born, in 1847, in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott.

Edison only attended school for a few months but later his mother taught him. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker’s School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections.

Edison was raised in the American midwest. Early in his career he worked as a telegraph operator, which inspired some of his earliest inventions.

Soon in 1876, he established his first laboratory facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he developed many of his early inventions.

Later he would establish a botanic laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida in collaboration with businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, and a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey that featured the world’s first film studio, the Black Maria.

He was a prolific inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as patents in other countries.

Thomas Edison Images

Thomas Edison Quotes

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
I start where the last man left off.
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Edison Children

On December 25, 1871, at the age of twenty-four, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell (1855–1884), whom he had met two months earlier; she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:
Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed “Dot”
Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed “Dash”
William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.
On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty-nine, Edison married the 20-year-old Mina Miller (1865–1947) in Akron, Ohio. They also had three children together:
Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane
Charles Edison (1890–1969), Governor of New Jersey (1941–1944), who took over his father’s company and experimental laboratories upon his father’s death.
Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics 1923), credited with more than 80 patents.

Thomas Edison Awards

The President of the Third French Republic, Jules Grévy, designated Edison with the distinction of an Officer of the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur) by decree on November 10, 1881; Edison was also named a Chevalier in the Legion in 1879, and a Commander in 1889.

In 1887, Edison won the Matteucci Medal. In 1890, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences elected him as a member.

Later in 1915, Franklin Medal of The Franklin Institute awarded Edison for discoveries contributing to the foundation of industries and the well-being of the human race.

On May 29, 1928, Edison received the Congressional Gold Medal.

Thomas Edison Light Bulb

In 1878, Edison began working on a system of electrical illumination, something he hoped could compete with gas and oil based lighting.
After many experiments, first with carbon filaments and then with platinum and other metals, Edison returned to a carbon filament.

The first successful test was on October 22, 1879; it lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued to improve this design and on November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using “a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires”. This was the first commercially practical incandescent light.

In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan, Spencer Trask, and the members of the Vanderbilt family.

Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park.

Thomas Edison Scientist

With Menlo Park, Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application. Edison’s name is registered on 1,093 patents.

Edison’s patents were utility patents, which were protected for a 17-year period. Later these patents included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to a 14-year period.

As in most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, in contrast, was unprecedented as describing the first device to record and reproduce sounds

Thomas Edison Education

Edison only attended school for a few months and was instead taught by his mother. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker’s School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Thomas Edison Facts

In 1862, Edison rescued a three-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward.

Soon in October 1869, Edison formed with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley the organization Pope, Edison and Co. Later they advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph.

Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, in 1876. This site later become known as an “invention factory,” since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there.

Edison set up an electric light factory in East Newark in 1881, and then the following year moved his family and himself to New York and set up a laboratory there.

Thomas Edison Family

His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edison’s mother died in 1871, and later that year, he married a former employee, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day.

While Edison clearly loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues.

Nevertheless, their first child, Marion, was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., born on January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two “Dot” and “Dash,” referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie was born in October 1878.

Edison’s wife, Mary, died on August 9, 1884, possibly from a brain tumor. Edison remarried to Mina Miller on February 24, 1886, and, with his wife, moved into a large mansion named Glenmont in West Orange, New Jersey.

Later Edison’s children from his first marriage were distanced from their father’s new life. Edison and Mina had their own family: Madeleine, born on 1888; Charles on 1890; and Theodore on 1898.

Unlike sickly Mary, active Mina, devoted much time to community groups, social functions, and charities, as well as trying to improve her husband’s often careless personal habits.