Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio; the seventh and last child of Samuel and Nancy Edison. When Edison was seven his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan. Edison lived here until he struck out on his own at the age of sixteen. Edison had very little formal education as a child, attending school only for three months. He was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, but was always a very curious child and taught himself much by reading on his own. This belief
Рис. 2
Thomas Edison
| in self-improvement remained throughout his life. (1) Edison began working at an early age, as most boys did at the time. At thirteen he took job as a newsboy, selling newspapers and candy on the local railroad that ran through Port Huron to Detroit. He seems to have spent much of his free time reading scientific and technical books, and also had opportunity at this time to learn how to operate a telegraph. By the time he was sixteen, Edison was proficient enough to work as a telegrapher full time. (2) The development of the telegraph was the first step in the |
communication revolution and the telegraph industry expanded rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. This rapid growth gave Edison and others like him a chance to travel, see the country and gain experience. Edison worked in a number of cities throughout the United States before arriving in Boston in 1868 where he began to change his profession from telegrapher to inventor. He received his first patent on an electric vote recorder, a device intended for use by elected bodies such as Congress to speed the voting process. In general, Edison was probably the world’s greatest inventor. He had patented on 1,093 inventions. (3)
Edison moved to New York City in 1869. He continued to work on inventions related to the telegraph and developed his first successful invention, an improved stock ticker called the “Universal Stock Printer”. For this and some related inventions Edison was paid $40,000. Edison set up his first laboratory and manufacturing facility in New Jersey in 1871. During the next five years, Edison worked in Newark inventing and manufacturing devices that greatly improved the speed and efficiency of the telegraph. He also found time to get married to Mary Stilwell and start a family. (4)
In 1876 Edison sold all his Newark manufacturing concerns and moved his family and staff of assistants to the small village of Menlo Park, 25 miles southwest of New York City. Edison established a new facility containing all the equipment so as to work on any invention. This research and development laboratory was the first of its kind anywhere; the model for later, modern facilities such as Bell Laboratories, this is sometimes considered Edison’s greatest invention. Here Edison began to change the world. (5)
The first great invention developed by Edison in Menlo Park was the tin foil phonograph. The first machine that could record and reproduce sound created a sensation and brought Edison international fame. Edison toured the country with the tin foil phonograph and was invited to the White House to demonstrate it to President Rutherford B. Hayes in April 1878. (6)
In 1877 Edison made a recording on a little machine which he had invented and
played it back to himself. Although he knew that he would hear his own words, he was astonished just the same when they were spoken back to him. The first phonograph was
not at all like a record player of our time. (7)
Edison next undertook his greatest challenge, the development of a practical
incandescent, electric light. The idea of electric lighting was not new, and a number of people had worked on, and even developed forms of electric lighting. But up to that time, nothing had been developed that was remotely practical for home use. After one and a half year of work, success was achieved when an incandescent lamp with a filament of carbonized sewing thread burned for thirteen and a half hours. The first public demonstration of the Edison’s incandescent lighting system was in December 1879, when the Menlo Park laboratory complex was electrically lighted. Edison spent the next several years creating the electric industry. In September 1882, the first commercial power station went into operation providing light and power to customers in a one square mile area; thus marking the beginning of the electric age. (8)
The following decade was devoted to the invention and exploitation of methods for the distribution of electricity, improved dynamos and motors, and an electric railway for carrying freight and passengers. In 1885 he patented a method of transmitting telegraphic signals from moving train. (9)
The success of his electric light brought Edison to new heights of fame and wealth, as electricity spread around the world. Edison’s various electric companies continues to grow until in 1889 they were brought together to form Edison general Electric. Despite the use of Edison in the company title however, Edison never controlled this company. The tremendous amount of capital needed to develop the incandescent lighting industry had necessitated the involvement of investment bankers such as J.P. Morgan. When Edison General electric merged with its leading competitor Thompson-Houston in 1892, Edison was dropped from the name, and the company became simply General Electric. (10)
This period of success was marred by the death of Edison’s wife Mary in 1884. Edison’s involvement in the business and of the electric industry had caused Edison to spend less time in Menlo Park. After Mary’s death, Edison was there even less, living instead in New York City with his three children. A year later, while vacationing at a friend’s house in New England, Edison met Mina Miller and fell in love. The couple married in February 1886 and moved to West Orange, New Jersey where Edison had purchased an estate Glenmont, for his bride. Thomas Edison lived here with Mina until his death. (11)
When Edison moved to West Orange, he was doing experimental work in makeshift facilities in his electric lamp factory in nearby Harrison, New Jersey. However, a few months after his marriage, Edison decided to build a new laboratory in West Orange itself, less than a mile from his home. Edison possessed the both resources and experience by this time to build, “the best equipped and largest laboratory extant and facilities superior to any other for rapid and cheap development of an invention”. The new laboratory complex consisting of five buildings opened in November 1887. The large size of the laboratory not only allowed Edison to work on any sort of project, but also allowed him to work on as many as ten or twenty projects at once. One of the projects he was involved in was the development of a better storage battery for use in electric vehicles which he enjoyed very much. He even owned a number of different types of automobiles, powered by gasoline, electricity, and steam. Edison thought that electric propulsion was clearly the best method of powering cars, but realized that conventional lead-acid storage batteries were inadequate for the job. Edison began to develop an alkaline battery in 1899. It proved to be Edison's most difficult project, taking ten years to develop a practical alkaline battery. By the time Edison introduced his new alkaline battery, the gasoline powered car had so improved that electric vehicles were becoming increasingly less common, being used mainly as delivery vehicles in cities. However, the Edison alkaline battery proved useful for lighting railway cars and signals, maritime buoys, and miners lamps. Further, Edison's work paved the way for the modern alkaline battery. (12)
In 1913 he produced talking motion pictures. On his seventy-fifth birthday Edison was asked what his philosophy of life was. He said that work was bringing out secrets of nature and applying them for the happiness of man. (13)
He worked till the very last moment of his life. At ten o’clock on the evening of his funeral, in homage to the memory of a great man, every American switched off the electric light and for the space of one minute the entire country was in darkness.(14)
Edison was also a ruthless businessman who fought to defeat his competitors. One of the most famous examples of his competitive vigor was the war of the currents (direct current vs alternating current) he conducted to discredit Nicola Tesla's Alternating Current system. (15)
Edison had enough genius to see the genius in others. Already by the time he moved to Menlo Park, he had gathered many of the men who would work with him for the rest of their lives. By the time Edison built his West Orange lab complex, men came from all over the US and Europe to work with the famous inventor. Often these young “muckers”, as Edison called them, were fresh out of college or technical training. What better place to start a career? Unlike most inventors, Edison depended upon dozens of “muckers” to build and test his ideas. In return, they received “only workmen's wages”. But, the inventor said, it was “not the money they want, but the chance for their ambition to work”. The average work week was six days for a total of 55 hours. But if Edison had a bright idea, days at work would extend far into the night. What was it like to work for Edison? One “mucker” said that he “could wither one with his biting sarcasm or ridicule one into extinction”. Just think how it would feel to listen to the world's greatest inventor criticize your work. On the other hand, as electrician Arthur Kennelly stated, “The privilege which I had being with this great man for six years was the greatest inspiration of my life”. (16)
(Adapted from the Internet sites)
1 Look back in the text and make a list of Edison’s inventions.
5 Read the text again and answer the following questions:
a) What kind of education did Edison get?
b) How did phonograph work?
c) How many inventions did Edison patent?
d) How did Edison’s electric light work and how was it improved?
e) What was his philosophy of life?
f) Could you name other men of science equally possessed by the idea to create so that they were “deaf and blind to everything else in the world except science?” like Edison?
g) How can you characterize Edison’s education?
h) Does Edison create for people or is his only goal to find medium for the expression of his ideas, feelings, and get free of his obsession?
i) How did Edison’s inventions change our everyday life?
