Life, inventions and legacy of Thomas Edison
Browse the collection
Thomas Edison received 1,093 United States patents. The number is repeated so often that it can sound like a sporting record: evidence that he simply invented more things than anyone else. It is an impressive total, but it is also easily misunderstood. The patents range from famous machines to…
In the spring of 1921, newspapers published a challenge that seemed to come straight from Thomas Edison’s own desk. Could a job applicant name the country that produced the most nickel? Where was the Volga? Who invented logarithms? What city was famous for laundry machinery? The questions ranged…
A singer entering Thomas Edison’s recording studio did not meet a microphone. She faced a metal horn, an unseen recording machine and a company that believed musical quality could be tested scientifically.
Thomas Edison’s phonograph promised music, family voices and books read aloud. Its steadiest early business use was less romantic: dictation.
Samuel Insull arrived in New York in 1881 as Thomas Edison’s twenty-one-year-old private secretary. He took dictation, guarded access and mastered the swarm of companies growing around electric light.
Late in 1877, Thomas Edison handed his chief machinist a sketch of an unlikely machine.
Thomas Edison entered the disc-record market late and then refused to imitate it. His Diamond Disc records were thick, expensive and technically distinctive.
When Thomas Edison began work on electric lighting, he possessed energy, practical electrical experience and confidence in experiment. What he did not possess was advanced mathematical training.
The best-known photographs of Thomas Edison’s laboratories show men gathered around machines.
Long before cinemas learned to speak, Thomas Edison believed moving pictures ought to be heard. His first motion-picture proposal in 1888 compared the camera to the phonograph, and an experimental film later showed W.
