Life, inventions and legacy of Thomas Edison
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Thomas Edison’s first patent was not for a lamp, a phonograph or a telegraph. It was for a machine designed to make legislators vote more quickly. The electrical vote recorder worked.
In 1883, while investigating why carbon filaments blackened the inside of electric lamps, Thomas Edison placed a small metal plate inside a bulb.
In December 1908 ten businesses announced an arrangement that appeared capable of deciding who could make, distribute and show films in the United States.
When Thomas Edison’s first motion-picture camera was taking shape, the man bending over its mechanism was William Kennedy Laurie Dickson.
Thomas Edison has acquired two opposite reputations. In the older version he sits alone at a bench and invents the modern world.
In the spring of 1903, Thomas Edison told a reporter that he was afraid of X-rays. This was an extraordinary admission from a man who usually met a dangerous experiment by demanding another test.
During the First World War, Edison chaired the Naval Consulting Board and pursued submarine detection, communications and other naval problems—with mixed results.
Who were Edison’s “muckers”? Meet the machinists, chemists, draughtsmen, glassblowers and managers whose collective labour powered the invention factories.
In his final years Edison pursued rubber research, revisited Menlo Park and became a living national monument. He died at Glenmont on 18 October 1931.
Thomas Edison became Henry Ford’s hero, neighbour and travelling companion. Their friendship joined industry, publicity and the celebrated Vagabonds motor tours.
