Edison biography. Biography of Thomas Edison (briefly). What did Thomas Edison invent? Electric lighting system

Thomas Alva Edison. Born February 11, 1847, Mylene, Ohio - died October 18, 1931, West Orange, New Jersey. American inventor and entrepreneur. Edison received 1093 patents in the USA and about 3 thousand in other countries of the world. He improved the telegraph, telephone, and cinema equipment, developed one of the first commercially successful versions of the incandescent electric lamp, and invented the phonograph. It was he who suggested using at the beginning telephone conversation the word "hello". In 1928 he was awarded the highest US award, the Congressional Gold Medal. In 1930 he became a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Around 1730, the family of miller Edison moved from Holland to America. They were given a plot of land in the small village of Caldwell in New Jersey. The first accurate information about Edison's ancestors dates back to the period of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). John Edison, a wealthy landowner and great-grandfather of the inventor, took part in the war on the side of England. However, he was caught by the revolutionaries and convicted. Only thanks to his relatives was John able to avoid serious punishment; he was expelled from the United States and settled with his family in Canada.

In 1804, the son Samuel Jr., the future father of Thomas A. Edison, was born to the family of the eldest son, John Samuel.

In 1811, not far from what is now Port Barwell in Canada, the Edison family received a large plot of land and finally settled in the village of Vienna.

In 1812-1814, Captain Samuel Edison Sr., the future grandfather of Thomas Alva, took part in the Anglo-American War. In subsequent years, the Edison family prospered, and their hospitable manor on the river bank was known throughout the area.

In 1828, Samuel Jr. married Nancy Eliot, the daughter of a minister who received a good upbringing and education and worked as a teacher at the Vienna School.

In 1837, under the influence of the economic crisis and crop failure, a rebellion broke out in Canada, in which Samuel Jr. took part. However, government troops suppressed the rebellion and Samuel was forced to flee to Mylan (Ohio, USA) to avoid punishment.

In 1839, he manages to transport Nancy and her children. Edison's business was going well. It was during this period of Edison's life in Mailan that his son Thomas Alva was born (February 11, 1847).

Al - what Thomas Alva was called as a child, was vertically challenged and looked a little frail. However, he was very interested in the life around him: he watched steamships and barges, carpenters at work, boats being lowered at the shipyard, or sat quietly for hours in a corner, copying the inscriptions on warehouse signs. At the age of five, Al visited Vienna with his parents and met his grandfather.

In 1854, the Edisons moved to Port Huron, Michigan, located at the bottom of Lake Huron. Here Alva is within three attended school for months. Teachers considered him “limited” because they did not try to understand and develop the child’s individuality. His mother took him out of school and gave him his first education.

Edison often visited the Port Huron People's Library. Before the age of twelve, he managed to read Gibbon's History of the Rise and Decline of the Roman Empire, Hume's History of Great Britain, and Burton's History of the Reformation. However, my first scientific book the future inventor read it at the age of nine. It was "Natural and Experimental Philosophy" by Richard Greene Parker, which told almost all the scientific and technical information of the time. Over time, he performed almost all the experiments mentioned in the book.

Since childhood, Edison helped his mother sell fruits and vegetables. However, the pocket money earned in this way was not enough for his experiments, especially chemical ones. Therefore, in 1859, Thomas got a job as a newspaperman on the railway line connecting Port Huron and Detroit. Young Edison's earnings reached 8-10 dollars a day. He continues to be interested in books and chemical experiments, for which he seeks permission to set up his laboratory in the baggage car of a train.

Edison took every opportunity to increase demand for the newspapers he sold. So, when in 1862 the commander-in-chief northern army suffered a serious defeat, Thomas asks the telegraph operator to transmit short message about the battle at Port Huron and all intermediate stations. As a result, he managed to increase newspaper sales at these stations several times. A little later he becomes the publisher of the first train newspaper. It was also during this time that Edison developed an interest in electricity.

In August 1862, Edison saved the son of the head of one of the stations from a moving carriage. The boss offered to teach him telegraphy in gratitude. This is how he became acquainted with the telegraph. He immediately sets up his first telegraph line between his house and his friend’s house. Soon there was a fire in Thomas's carriage, and the conductor threw Edison and his laboratory out.

In 1863, Edison became a night shift telegraph operator at the station with a salary of $25 a month. Here he manages to automate part of the work and sleep on the job, for which he soon receives a severe reprimand. Soon, due to his fault, two trains almost collided. Tom returned to Port Huron to live with his parents.

In 1864, Thomas went to work as a day shift telegraph operator in Fort Wayne. Within two months he moved to Indianapolis and found work at the Western Union telegraph company.

On February 11, 1865, Tom turned eighteen years old. By this time he had already moved to Cincinnati, where he also served as a telegraph operator for the Western Union company. Here he qualified as a first class operator with a salary of $125. From Cincinnati, Thomas moved to Nashville, from there to Memphis, and then to Louisville. In Louisville he continued his many experiments, ruined the manager's office with acid, and was forced to move again to Cincinnati and from there home to Port Huron. In the winter of 1868, Thomas got a job at the Boston branch of Western Union.

All this time, Edison cared little about clothing and everyday life, spending all his money on books and materials for experiments. It was in Boston that Edison first became acquainted with the works of Faraday, which had great value for all his future activities.

In addition, it was during these years that Edison tried to obtain his first patent from the Patent Office. He is developing an "electric voting machine" - special device to count the yes and no votes cast. The demonstration of the apparatus before a special parliamentary commission ended unsuccessfully due to the reluctance of parliament to abandon paper counting.

In 1868, Edison went to New York to sell another of his inventions there - an apparatus for automatically recording stock exchange rates. However, these hopes were not justified. Edison returns to Boston.

In the spring of 1869, having arrived in New York, Edison went to the Western Union telegraph office, hoping to get a job. There is practically no money left. Thanks to his acquaintances, he manages to find a place to stay overnight in a company that produces mechanical gold price alarms. Edison studies alarm devices. Help in troubleshooting is provided by permanent job By technical operation devices. But very soon Edison is no longer satisfied with the position of an employee.

On October 1, 1869, he organized the Pop, Edison and Company society. He improved the system of telegraphing exchange bulletins about the rate of gold and shares through the use of a stock ticker. The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company bought his development for $40,000, while Edison's salary as an employee was only $300 a month.

With the money received, Edison buys equipment for making stock tickers and opens his own workshop in Newark, near New York.

In 1871, he opened two more new workshops. He devotes all his time to work. Edison subsequently said that until the age of fifty, he worked an average of 19.5 hours a day.

The New York Automatic Telegraph Society suggested that Edison improve an automatic telegraphy system based on paper perforation. The inventor solves the problem and gets, instead of the maximum transmission speed on a manual device, equal to 40-50 words per minute, the speed of automatic devices is about 200 words per minute, and later up to 3 thousand words per minute.

While working on this task, Thomas meets his future wife, Mary Stillwell. However, the wedding had to be postponed because Edison's mother died in April 1871. The wedding of Thomas and Mary took place in December 1871. In 1873, the couple had a daughter, who was named Marion in honor of older sister Tom. In 1876, a son was born, who was named Thomas Alva Edison Jr.

After a short stay in England, Edison began working on duplex and quadruplex telegraphy. The principle of quadruplex (double duplex) was known earlier, but in practice the problem was solved by Edison in 1874 and is his greatest invention. In 1873, the Remington brothers bought an improved model of the Scholz typewriter from Edison and subsequently began to widely produce typewriters under the Remington brand.

In three years (1873-1876), Thomas applied for new patents for his inventions forty-five times. Also during these years, Edison's father moved in with him and took on the role of economic assistant to his son. For inventive activities, a large, well-equipped laboratory was needed, so in January 1876 its construction began in Menlo Park near New York.

Menlo Park, a small village where Edison moved in 1876, became world famous over the next decade. Edison gets the opportunity to work in a real, equipped laboratory. From this moment on, invention becomes his main profession.

Edison's first work in Menlo Park included telephony. The Western Union Company, concerned about the threat of competition to the telegraph, turned to Edison. After trying many options, the inventor created the first practical telephone microphone, and also introduced an induction coil into the telephone, which significantly increased the sound of the telephone. For his invention, Edison received 100 thousand dollars from Western Union.

In 1877, Edison registered the phonograph with the Bureau of Inventions. The appearance of the phonograph caused general amazement. The demonstration of the first device was immediately carried out in the editorial office of Scientific American magazine. The inventor himself saw eleven promising areas for the use of the phonograph: recording letters, books, teaching eloquence, playing music, family notes, recording speeches, the area of ​​advertising and announcements, watches, learning foreign languages, recording lessons, connecting to the telephone.

In 1878, Edison visited Ansonia William Walas, who was working on electric carbon arc lamps. Walas gave Edison a dynamo along with a set of arc lamps. After this, Thomas begins work towards improving the lamps. In April 1879, the inventor established the critical importance of vacuum in the manufacture of lamps. And already on October 21, 1879, Edison completed work on an incandescent light bulb with a carbon filament, which became one of the largest inventions of the 19th century. Edison's greatest achievement was not in developing the idea of ​​the incandescent lamp, but in creating a practical, widespread system of electric lighting with a strong filament, a high and stable vacuum, and the ability to use many lamps simultaneously.

On the eve of 1878, giving a speech, Edison said: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”

In 1878, Edison, along with J.P. Morgan and other financiers, founded the Edison Electric Light Company in New York, which by the end of 1883 produced three-quarters of the incandescent light bulbs in the United States.

In 1882, Edison built New York City's first distribution substation, serving Pearl Street and 59 customers in Manhattan, and founded the Edison General Electric Company to manufacture electric generators, light bulbs, cables, and lighting fixtures. To conquer the market, Edison set the selling price of a light bulb at 40 cents when its cost was 110 cents. For four years, Edison increased the production of light bulbs, reducing their cost, but suffered losses. When the cost of the lamp dropped to 22 cents, and their production increased to 1 million units, he covered all costs in one year. In 1892, Edison's company merged with other companies to form General Electric.

In 1884, Edison hired a young Serbian engineer, whose responsibilities included the repair of electric motors and DC generators. Tesla proposed using alternating current for generators and power plants. Edison perceived Tesla's new ideas rather coldly, and disputes constantly arose. Tesla claims that in the spring of 1885 Edison promised him 50 thousand dollars (at that time an amount approximately equivalent to 1 million modern dollars) if he could constructively improve the direct current electric machines invented by Edison. Nikola actively got to work and soon introduced 24 varieties of Edison's alternating current machine, a new switch and regulator that significantly improved performance. Having approved all the improvements, in response to a question about the reward, Edison refused Tesla, noting that the emigrant still did not understand American humor well. Offended, Tesla immediately quit.

A couple of years later, Tesla opened his own Tesla Electric Light Company next door to Edison. Edison began a wide information campaign against alternating current, claiming that it is dangerous to life.

Kinetoscope(from the Greek “kinetos” - moving and “skopio” - to look) - an optical device for displaying moving pictures, invented by Edison in 1888. The patent described the film format with perforations (35 mm wide with perforations along the edge - 8 holes per frame) and a frame-by-frame transport mechanism. One person could watch the film through a special eyepiece - it was a personal cinema. The cinematography of the Lumière brothers used the same type of film and a similar transport mechanism.

In the USA, Edison started a “patent war”, justifying his priority on perforated film and demanding royalties for its use. When Georges Méliès sent several copies of his film A Trip to the Moon to the United States, Edison's company remade the film and began selling copies by the dozen. Edison believed that in this way he was reimbursing the patent fee, since Méliès's films were shot on perforated film. "A Trip to the Moon" made it possible to open the first permanent movie theater in Los Angeles, one of the outskirts of which was called Hollywood.

Thomas Edison died of complications diabetes mellitus October 18, 1931, at his home in West Orange, New Jersey, which he purchased in 1886 as wedding gift for Mina Miller. Edison was buried in the backyard of his home.

Hi all! The hero of today's article will be an outstanding inventor who improved the incandescent lamp, the telephone and created the phonograph.

Thomas Edison was able to achieve universal recognition by illustrating own life his favorite expression: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milen, Ohio on February 11, 1847. The obstetrician who delivered the baby immediately noted the “non-standard” appearance of the baby with a larger-than-usual head and suggested that this was a sign of “brain fever.”

The boy actually grew up quite weak: frail, short in stature, and due to scarlet fever he was deaf in one ear.

Thomas's father, Samuel Edison, was a businessman: he traded in wheat, real estate, and timber. Mom - Nancy Eliot - was raised in the family of a priest, received a decent education and worked as a teacher before her marriage.

Married in Canada, the parents migrated to America during a time of economic upheaval.

In addition to Thomas, there were other children in the family; the boy was the youngest, seventh child. Before his birth, the couple’s three children died, and little Alva (the family also called him Al, El) was given special care.

According to his father, Thomas had no desire for children's toys. He was always amused by steam engines and mechanisms. Having constructed his “inventions,” he often got into trouble: he fell into a canal, got stuck in a grain elevator, and set fire to a barn.

In 1854 the family was forced to leave hometown, which by that time had begun to decline, and moved to Port Huron, Michigan.

There, Thomas works on a farm, harvests crops, and sells vegetables and fruits.

Education

In 1852, the United States passed a law requiring children to go to school. Thomas's mother herself taught her son to read and write, and placed him in primary school.

School did not work out right away: the boy was inattentive, hard of hearing, and cramming was difficult. The teachers did not consider it shameful to “educate” a careless student with a belt and call him “stupid.”

Mom Nancy showed great parental wisdom here, which, as the inventor himself later admitted, was the creator of his abilities.

After 2 months of school “torment,” she took her son out of school, hired a tutor and allowed the boy to study independently those subjects that sincerely interested him.

Many people have heard very beautiful story about mother's love: One day Thomas Edison brought a note from school. The mother read it aloud to her son: “Your son is a genius. There are no suitable teachers in our school who can teach him anything. Teach it yourself, please.” Many years later, after the death of his mother, a successful inventor will find this note, which reads: “Your son is mentally retarded. We can’t teach him along with the others.”

At the age of 9, Thomas began to read history books and the works of Dickens. In the basement of the house, he sets up a laboratory and implements the experiments described in Parker’s book “Experimental Philosophy.”

Activities "before fame"

Before his career, Edison had the opportunity to experience different roles.

• In 1859, the father finds a job on a train for a 12-year-old boy: he sells sweets and newspapers in the carriages. Alva quickly “grabs” the principle, hires 4 assistants and brings $500 a year into the family’s treasury.
• Having converted an abandoned smoking room car into a printing house, Thomas begins publishing the newspaper “Vestnik” for train passengers. He himself prints and corrects local news and reports on military events (at that time there was a war between the South and the North). The publication even received a flattering response from the English Times. In order for the public to quickly buy up newspapers, Al comes up with the idea of ​​announcing subheadings by telegraph: passengers were eagerly purchasing printed materials, wanting to know the details of what he heard.
• In the same smoking-room car, Thomas sets up a laboratory, but due to the movement of the train, a bottle of phosphorus spills and a fire breaks out. All his work is wasted in every sense and the guy is fired from his job. He transfers his activities to the basement of the house: he creates a steam engine and a telegraph message, and begins to publish “Paul Pr”.

In 1863 at railway station Thomas saved a two-year-old boy: in the last seconds he pulled him out from under the wheels of a moving locomotive. In gratitude, the baby’s father, a station superintendent, offered to teach the boy how to operate a telegraph machine.

Six months later, 16-year-old Edison gets a job as a telegraph operator in a railway office.

Laziness, as you know, is the engine of progress. Thomas loved night shifts for their silence: no one bothered him to invent. But the manager insists that every half hour the employee reports on his wakefulness, transmitting the given word by telegraph. Edison made an “answering machine” with Morse code. The requirement was fulfilled, and the inventor could indulge in his favorite work.

Soon the enthusiastic employee is fired, almost putting a criminal case on him: due to Edison’s carelessness, two trains almost collided.

For several years he continued to work as a telegraph operator: in Adrian, Nashville, and Memphis.

Having moved to Louisville, he again gets into trouble: while experimenting with sulfuric acid at his workplace, he accidentally breaks the bottle and burns the liquid through the floor and expensive property on the floor below.

The addicted “alchemist” is kicked out again.

In 1869, Edison received his first patent for the creation of an “electric voting apparatus.” But it was not successful: Congress decided that the machine was too slow, and it was possible to fix it manually faster.

New York, early career

In the same year 69, Edison went to New York to find a stable job.

An incident helped: when he arrived at another company, he found its owner repairing a machine for sending reports. Edison easily repairs the device, gets the position of telegraph operator, finalizes the design of the device and transfers the entire office to his invention.

In 1870, the head of the Gold and Stock Telegraph company, Lefferts, invited Edison to buy his invention. He hesitates, not knowing what amount to put forward - 3 thousand? Or maybe 4,000?

Thomas later admits that he almost fainted for the first time when he saw a check written for $40,000.

In New Jersey, Edison opens the first telegraph repair shop and hires more than a hundred employees.

Personal life

Our hero is not lacking in determination on the love front either. His first wife, Mary Stillwell, worked on the staff of his workshop.

Bypassing the tedious courtship, Thomas approached the girl and proposed marriage to him, noting that she should not rush to answer and make a decision before Tuesday.

They got married in '71. The marriage produced three heirs - two sons and a daughter.

In 1984, the wife dies. A couple of years later, 39-year-old Edison marries Mina Miller. The couple has three more children.

Edison's inventions

In 1874, the Western Union company purchased Edison's invention - the quadruplex - a telegraph capable of transmitting two messages in both directions.

By the age of 29, Thomas had already become a regular “client” at the Patent Office. Over three years, he registered his developments about 45 times.

With money from the quadruplex, Edison builds a laboratory in Menlo Park, where he conducts his experiments day and night under the heading “secret”. He does not divide the day and week into workdays and weekends: hard work gives him pleasure.

In 1877, Edison created the phonograph, the very first device for reproducing and recording sound.

Interesting fact! Thanks to Edison's phonograph, Tolstoy's speech has come to us. Thomas personally sent the invention to the writer free of charge with the note “A gift to Count Leo Tolstoy from Thomas Edison.”

In 1878, a genius began to improve the incandescent light bulb. The lamps existing at that time burned out quickly, were expensive and needed large quantities energy.

What did Edison come up with? He gave it the look we are used to with a base, socket, plug and socket, and also made it accessible to mass user, announcing before this: “We will make the lamp so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”

Edison's perseverance is enviable. Before creating a working light bulb, he conducted 9,999 experiments! In response to his colleagues’ recommendations to abandon the idea, Thomas said, “Now I know 9,999 ways not to do it,” and for the 10,000th time the lamp lit up.

In the same 1978, Edison created a carbon microphone, used in telephones until the 80s.

In 1982, he built a substation and launched electricity in Manhattan.

Battle of two geniuses

In 1984, Edison hired Serbian engineer Nikola Tesla to repair electrical machines.

A confrontation arises between partners: the manager gravitates towards direct current, while the new employee turns out to be a supporter of alternating current.

Edison tries to prove the danger of alternating current and even takes part in the execution of a circus elephant who trampled three people (there is even a video of that tragic execution on YouTube, but I will not publish it here).

Not seeing eye to eye, Tesla quits and starts his own business.

In 1888, Thomas created the kinetoscope, a device for displaying moving images.

In 1895, with the discovery of X-rays and the ingenious hand of Edison, a fluoroscope was designed - a device for fluoroscopy. Development was later canceled when the dangers of such rays became clear.

Life priorities

Truly great fame came to the inventor. An asteroid discovered in 1913 was even named in his honor.

But money and fame did not spoil Edison. Friends and colleagues claimed that the legend of American science remained the same simple and sincere Tom.

He understood the value of time like no one else. He admitted that he did not need yachts because he did not have time for it. He always needed only workshops.

He was indifferent to meat and alcohol, convinced that another use for the mind could be found.

In recent years, he was occupied with the idea of ​​​​creating a necrophone - a device for communicating with the dead. Edison even made a “pact” with his colleague: whoever dies first will send a message to the other.

The comrade left first, but judging by the lack of industrial production of the device, the idea was not crowned with success.

Thomas Edison died at age 83 on October 18, 1931 from complications of diabetes. He admitted to his wife that he “did the best I could in my life.”

One of the greatest minds of the 19th century, the successful inventor of his era, was convinced: “If we did everything in our power, we would surprise ourselves.”

With this I say goodbye to you. I wish you to achieve your goals no matter what.

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See you soon!

Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in the city of Mailen (sometimes called Milan in Russian-language sources) in American state Ohio. Edison's ancestors came to America from Holland.
Edison's childhood is partly reminiscent of the childhood of another brilliant inventor -. Both suffered from scarlet fever and became practically deaf; both were declared unfit for school. But if Tsiolkovsky studied at school for several years, then Edison went to school for only three months, after which he was called “brainless” by the teacher. As a result, Edison received only home education from his mother.

Thomas Edison as a child

In 1854, the Edisons moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where little Thomas sold newspapers and candy on trains, and also helped his mother sell fruits and vegetables. In his spare time, Thomas enjoyed reading books and scientific experiments. He read his first science book at the age of 9. It was "Natural and Experimental Philosophy" by Richard Greene Parker, which told almost all the scientific and technical information of the time. Over time, he performed almost all the experiments mentioned in the book. Edison set up his first laboratory in the baggage car of a train, but after a fire there, the conductor threw it out onto the street along with the laboratory.
While working on the railroad, the teenage Edison founded his own travel newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, which he printed with 4 assistants.
In August 1862, Edison saved the son of the head of one of the stations from a moving carriage. The boss offered to teach him telegraphy in gratitude. For several years, Edison worked in various branches of the Western Union telegraph company (this company still exists and, after the decline of the telegraph, is engaged in money transfers).
Edison's first attempts to sell his inventions were unsuccessful, as was the case with a device for counting votes cast for and against, as well as with a device for automatically recording stock exchange rates. However, things soon went well. Edison's most important invention, which ultimately led to the creation computer networks, became a quadruplex telegraph. The inventor planned to get 4-5 thousand dollars for it, but in the end in 1874 he sold it to Western Union for 10 thousand dollars (about 200 thousand dollars taking into account inflation today). With the money received, Edison opens the first industrial research laboratory in the world in the village of Menlo Park, where he worked 16-19 hours a day.

Thomas Edison Laboratory (Menlo Park)

Edison's famous saying: "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." For Edison himself, who was self-taught, everything was exactly like this, for which he was criticized by another famous inventor Nikola Tesla:
“If Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would waste no time in determining the most likely location of its location. He would immediately, with the feverish diligence of a bee, begin to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. methods are extremely ineffective: he can spend a huge amount of time and energy and achieve nothing unless he is helped by a happy accident. At first I watched his activities with sadness, realizing that a little creative knowledge and calculations would have saved him thirty percent of the work. But he had genuine contempt for bookish education and mathematical knowledge, trusting entirely in his instincts as an inventor and common sense American."
However, without knowing, for example, higher mathematics, Edison did not shy away from resorting to the help of more qualified assistants who worked in his laboratory.

Thomas Edison in 1878

Inventions

In 1877, Thomas Edison introduced the world to a hitherto unknown miracle - the phonograph. It was the first device for recording and reproducing sound. To demonstrate, Edison recorded and played back the words from the children's song "Mary had a little lamb." After this, people began to call Edison "the wizard of Menlo Park." The first phonographs sold for $18 each. Ten years later, Emil Berliner invented the gramophone, which soon supplanted Edison's phonographs.

Thomas Edison testing a phonograph

Abraham Archibald Anderson - Portrait of Thomas Edison

In the 70s, Edison tried to improve incandescent lamps, which until now no scientist before him had been able to make publicly available and ready for use. industrial production. Edison succeeded: on October 21, 1879, the inventor completed work on an incandescent light bulb with a carbon filament, which became one of the largest inventions of the 19th century.

Edison's early incandescent lamps

To demonstrate the possibility of using light bulbs on a large scale, Edison created a power plant that provided electricity to the entire New York area. After the success of his experiments, Edison declared: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”
Edison patented the fluoroscope, a device for creating radiography. However, experiments with X-ray radiation seriously undermined the health of Edison and his assistant. Thomas Edison refused further development in this area and said: “Don’t talk to me about X-rays, I’m afraid of them.”
In 1877-78, Edison invented the carbon microphone, which significantly increased the volume of telephone communications and was used until the 80s of the 20th century.
Edison also left his mark on cinema. In 1891, his laboratory created the Kinetograph, an optical device for shooting moving images. And in 1895, Thomas Edison invented the kinetophone - a device that made it possible to demonstrate moving pictures with a phonogram heard through headphones, recorded on a phonograph.
On April 14, 1894, Edison opened the Parlor Kinetoscope Hall, which contained ten boxes designed to display films. One session in such a cinema cost 25 cents. The viewer looked through the device's peephole and watched a short film. However, a year and a half later, this idea was buried by the Lumiere brothers, who demonstrated the possibility of showing films on the big screen.
Relations with cinema in general were tense for Edison. He enjoyed silent films, especially 1915's The Birth of a Nation. Edison's favorite actresses were silent film stars Mary Pickford and Clara Bow. But Edison reacted negatively to the advent of sound cinema, saying that the acting was not so good: “They concentrate on the voice and have forgotten how to act. I feel it more than you, because I am deaf.”

Thomas Edison in 1880

Thomas Edison in 1890

Family

Edison was married twice. His first wife was telegraph operator Mary Stillwell (1855-1884). They married in 1871. There were three children in this marriage: a daughter and two sons. As they say, Edison went to work after the wedding and worked until late at night, forgot about the first wedding night. Mary died at the age of 29, presumably from a brain tumor.

first wife Mary Stillwell (Edison)

In 1886, Edison married Mina Miller (1865-1947), whose father, like Thomas Edison, was an inventor. Mina far outlived Thomas Edison (he died in 1931 at the age of 84). There were also three children in this marriage: a daughter and two sons.

second wife Mina Miller (Edison)

Mina with her husband, Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison. Photo from 1922

Thomas Alva Edison is one of the brightest and famous inventors XIX century. At this time, in different parts of the planet, people began to look for ways to use artificial light, transmit and record sound and image. Under these conditions, Edison managed not only to improve the inventions of his predecessors, but also to create completely new ones. technical devices. Thomas Edison combined the talent of an inventor and a commercial spirit. This allowed him not only to come up with many technical innovations, but also to successfully introduce their use into daily life people all over the world.

Childhood and youth

The future inventor was born on February 11, 1847 in the town of Milon, Ohio, into the family of a merchant and a schoolteacher. Neither parents nor teachers for a long time and did not suspect that in a few decades little Thomas would radically change the usual way of life of Europeans and Americans. IN early childhood Edison was not doing well with his studies. This was due not only to childhood restlessness, but also to health problems. Due to an incompletely cured infection, the boy began to lose his hearing. He had to leave school and study at home. Thomas's mother taught her son everything she knew and also regularly bought for him best books and textbooks.

In his free time from lessons, Thomas earned money by selling sweets and various small items. Quite early on, the boy began to demonstrate extraordinary commercial abilities; he managed to organize groups of the same boy traders and receive a portion of their proceeds. Then he began to conduct his first experiments in chemistry and physics.

As a teenager, Edison began working as a newspaper delivery boy. He got such a taste for the business that a couple of years later he even began publishing the first train newspaper for passengers. Perhaps Edison's life would have turned out completely differently if not for one happy incident that happened to him in his youth. In the summer of 1862, Thomas saved little boy, almost getting hit by a train. The father of the child turned out to be the head of the railway station, who, as a thank you, decided to teach the talented young man the telegraph business. Edison thoroughly studied the work of the telegraph, which allowed him to find a better-paying job. However, the inventor did not stay in one place for long.

In the period from 1863 to 1869, Edison traveled a lot around the country and changed several jobs, including the Western Union company that still exists today. All this time, he did not abandon his experiments and created several devices, which, however, did not find wide application. For example, potential customers rejected the electric vote-counting device that Edison created specifically for the American Parliament.

Career

In 1874, Edison was lucky. He created a quadruplex telegraph intended for stock trading. This telegraph made it possible to establish a stronger and more stable connection than its predecessor. The apparatus was immediately purchased by the head of the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company for a huge sum of money. From that moment on, Edison decided to quit his job and devote all his time to invention.

The money received for the quadruplex telegraph allowed the inventor to open a huge laboratory in the town of Menlo Park in 1876. Representatives of various American companies regularly came here, wanting to get a solution to some technical problem from Edison. And by the end of the 1880s, the name Edison was already known in Europe. Journalists and onlookers were strictly prohibited from entering the laboratory territory. Locals They treated the inventor and his work with almost reverent awe. In a matter of years, the laboratory turned into a full-fledged research center, and Edison began to open its branches in other cities.

In Menlo Park, the inventor created many world-changing devices, such as the microphone and phonograph, which allowed people to play and record sounds. Edison sent several of his first phonographs to people whom he considered the greatest of his contemporaries, including Leo Tolstoy.

A special milestone in Edison's inventive activity was the improvement of the incandescent lamp. The first such lamp was created in 1874 by the Russian engineer Lodygin. Lodygin pumped air out of a glass flask into which a carbon thread was inserted. Due to the incandescence of the filament, the lamp began to glow. Unfortunately, the carbon filament often burned out and the lamps became unusable. Edison improved Lodygin's invention by replacing the filament material with tungsten. This made the lamps more durable and suitable for mass production.

Edison also bought the rights to Lodygin’s invention: the Russian physicist could not renew his patent due to financial difficulties. Immediately after receiving the patent, the inventor established own production incandescent lamps and opened America's first power plant in 1882. Edison, who had an excellent understanding of the intricacies of legislation, very often used this technique with talented inventors who lacked commercial abilities. Because of this, he was criticized more than once during his lifetime. Many believed that Edison was a plagiarist who only slightly altered other people's inventions. The desire for profit and appropriation of other people's laurels led to a cooling of relations, and later to an open confrontation between the American inventor and Nikola Tesla, who at one time worked in the Edison company.

The inventor was married twice to:

• Mary Stiwell, who died in 1884. In this marriage, Edison became the father of two sons and a daughter.
• Mina Miller, who was 18 years younger than her husband and also bore him three children.

The inventor died at 84 from diabetes. During his lifetime, he became a recognized genius and world figure.

Inventions of Thomas Edison

The number of inventions that appeared thanks to the sharp mind and rich imagination of Thomas Edison is truly enormous. Over 1,000 patents were issued in Edison's name. Some of these items are a thing of the past, but we still use many of them to this day.

• The mimeograph was one of the first copying machines;
• Kinetoscope, which made it possible to make films;
• Electric chair;
• Magnetic ore separator;
• Alkaline battery;
• Electric generator;
• Carbon microphone used in telephony.

In addition, Edison was the first to isolate many substances used today in pharmaceuticals and chemical production eg phenol and benzene.

Throughout his life, the inventor remained self-taught; he never received any education. Edison was contemptuous of book learning and theoretical sciences, believing that it was a waste of time, and practice was much more important for an inventor. This often complicated his work; in some cases he had to work as if blindly, simply going through all the available options, instead of immediately choosing the best one with the help of natural science laws and mathematics. For example, it is known that during the development of the alkaline battery, Edison conducted almost 60,000 experiments. Edison always approached his work very thoroughly and carefully; every day he spent at least 16 hours on experiments and their descriptions.

The end of the 19th century was a time of breakthrough discoveries and inventions, without which it is difficult to imagine the world today. Thomas Edison, who is called nothing less than the greatest American inventor, made a significant contribution to this. We have already talked about his “war of currents” with Tesla, but today we will focus on Edison’s personality and the inventions that brought him fame as the “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

Like many American inventors, Thomas Edison was a descendant of migrants. His ancestor, miller Edison, and his family moved to America from Holland sometime in the 1730s. The inventor's great-grandfather participated in the War of Independence on the side of England, as a result of which he was later exiled to Canada. The Edison family was not at all calm: the inventor's grandfather early XIX century he managed to fight in the Anglo-American conflict, and his father took part in the “hunger” uprising of 1837 in Canada. That rebellion was suppressed, and the head of the family was forced to flee to the USA, where Thomas Alva Edison was born in 1847.

Edison house in Milan, Ohio. Now and then

The future inventor was a frail boy, and his teachers considered him narrow-minded. As a result, his mother took Thomas out of school and homeschooled him. But the boy himself was drawn to knowledge: in the library of the town of Port Huron, he read literature on the history of Great Britain, the Roman Empire and the Reformation, and the boy read his first scientific book, which contained all the scientific and technical information of the first half of the 19th century, at the age of nine.

The life of children of that time cannot be called a hothouse. Thomas helped his mother sell fruits and vegetables, and at the age of 12 he got a job as a newspaper seller at a railway station. The money earned was enough to conduct chemical experiments, which Thomas learned about from books. The guy even had his own laboratory in the baggage car of the train. True, Edison’s experiments were quite dangerous, and therefore the laboratory eventually burned down, for which the guy received a scolding.

Thomas Edison is already in mature age conducts experiments

The Edison offspring became a cunning fellow who spun as best he could. In 1862, he saved the son of the head of a railway station from a moving carriage and, as a reward, received the opportunity to learn the telegraph business. In fact, this became his main activity for the next seven years. Thomas moves from city to city, from station to station, and spends all the money he earns on books and experiments.

During the same period, Edison presented to the public his first invention - a device for counting votes in elections. But there were conservatives in parliament who did not dare to abandon paper counting. However, further affairs of the young inventor, whose flexible mind was 22 years old, went like clockwork. He got a job as a technical worker in a company producing mechanical gold price alarms. However, Edison no longer wanted to be a simple hired worker who serves machines and other people’s interests.

The inventor improved a system for telegraphing exchange bulletins about the gold rate using a stock ticker and sold the development for $40,000, with an average salary of $300 for an employee. Big money paved the way for the implementation of Edison's most daring ideas. But he does not immediately spend all the funds on experiments and laboratory equipment. He opens several workshops for the production of stock tickers, sells quadruplex telegraph technology (transmitting two independent signals in both directions) and makes capital.

In 1876, Edison used the money he earned to open his own laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Very soon it will turn into a forge of inventions on a global scale, and Edison will receive the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”

On the ground floor there was a workshop with measuring instruments, and on the second - a chemical laboratory

Many engineers worked for Edison. Thomas himself promised to release a minor invention every 10 days, a breakthrough - every six months

Sound recording

He was given this nickname for the invention of the phonograph - the “shaitan machine”, which recorded and reproduced a person’s voice. In those years, this was a real miracle that was difficult to believe. Thus, at a demonstration of the device at the French Academy of Sciences, Edison’s employee was almost beaten, accusing him of ventriloquism. In Russia, the owner of the “talking beast” was sentenced to three months in prison and a fine for fraud. The world was definitely shocked by Edison's invention.

The phonograph was the result of work to improve Alexander Bell's telephone. Edison developed a carbon microphone that improved the quality of voice transmission. There was coal powder between the metal plates. One of the plates was a diaphragm. When it oscillated from sound pressure, vibration was transmitted to the powder, which led to a change in the resistance of the powder.

The 30-year-old "Wizard of Menlo Park" shows off his invention

These experiments with the telephone led to the creation of the phonograph. It worked on the principle of mechanical vibrations from a diaphragm, which caused a moving needle to leave indentations on the surface of the foil. The foil was glued to the cylinder, and the needle ran along it in a spiral to increase the recording duration. The first sound recording on a phonograph was the American children's song “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” which Edison himself sang into the phonograph.

Phonograph and dozens of recording cylinders

He saw several areas where the phonograph could be used: secretarial work, recording music and speeches of great people, a kind of answering machine for the telephone, and even talking books for the blind. But the recordings of such a phonograph were short-lived and quickly wore out. And the author himself lost interest in him. However, other inventors took up the work on the device - they applied wax to the cylinders, proposed using disks instead of rollers, and conical horns to amplify the sound.

Some researchers believe that humanity could have invented phonographs back in ancient times: the level of technology allowed, and ignorance of the wave nature of sound was not an obstacle. But the phonograph, in fact, became a side invention - after a dozen experiments on other technologies. It would be great to hear the voice of Pushkin or Aristotle today.

Electric light

Thomas Edison was not the author of the idea electric lamps incandescent Long before him, experiments were carried out in this direction by American, Russian and British scientists. Lodygin, who emigrated to the USA, suggested using tungsten filament in light bulbs. Edison's greatest merit is that he really made electric light so cheap and practical that only the rich could burn candles.

Edison developed the lamp shape, screw base and socket, and much more that is used today for mass lighting. The inventor carried out serious research, selecting material for the filament. A total of 1,500 materials were tested, but Thomas settled on a carbon filament, which he patented for a light bulb in 1879. It was the first commercial incandescent lamp life cycle which could reach 1200 hours of glow.

Together with several financiers, Edison created a company, the first object of coverage for which was the steamship Columbia. It later transformed into General Electric. The light bulbs were sold below cost, but this allowed Edison to capture three-quarters of the US market. Light bulbs were constantly improved, the cost of their production decreased, production capacity and demand grew, and Edison managed to recoup all losses in just one year.

Just to give you an example, the first urban commercial lighting system was installed on a street in Manhattan in 1882. It consisted of 400 lamps. A year later, 10,300 lamps were already working there.

"Live" pictures

In the late 80s, Edison was impressed by the zoopraxiscope - a disk machine with pasted pictures that, when rotated, created the illusion of movement. " I am working on an instrument that will be to the eye what the phonograph was to the ear."- said the inventor in 1888. Edison shared this task with his employee William Dixon. The electromechanical design of the kinetoscope was ready, while Dixon began optical development.

The kinetoscope was a colossus into which film was loaded, and on the body there was an eyepiece for one single viewer. The film moved continuously on rollers, illuminated by a pulsed electric lamp. As a result, the viewer watched a very short video on perforated 35 mm film. It was Edison who made it the standard for future cinema.

Already in 1893, a patent was received for a kinetoscope, which turned into a kind of attraction in the States. The devices were sold to local entrepreneurs, who installed them in batches of 10 in special viewing rooms. For 25 cents you could watch five videos, moving from one kinetoscope to another.

"Only for men" .

Competition in the Kinetoscope market was fierce. When Dixon was caught helping competitors, Edison fired him without regret.

Death

By his 70th birthday in 1917, Thomas had already retired from direct company management and invention. He was already an elderly man, the business turned out to be huge and highly diversified, but they listened to Edison’s authoritative advice.

The entrepreneur's health was deteriorating. In the 20s, he began to spend more time at home with his wife, and his children moved away from him. The rumor became completely useless. In the newsreel “One Day with Thomas Edison” (1922), you can see how his employees get close to the maestro’s ear so that he can hear them.

Heart problems and the development of diabetes in the last two years of his life led to Thomas Edison falling into a coma on October 14, 1931, and four days later the newspapers published an obituary. Edison was buried behind the house. His good friend Henry Ford convinced his son to seal his father's last breath in a flask. The air from Edison's room is now kept in the Ford Museum as a memory of the inventor.