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Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Edison (Thomas Alva Edison) (February 11, 1847 Ohio - October 18, 1931 New Jersey) nicknamed The Wizard of Menlo Park, is recognized as one of the inventors U.S. largest [1]. Founder of General Electric, a leading industrial empires global pioneer of electricity, broadcaster, popularisateur and perfectionneur technologies avant garde, self-proclaimed inventor of the telephone, film and sound recording, it ' never hesitated to take, without any qualms, many inventions made by others, to claim the record number of patents 1093 (although the vast majority of them were either redeemed for a derisory price, either blithely looted on the back of his collaborators and competitors, such as Nikola Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Antonio Meucci, Georges Melies)
Children Self
He was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan in Ohio. Son of Samuel Edison, hands-on, junk, grocer, real estate agent, carpenter, and so on. Canadian Dutch origin and Nancy Elliot Edison, a former teacher Canadian Scottish origin. It is a cadet of a modest family of seven children.
In 1853, when he was 7 years old, his family moved to Port Huron in Michigan. His teacher, Reverend Engle, then quickly sees as a hyperactive stupid because it is too curious, raises too many questions and does not learn quickly. After 3 months of classes, his mother offusquée decides to make the school itself. He completed his basic training to perfect a self-devouring all the books of science from his mother.
Prime Chemistry Laboratory at 10 Years
In 1857, aged 10, Thomas already has a true small chemical laboratory in the basement of the house of his parents to develop its intelligence practice.
In 1859, aged 12, Thomas became selling newspapers, drinks and cigars, cigarettes and sweets, in the process of the Grand Trunk Railway "which is the daily round-trip Detroit-Port Huron. With the money earned, he bought a printing press used it installs in a baggage car for the drafting and printing during journeys of its own mini weekly newspaper "The Herald Weekly" fired 500 copies.
In 1860 he is authorized to adjust its chemistry laboratory in his car baggage-printing. He continued his experiences during the hours of 5 stops in Detroit. He is also the telegraph train invented in 1838 by Samuel Morse. A sheer train overturns one day its chemicals and causing a fire that earned him his dismissal with its first $ 2 000 commercial gain proudly earned.
Virtually Deaf at The Age of 13 Years
Barely 13 years, he caught scarlet fever from which it appears virtually deaf. This handicap strongly influence its behavior, his career, guiding its work, its desire to improve the lot of humanity, the motive for several inventions and multiplies its greed for reading books in particular chemistry, electricity, physics, mechanics and so on.
Employee Telegrapher for Western Union Telegraph Company
In 1862 Thomas heroically saved the baby's head of station in Port Huron who fails to be crushed by a train. To thank him, the officer agrees to teach him the alphabet walrus and the use of its telegraph during 2 months of training. This new competency-passion allows him to find a job as a telegraph operator in Memphis.
In 1866 aged 19, he moved to Toronto in Canada and found a job as assistant-telegrapher at Western Union Company. His job is to retransmit in Toronto received messages every hour. It will run his first invention: it transforms its telegraph a "transmitter-receiver duplex automatic Morse code" capable of transmitting on the same cable news two in the opposite direction automatically without the intervention of employee, and files its first patent.
Then he returned as an itinerant from city to city across the eastern USA.
In 1868, aged 21, an expert in telegraphy, Thomas was hired as a telegraph operator-night Western Union Company in Boston and works in parallel on several projects inventions including a machine automatic vote counting which is not accepted by the Congress of the USA as judged too fast ... He concludes one of its future major basic principles: "Never invent something that people do not want" (never invent something that people do not want).
In 1869 he tried his luck in New York, where he found a chamber of fortune in the basement of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. He sleeps next to the teletype which transmits the gold price in financial markets, and this machine is studying closely. It helps one day the telegraph operator of the Western Union to resolve a major blackout on the telegraph and is offered a comfortable place to assistant chief engineer of the Western Union in New York with the mandate to improve the teletype the New York Stock Exchange.
Foundation of Edison Universal Stock Printer New York
He founded and then resells 40 000 dollars its first "Edison Universal Stock Printer", where it develops and commercializes its patented automatic multiplexed telegraph could transmit and print multiple classes of securities exchanges.
Foundation of its Industrial Empire of Menlo Park
In 1874, with 40 000 dollars previously harvested, he founded his own industrial empire "Menlo Park" with research laboratories in Newark in New Jersey near New York. It is the forerunner of the modern industrial research applied with 2 associates and a team of 60 researchers employees (instead of individual researchers), supervises up to 40 projects at the same time, and files up to 400 patents per year. It manufactures and markets the first teleprinters which print at high speed.
Patented invention of the telephone just before him by Bell
In 1876 he began to develop the phone but Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent shortly before him. Edison develops a microphone cartridge carbon improves the capacity of its telephone competitor.
Thomas Edison in his laboratory lives and sleeps only four hours a night. He claims to be able to work 48 or even 72 hours in a row.
Invention of the Phonograph
The french Leon Scott had already recorded sounds on paper in 1859 and inventing the phonoautographie but that in 1877 qu'Edison completing the construction of the first truly capable phonograph record and replay human voice and sound , Which he perfected over time (Phonographic steel cylinder covered with a sheet of tin and a needle that serious then reads 2 minutes sounds collected or distributed by an acoustic horn). The following versions of this device are at the base of the colossal industry recorded music.
In 1878 at a fishing lake Battle of the Sierra Madre in Wyoming, he observes how the fibers of a piece of bamboo on his fishing rod broken pier fire shone without disintegrating. This observation inspired him the idea of a bright filament inside an incandescent bulb.
General Electric Foundation
1878 Thomas Edison binds with businessmen among the richest in New York and founded the Edison Electric Light Company, which became in 1889 the Edison General Electric Company, and General Electric in 1892.
The France decorates of the rank of Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur then Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur in 1889.
Invention and dissemination of the light bulb domestic
In 1879 he filed the patent for the light bulb filament-based bamboo in Japan in low voltage bulb in a glass vacuum after testing 6 000 herbal substances sent search in the world, with a budget of 40 000 dollars.
Lewis Howard Latimer, an engineer of the Edison Company to remedy the problem of the bulb filament bamboo, which grid after 30 h. In 1881 he patents then, with his friend Joseph V. Nichols, the first incandescent bulb with carbon filament, then gets alone in 1882, a patent for its method of manufacture and assembly of carbon filaments. Only Black team member scientific research Edison, Latimer directs the installation of the system of electric light in Philadelphia and Montreal, Canada. Then we will send to London, Great Britain, where he is responsible for setting up a department of incandescent lamps for Maxim-Weston Electric Light Company.
William Hammer, engineers Thomas Edison, discovered from the invention of Edison Effect: electron emission by a hot filament that will lead to the invention of radio lamps at the base of modern electronic and the radio.
In 1880 he illuminates January 1, any street, the library and laboratory in Menlo Park with a dynamo and 40 low-voltage light bulbs. He founded in October with the help of major financial capital, its own factory bulbs of the "Edison Electric Light Company." From May to June he filed a series of 33 patents "comprehensive distribution of domestic electric lighting, electric generators, electrical conductors, electric motors, fuses and so on. It improves the patent of its predecessors such as Joseph Swan, Henry Woodward, James Lindsay Bowman and William Sawyer.
In 1881, the International Exhibition of Electricity Paris 1881 Thomas Edison propels the rank of "international symbol of modernity and social scientific progress."
Invention of the power station
In 1882 the Edison Electric Light Company "by Thomas Edison founded the first power station in the world based on 6 dynamos" Jumbo "on September 4 to produce direct current in the district of Wall Street in Manhattan, with a capacity of 1 200 lamps to light 85 houses, offices or shops. Less than a year later, other central increasingly powerful light over 430 buildings in New York with more than 10 000 bulbs, soon followed by London.
In 1884, Edison (fervent advocate of direct current) separates from its employee Nikola Tesla, a pioneer of alternating current, more dangerous but can be transported over long distance as the choices of stubborn Edison. The two men can not agree. Edison will use its relations in order to discredit Tesla in the eyes of public opinion. Despite this industry quickly opts for the development of alternating current.
Foundation of the industrial empire of West Orange near New York
1887 Edison moved to West Orange in New Jersey to multiply by 10 the size of its research laboratories on a huge industrial complex comprising 14 buildings including 6 in research and development, a factory produces blisters, a Central electric production, a library and more than 5 000 employees on site. He said: "I will make electricity so cheap that only the rich could afford the luxury of using candles."
Invention and foundation of film studios
In 1893 Edison founded with his assistant producer William Dickson, the first movie studios to project his films in his "Kinetoscope Parlors" (first forerunners of cinema halls)
In 1895 it was Rumford Prize winner for his work on electricity.
In 1902 his staff pay a projectionist for London to take a reel of film Le Voyage dans la Lune de Georges Méliès adapted from the famous novel by Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon. The coil is reduced to the USA and replicated in many copies. The film is a huge financial success for Edison, and causing the bankruptcy of Melies.
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