Thomas Edison (1847-1931) (2070)

When Thomas Edison was born in the small town of Milan, Ohio, America was just beginning its great industrial development. The time in which Edison lived his long life, was an age of inventions, filled with human and scientific adventures; and Edison became the hero of that time.

The boy's education was limited to some months in the public school. Though Thomas was not good at lessons, he was very interested in science. Thomas began experimenting when he was ten or eleven years of age. Several years later, Edison learned telegraphy and became a telegraph operator. He was soon one of the fastest operators in a large telegraph company in Boston. He wanted to improve the telegraph system and worked very hard at it. Soon he built a carbon transmitter that marked a real advance in the art of telephony and helped much in bringing the Bell telephone into practical use.

One of Edison's greatest inventions was the gramophone or the "phonograph or speaking machine" as he called it. For the first time in history a human voice had been captured. Edison's success was immediate in America, but in Europe his invention was met with suspicion. In Russia a government official protested against the "mechanically speaking animal". When the phonograph was demonstrated in the French Academy of Sciences, one of the learned man shouted that it was a shame to deceive people, he couldn't believe that dead metal could produce a living human voice.

Another of Edison's inventions was the electric lamp. On October 21, 1879 Edison passed electricity through a carbonized cotton thread in a vacuum glass bulb. The lamp gave off a feeble, reddish glow, and it continued to burn for 40 hours.

There is scarcely a field of technical life in which Edison did not break fresh ground or at least stimulate discovery. He not only developed an improved dynamo to provide the power for electric lighting, but he also perfected other electric power equipment such as the generator, conductors, and underground power cables. The carbon filament lamp and the system of electrical distribution which he devised were key developments in the modern electronics revolution.

Thomas Edison, the world's leading inventor, patented over 1000 inventions, which changed our way of life. Among all his fame Edison remained a modest man. His motto was: "I find what the world needs; then I go ahead and try to invent it." He was sure that genius was "two per cent inspiration and ninety eight per cent perspiration".

Check your comprehension.

1. Where was Thomas Edison born? 2. What time did he live in? 3. What was he interested in when at school? 4. What was his first work? 5. What was Edison's greatest invention? 6. How did people meet this invention in America, Russia, and France? 7. What great invention did Edison demonstrate in 1879? 8. What other inventions did Edison make? 9. What was Edison's motto in his life? 10. How did Edison define a genius?

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