Hundreds of people stood in a crowd in front of the Menlo
Park factory in New Jersey as a banner unfurled to reveal the image of Thomas Edison. He wanted the world to know that he was the
most important person in the room. He was the brand. The inventor. The one in charge of over 1,000 machines created
under his name. Thomas Edison has become a polarizing figure
in modern history. Some believe that he was a genius inventor
and a brilliant businessman who changed the world as we know it. Others believe that he was manipulative, and
stole the ideas of greater minds. The truth? Well it's somewhere in between. On today's Biographics, we are going to dive
into the incredible life of Thomas Edison. Early Life
Today, Thomas Edison is considered to be one of the greatest American icons of all time. Surprisingly, though, his family history started
out as the exact opposite of the American Dream. His grandfather, Samuel Ogden Edison, was
a loyalist during the Revolutionary War. So he decided to move the family to Canada,
and pledge his undying allegiance to King George III. Thomas Edison’s father, Samuel Jr., was
later exiled from Canada for being apart of the Mackenzie Rebellion. This was a revolt against the oligarchy who
was in control of local government. Sam Edison and his wife Nancy had no choice
but to move to the United States. They had a total of 7 children, but three
of them died during infancy. Thomas Alva Edison was the youngest child
in the family, and he was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He and his family moved to a farming community
in Port Huron, Michigan. He only had three months of formal schooling
before working on the family farm. His mother Nancy actually had several years
of education behind her from her time in Canada, so she taught him how to read and write at
home. Edison continued to read as many books as
he could get his hands on, and had a natural curiosity for the world around him. He sat on goose eggs to see if he could get
them to hatch, and set a neighbor’s house on fire, just to watch it burn...Because...you
know, we all know that with arson and property damage, boys will be boys, right? When reflecting on this time, Edison said
it was just a bunch of “devilish hijinks.” Even as a young boy, Edison began to dabble
in chemical experiments in his parent’s basement. We’re pretty sure a basement isn’t the
best place to be mixing chemicals. He eventually got some fresh air by working
as a newspaper boy for a local railroad at 12 years old. Since he was spending so much time working,
he wanted to continue his experiments whenever there was down time. So he began tinkering with his chemicals in
one of the train cars, and accidentally started another fire. As you can tell, setting fire seems to be
a trend in his life. Not surprisingly, he was asked to pack up
his chemistry set and never return. Since becoming a newspaper boy didn’t work
out, Edison decided to learn a valuable skill. He taught himself morse code. No one ever taught him how to do this, so
Edison spent up to 18 hours a day sending and receiving these messages in morse code
in order to become proficient at the skill. By the time he turned 15, he got a full-time
job as a telegraph operator for one of the local newspapers. He received the news from far-off publications,
and he was able to write down the basic information before handing it off to the writers. It was around this time when he began going
deaf. It’s possible that the loud trains he worked
on as a young boy and the nearly constant tapping he had to listen to for most of his
life contributed to this very early hearing loss. However, he was so hyper-focused on the task
at hand, as he tried to get better and better at translating morse code. He was always highly competitive, and wanted
to be the best operator there. He once wrote that his hearing was so bad,
all of the background noise of other operators faded away. The sound of their machines was drowned out
in a low muffle, and the only thing he could hear was the tapping of his own telegraph. Because of this, he spent a lot of time thinking. Instead of making friends at work, he scarcely
spoke to his co-workers, and concentrated on the machines, instead. Eventually, Thomas Edison asked to work the
night shift, so he was always doing overtime a total of 16 hours a day. At night, there was scarcely any news coming
over the wire. So Edison had plenty of free time to tinker
with the machines. He wanted to know how they worked, and how
they could possibly be improved. It wouldn’t be too long before he figured
out how to make his beloved telegraph machines to the next level. The Great American Inventor
When he was 22 years old, Thomas Edison decided to leave his job as a telegraph operator and
moved to New York City. At this point, he had studied the telegraph
machines so closely that he knew how to manufacture them from scratch, and he made far more money
creating and selling the machines that he did as a mere operator. New York City right in the midst of the industrial
revolution. Movie stars did not exist yet, so the real
heroes of America were the inventors. Everyone wished that they could come up with
a brilliant new idea and file a patent, which would lead to fame and fortune. Their name would be published in the newspapers
and magazines, and they became a permanent part of history. For years, Americans had struggled to find
their sense of national identity. They didn't have the great architecture or
universities that you could find in Europe, and many people considered most things in
the young nation to be sub-par. But once Americans became the masters of innovation,
many young men from all over the world began to immigrate to New York City in order to
become the next great inventor. Edison began to receive more and more orders
for new telegraph machines, and he had a good business going for himself. He started to hire other men to put the pieces
together, in order to have more time to tinker on his own. As time went on, he began to create telegraphs
that could print out messages. He also developed the patent for a multiplex
telegraph, which could send out several messages at the same time. After making these new machines, he only attracted
more and more customers to order from him over the competition. In 1871, he was 24 years old when he met his
wife, Mary Stilwell, and got married. He was 24 years old, and she was just 16. They had two children together, and she immediately
set out helping him with his meals, clothing, and other essentials so that he could continue
to concentrate on work. Edison worked throughout the day and night
to fulfill his orders. He scarcely stopping to sleep or eat, because
there was so much to do. He once said, “The reason a lot of people
do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking
like hard work.” After a few years of this hardcore lifestyle,
Thomas Edison began to make a lot of money from his telegraph business. At 29 years old, he invested nearly all of
his earnings from those 7 years into a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He hired a team of men who all shared a vision
that Menlo Park could become the world’s first “think tank”. It was a place where inventions could happen. He wanted to be the world’s very first full-time
professional inventor. His family moved into a house that was built
on the same property as the factory. Even though he was working close to his wife
and children, they almost never saw him, because he spent almost all of his time working. At night, he would walk home to sleep. The one and only day he took off was Sunday,
for church and rest. Edison once wrote to a friend that he had
to goal of creating a minor invention every 10 days, and a major breakthrough once a month. Of course, this would be impossible for one
man to do alone. He would give his employees assignments to
work on specific projects, or ask them to find a solution to a problem. Since he had multiple teams working on these
new invention every single day, they were able to come up with new breakthroughs. Once they finished a new invention, he would
patent the idea in his own name, and reap the benefits of its profits. in 1876, there was a massive exhibition in
Philadelphia where inventors showcased their new ideas. This is where Alexander Graham Bell displayed
the very first telephone. This invention threatened Thomas Edison's
livelihood. It would make the telegraph completely obsolete. After all, if you could hear someone's voice,
why would you bother learning morse code to communicate over the telegraph? Thomas Edison immediately decided to try to
improve on the telephone’s design. He once said, "An inventor needs an enemy." Bell was from a well-to-do family and he had
a college education. He also had plenty of money handed to him
from his father-in-law to tinker with his new inventions. Edison was motivated to compete with him,
and just a few months later, his laboratory developed an improved version of Bell's telephone
that could be patented. He had once figured out how to write from
a telegraph, based on the vibrations coming from the Morse code. He thought- if it worked on paper, why not
something else? He placed a needle on top of a sheet of foil,
and began to speak loudly into the phonograph. The first thing he ever recorded was the child's
nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb". After years of improving on other people’s
inventions, his kaleidoscopic mind had finally rearranged all of the knowledge he had collected. This was his first completely original invention. "I was taken aback," he said. "I was always afraid of anything that worked
the first time." 1877, Scientific American published the story
about Edison's phonograph. Reporters from all over the world rushed to
Menlo Park to see the new device first hand. Edison knew how to be charismatic, and played
to the crowd. When the reporters would show, up he would
offer them slices of pie and cigars while he told them entertaining stories. This made the reporters like him, and they
would write about his brilliant mind and impressive laboratory. Like any businessman who knows what he’s
doing you can bet that he immediately took full advantage of all of this free press. He ran ads in newspapers offering to sell
anyone a phonograph to anyone in America. Thousands of people would have read the news
and want to order these machines for their own homes. Now, instead of just producing telegraphs,
the Edison factory was also selling telephones and phonographs, and he became incredibly
wealthy. Newspapers continue to print stories about
his personal life, because they believed that he was exactly what they would imagine as
the perfect All-American inventor. On April Fool's Day, one newspaper printed
a story that Thomas Edison had come up with an invention to turn dirt into food and wine. Even though this was completely ridiculous,
people actually fell for it because they thought that he truly could invent anything. He began receiving fan letters and interview
requests on a daily basis. People would ask for money, favors, and just
about anything you could think of. Edison spent a significant amount of everyday
answering these letters and speaking to reporters, which took even more of his free time away
from his family. After a while, being a public figure became
so overwhelming that he was no longer getting any work done in the factory at all. In 1878, Thomas Edison decided to go on a
trip to Wyoming so that he and a group of men could watch the solar eclipse. His wife Mary was pregnant with their third
child. She felt sick, and became very anxious, especially
with so many people knocking on their door looking for her husband. Doctors wrote to Edison that he needed to
return home immediately, because she was too ill to be left alone. Instead of rushing back to his pregnant wife,
Edison ignored the letters. He was used to Mary complaining that he worked
too much, and he usually ignored her please for help. So he finished out 3 more weeks of his trip. Sadly, Mary was more than just anxious. She truly was sick. For the next few years, her health only continued
to decline. The War of Currents
Soon after the birth of his third child, Thomas Edison did the opposite of slowing down and
enjoying his time as a father. He began his most ambitious project yet; The
light bulb. Plenty of other inventors had come up with
light bulbs before, but they burned out after just a few minutes. So he decided to come up with a solution. In just a few days Thomas Edison figured out
how to have a long-lasting incandescent light bulb. Since the journalists were waiting with bated
breath to find out what he would do next, this became an overnight sensation. Investors were suddenly showing up to his
door handing in money, and Edison stock went through the roof. They wanted to support his idea to create
a society that no longer needed to rely on dirty oil lamps to bring light to people's
homes. He announced that he would do the impossible:
Light up New York City so that it shines even at night. But by the summer of 1879, New York City still
was not filled with electric light bulbs as promised. Edison stock was dropping, and people accused
him of lying to manipulate the market. People began to lose hope that an electric
city could ever exist. Behind the scenes, workers in Menlo Park were
hustling day and night to get the light bulbs working. Of course, the task was much more difficult
than Edison had ever anticipated. They needed sockets, wiring, and an electrical
system that must be installed into a building before appliances could work. They also needed to create massive generators. He wanted to achieve this using DC, or Direct
Current. However, the DC power generations broke down
very easily, and he needed to hire someone to come up with a solution to the problem. His saving grace was none other than Nikola
Tesla. He was the true natural-born genius with an
“eidetic memory”, which meant that he could recall objects from memory, and recreate
them perfectly. After spending years working on DC power in
Budapest, 28-year old Nikola Tesla decided to leave Europe on a boat to New York City. After hearing so much hype up about the American
Dream, Tesla was actually disappointed once he arrived. He said, "What I had left [in Europe] was
beautiful, artistic and fascinating in every way; what I saw here was machined, rough and
unattractive. It [America] is a century behind Europe in
civilization." Despite being a bit underwhelmed by the scenery,
he was still caught up in the enthusiasm for invention. Almost immediately after arriving to the United
States, he approached Thomas Edison and asked for a job. Once Tesla learned about the issues with the
DC generator, Edison made him a deal He said that if he could come up with a solution to
the problem, he promised to give him a $50,000 bonus. With modern inflation, that’s closer to
1 and a half million dollars. Edison truly underestimated what a hungry
genius can accomplish with that kind of money on the line. In only a few months, Tesla fixed all of the
DC generators. When he came to collect his $50,000, reward,
Edison brushed it off, saying that it was a joke. He blamed it on Tesla’s inability to understand
the “American sense of humor”. He wasn’t falling for it, though. Nikola Tesla immediately quit his job, and
decided to go to business on his own. When he was repairing Edison’s generators,
he could see all of the problems, so invented a much better version called “Alternating
Current”, or AC Power. Edison’s Direct Current could only move
in one direction, and there needed to be generators every mile in order for the system to work. But Tesla’s Alternating Current bounced
back and forth, and it could vary in voltage. This meant it could go hundreds of miles in-between
generators. Tesla patented the technology, but it would
be an expensive undertaking. He tried to show it to investors, but most
thought it was impossible, and weren’t willing to compete with Edison. That was, until Tesla met George Westinghouse. Together, they spent the next few years plotting
to create a system that would defeat Thomas Edison’s electric lights. In the midst of this Current War, Edison’s
wife, Mary, died in 1888. She was just 29 years old. The doctors say that she had “congestion
of the brain”, which was a blanket term given to such an intense level of depression
and anxiety that it lead to high blood pressure and a stroke. When she first met him, Mary was just a 16-year
old girl who married a man with a small telegraph business. There was nothing that could have prepared
her for the pressure of being the wife of a celebrity. Since Edison was devoted to his company nearly
24/7, it only makes sense that he met his second wife at work. Two years after Mary’s death, Thomas Edison
married a woman named Mina Miller. Her father was also a well-known inventor,
and she had already grown up around famous scientists. This inspired her to work in one of Edison’s
factories in Newark. She had a keen scientific mind, and completely
understood Thomas Edison’s passion for innovation. During interviews, he would openly talk about
how much he loved and appreciated her. Edison even bought her a luxurious mansion
called Glenmont in the nearby town of West Orange. Mina was exactly the kind of wife Edison needed. She was able to manage their social calendar
to have parties with important people in the industry, and this only improved his relationships
with investors. However, while Edison and Mina were schmoozing
with investors, Tesla and Westinghouse were still hard at work developing their Alternating
Current. In 1893, Tesla and Westinghouse debuted the
AC Power system at the Chicago World’s Fair. Over 100,000 light bulbs illuminated the night,
and people were in total awe. It was clear who the better inventor truly
was. Tesla and Westinghouse won the contract to
light up New York City. After this, Edison was furious, and began
one of the worst smear campaigns in history. He claimed that AC power was too dangerous
for people’s homes. He demonstrated this by electrocuting animals
in public- even elephants. Edison was also the man behind demonstrating
how human beings could be killed in the electric chair. However, all of his attempts to ruin Tesla
and Westinghouse didn’t work, because AC power prevailed, and the War of Currents was
over. Motion Pictures and a Lasting Legacy
Thomas Edison could not make his mark on the world as being the man who would light up
the world. However, he succeeded in introducing the motion
picture camera to the United States. In 1888, Edison He told the press, "I am experimenting
upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which
is the recording and reproduction of things in motion ...." A Frenchman named Louis Le Prince had developed
the first motion picture camera in France. So Edison tasked one of his employees, William
Kennedy Laurie Dickson, to improve it just enough to file a patent. The result was the Kinetograph camera. They also created the Kinetoscope, which was
a device where people had to look into a view-finder to see the moving pictures after they had
been captured. Edison began to sell his new devices to the
masses, just like he had with his phonographs. Edison’s lab also began to double as a filming
studio, because they wanted to sell these reels for people to watch on their Kinetoscopes. They began to release productions of short
films, and charged people for tickets to see these new “movies”. However, once other filmmakers in New York
City started to produce films, Edison would try to sue them. He wanted a monopoly over any movie that was
made with his devices. So, these film makers decided it was time
to get as far away as humanly possible. They went to Hollywood. So, if it wasn’t for Thomas Edison’s litigious
nature, the movie capital of the world would probably still be in New York City. Over the course of his lifetime, Thomas Edison
filed 1,093 patents for new inventions. He died in 1931 at his home in West Orange,
New Jersey at the age of 84. Today, many people have discredited Edison,
because they believe that he doesn’t actually deserve all of the praise he was given over
the years. After hearing all of the terrible stories
about him, it’s easy to see why. However, you cannot deny that this man truly
did leave a lasting legacy, and he inspired countless numbers of inventors and businessmen. You could also argue that nearly every inventor
does similar things that Edison had. No one is angry at Elon Musk for the fact
that he was not the first to invent a car or a rocket ship. They’re also not mad that he has a huge
staff in his factory working for him, or that he has a public image. So, do you think Thomas Edison was unfairly
criticized for his competitive nature? Or was he truly just a terrible person who
deserves all the hate? Let us know in the comments.
