When we think of Thomas Edison, we think of his inventions and his "war" with Tesla. This "war" is more of a struggle for technological innovation than a war in the literal sense: The rivalry between the two geniuses is centered around who will light the world: Edison's direct current (DC) system versus Tesla's alternating current (AC) system... People who want to be on either side of this conflict often defend Tesla on the oppressed and aggrieved side; but this strong fanaticism, sometimes exaggerated, also creates some injustices against Edison.
Edison is
a successful inventor who has devoted his whole life to scientific inventions
and is also a businessman. This latter feature has caused him to turn science
into a trading machine and has lost the respect of the public in modern times.
However, Thomas Alva Edison was seen as one of the most famous and greatest
inventors of his age, and the engineers working in his companies were perhaps
able to achieve success that they could only see in their dreams.
Edison was
granted 1093 patents in the history of the USA, and even after his death in
1931, no one could break this record for almost a century. - until that record
was broken in 2003 by Japanese inventor Shunpei Yamazaki. The inventions of
Edison and his team literally "changed our world". Edison-related
patents also include the phonograph, motion picture camera, and incandescent
light bulb. His inventions of the telegraph and telephone communications made
important contributions to many technologies.
In this
article, we will also include the conflicts between Edison and Tesla, but most
importantly, we will try to introduce Edison independently by examining his
contributions to the history of science and his life. Historian Keith Nier has
this to say about Edison:
He's
actually one of the least known of all famous people, and most of what everyone
thinks they know about him is no more credible than a fairy tale.
This chart shows the annual number of
successful U.S. patent applications Edison has filed. At the height of his work
on electricity in 1882, he completed 106 successful patents. Rutgers University
Edison's Childhood and Adolescence
Thomas
Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, a village in Ohio, USA.. He
was the youngest of seven children of Samuel and Nancy Edison. His father was a
political activist exiled from Canada, while his mother was a successful school
teacher. Edison, who suffered from ear infections and febrile illness at an
early age, had difficulty hearing in both ears, which left him almost deaf in
his adulthood.
Edison,
who moved to Port Huron, Michigan at the age of 7, attended a school for 12
weeks; but he was described as a "difficult student" by his teachers.
Thereupon, his mother took Edison from school and started homeschooling.
Edison's interests were greatly expanded by his mother, and Edison was able to
learn to educate himself independently of educational institutions. Edison says
the following about his mother:
My mother
made me over. He understood me; allowed me to follow my inclinations.
At the age
of 12, he began selling newspapers to passengers along the Grand Trunk Railroad
line, and soon began publishing his own little newspaper, the Grand Trunk
Herald. The current articles he published attracted great attention from the
passengers.
Thomas
Edison, who was clear from an early age that he would become a successful
businessman, was 14 years old.
Edison,
who spent most of his free time reading scientific and technical books, also
had the opportunity to learn how to operate the telegraph. By the age of
sixteen he was proficient enough to work as a full-time telegrapher.
Edison was
so good at using the telegraph that he got a job as a telegrapher sending
signals between the United States and Canada. He began to look for ways to
improve the telegraph; this seemed to indicate that Edison would devote himself
to invention. Edison worked in many cities in the United States before coming
to Boston in 1868, at the age of 21. He started to progress confidently from
telegraphy to inventor.
In 1871,
Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, who was working in one of his
businesses. During their 13-year marriage, they had three children, Thomas, Marion,
and William. Mary died of suspected brain tumor in 1884 at the age of 29 (the
exact cause of death is unknown). Two years later, Edison married Mina Miller,
who was 19 years younger than him.
Thomas Edison's Inventions and Contributions to Inventions
Edison
moved to New York in 1869. Continuing to work on inventions related to the
telegraph, Edison developed his first successful invention, an advanced card
stock called the Universal Stock Printer. With the money he earned from here,
he managed to establish a laboratory where he could accelerate his inventions.
First Successful Patent: Electric Vote Recorder
Edison was
a 21-year-old telegraph operator when he received his first patent for a
machine he called the electric vote recorder. Washington, D.C. He was
encouraged by news that the City Council was planning to install an electric
vote recorder, and that the New York State legislature was considering it too.
In Edison's system, he transmitted a signal to a central recording device that
listed the members' names in two metal columns titled "Yes" and
"NoThe registrar would then place a chemically prepared sheet of paper
over the pillars, moving a metal cylinder over the paper.
As the
current passed through the paper, the chemicals decomposed, leaving a trail
similar to automatic telegraphs. Scales on both sides of the machine recorded
the total number of "yes" and "no".
However, the chairman of the committee was
not impressed with the speed with which the instrument recorded the votes.
Edison's vote recorder was never used.
His First Great Invention: The Foil Phonograph
In
1876, Edison sold his entire manufacturing facility and moved his family and
ancillary staff to the small village of Menlo Park, twenty-five miles southwest
of New York. Edison built a new facility containing all the necessary equipment
to work on any invention. This research and development lab was the first of
its kind anywhere. It was here that Edison began to work on his inventions that
would change the world.
Edison's
first major invention, developed in this laboratory, was the foil phonograph.
It caused a sensation as it was the first machine to record and reproduce sound
and brought Edison international fame. Edison toured the country with a tin-foil phonograph
and was invited to the White House in April 1878 to show it to President
Rutherford B. Hayes. Also, Edison was nicknamed "The Wizard of Menlo
Park".
Incandescent Bulb
Although
Edison was not the inventor of the light bulb, he discovered the technology
that helped bring it to the masses. Edison strove to perfect a commercially
practical and efficient incandescent light bulb in the early 1800s after
British inventor Humphry Davy invented the first early electric arc lamp.
Scientists such as Warren de la Rue, Joseph Wilson Swan, Henry Woodward, and
Mathew Evans also tried to perfect Davy's invention, but their attempts were
unsuccessful.
From 1878
to 1880, Edison and his colleagues studied at least three thousand different
theories for a long time to develop an efficient incandescent lamp.
Incandescent lamps heat a thin strip of material (filament) enough to glow and
produce light.
Edison's
lamp would consist of a filament placed in a glass vacuum bulb. Edison was
trying to develop a high-resistance system that required much less electrical
power than that used for arc lamps. In January 1879, in his laboratory in Menlo
Park, New Jersey, Edison built the first high-resistance incandescent electric
light, but the lamp could burn for several hours. Tested thousands of other
materials to be used for filament. He even considered using tungsten, the metal
currently used for light bulb filaments; however, he was unable to work with it
due to the tools available at the time. If it were to work, perhaps it would
have accelerated the development of the modern light bulb by decades.
Edison
eventually began carbonizing the materials to be used for the filament. He
tested the charred filaments of every imaginable plant, including laurel,
boxwood, walnut, cedar, flax and bamboo. He even contacted biologists who would
send him plant fibers from the tropics.
Edison
decided to try carbonized cotton yarn. When voltage was applied to the bulb, it
would emit a soft orange light. After about fifteen hours, the thread finally
burned out. With further experimentation, it produced filaments that could burn
longer in each test. On January 27, 1880, the patent number 223,898 was awarded
to Edison's incandescent lamp.
Modern
Edison bulbs are designed to replicate the same light color and bulb shape to
offer a more efficient version. Modern tungsten coils are already more
efficient. These bulbs are also the same transparent looking and pear shaped to
preserve the old style of producing.
In January
1880, Edison began developing a company whose electricity would begin to
illuminate all the cities of the world, and founded the Edison Illuminating
Company, which would later be renamed General Electric. In 1881, he left Menlo
Park to set up facilities in several cities where electrical systems were
installed. General Electric grew to become the 14th largest US company by
revenue in 2011; however, it has performed somewhat poorly since then. Two of
General Electric's engineers (Irving Langmuir and Ivar Giaever) were awarded
the Nobel Prize.
In 1882,
Edison opened Pearl Street Station, the first modern electricity company, in
New York. Within a year of its opening, Pearl Street has served more than 500
customers, including The New York Times. Pearl Street offered both reliable
power generation (they only had a three-hour outage during its existence) and
efficient and secure distribution. It acted as a catalyst for cost-competitive
incandescent lighting.
Edison's Other Inventions and His Work as
a Businessman
Edison
established an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, in
1887. The size of the lab allowed Edison not only to work on any project, but
also to work on more than ten projects simultaneously. He spent most of his
time there overseeing the development of lighting technology and power systems.
Also during this period he further developed the phonograph, developed a motion
picture camera and an alkaline battery. This lab was too large and complex for
any person to fully handle, so Edison found that his new role was not as
successful as his old role.
In the
1890s, Edison began producing phonographs for both home and business use. In
the process of making the phonograph practical, Edison revolutionized the
field, creating the recording industry. The development and refinement of the
phonograph would be an ongoing project almost until Edison's death.
He
continued to work at this complex until his death in 1931; Facilities have been
added or changed to the lab to meet Edison's changing needs. Factories were
built around the lab that would produce Edison's inventions over the years. The
entire laboratory and factory complex eventually covered more than twenty acres
and employed 10,000 people during the First World War (1914-1918).
In
the 1890s, he built a magnetic iron ore processing plant in northern New
Jersey, which ended in a commercial failure. Later, he succeeded in making the
process a better method for producing cement.
Edison's Contribution to the History of
Cinema
Thomas
Edison said in 1888:
I am
experimenting with an instrument that does for the eye what the phonograph does
for the ear, for recording and reproducing things in motion.
Wanting to
provide a visual accompaniment to the phonograph, Edison commissioned a young
laboratory assistant, William Dickson, to invent a motion picture camera in
1888. Building on the work of Muybridge and Marey, Dickson combined the two
essential features of motion picture recording, recording and imaging
technology. In Edison's laboratory, the Kinetograph (cinema camera) and the
Kinetoscope (cinema viewer) were invented. Dickson's camera, the Kinetograph,
was initially printed on 15 meters of celluloid film at around 40 frames per
second.
The
imaging device Dickson designed, called the Kinetoscope, worked for imaging on
a continuous 14-metre loop of film on reels between an incandescent lamp and a
shutter. Beginning in 1894, Kinetoscopes were marketed commercially through the
firm of Raff and Gammon for $250 to $300. Kinetoscope, one of the important
inventions, was invented in 1891 by Thomas Edison and William Dickson.
Motion
pictures have become a successful entertainment industry in less than a decade.
Edison Manufacturing Co. (which would later become Thomas A. Edison, Inc.) not
only built a device for shooting and projecting motion pictures, but also
produced films for the public.
Many of
the earliest examples of films were films that featured celebrities, news
events, disasters, people at work, new styles of travel and technology, scenic
views, exhibitions, and other leisure activities. As the popularity of such
films waned, the company's productions shifted to comedies and dramas. Edison
was the first to design a motion picture, arranging the world's first motion
picture screening on April 23, 1896, at Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New
York City.
This
collection includes 341 Edison films; The first example is a camera test in
1891. Further tests followed, and a wide variety of productions were made until
1918, when Edison's company stopped making films.
Electric Car Battery
Thomas
Edison began developing an accumulator suitable for automobiles in 1899, just
four years after the gas-powered automobile was introduced. Edison believed
that an electric storage battery could be developed that was more economical
than gasoline.
To
compete with the gasoline-powered car, Edison was trying to make the electric
car a rechargeable, longer-lasting, lightweight accumulator that produced enough
power to allow the vehicle to travel long distances without recharging.
He
developed a nickel-alkaline battery that is more durable and far less
dangerous, as opposed to the lead-acid battery, which is very heavy and
requires a lot of maintenance. Unfortunately, the new battery was also larger
and more expensive than the traditional lead battery.
The timing
of Edison's invention was also unfortunate. In 1908, Henry Ford introduced the high-quality,
low-cost, gasoline-powered Model T, a year after he perfected the Edison
battery and two years before it was ready for large-scale production. The Model
T won the attention of the American public and ushered in the internal
combustion engine era. By 1912, the development of the electric starter for
gasoline vehicles, which replaced the crank, eliminated a serious advantage
that electric cars had over gasoline-powered cars, at least in the eyes of the
consumer. If Edison's timing and technology had been right, perhaps fossil
fuel-powered cars would never have been as popular, and the effects of global
warming would perhaps have been delayed for many more years.
Edison as Chairman of the Navy Advisory Board
As
the United States approached participation in World War I, the Navy Advisory
Board made an attempt to organize the talents of leading scientists and
inventors in the United States for the benefit of the American armed forces. Edison
accepted the appointment. During the war and at the age of seventy, Edison
spent several months in Long Island Sound on a borrowed navy ship to experiment
with techniques for detecting submarines.
Edison's Last Work
He
made his last invention in the late 1920s at the request of Henry Ford and
Harvey Firestone, who were good friends. Edison was asked to find an
alternative source of rubber for use in automobile tires. The natural rubber
used in tires until then came from the rubber tree, which did not grow in the
United States. Raw rubber had to be imported and was expensive. Edison tested
thousands of different plants and finally found a kind of grass that could
produce enough rubber to be viable. Edison was still working on this before he
died. (goldenrod).
During the
last two years of his life, Edison's health gradually deteriorated. Instead,
Edison spent more time away from the lab, working at Glenmont. He started
staying more at his vacation home in Fort Myers, Florida. Edison was past
eighty and suffered from a number of ailments; He died on October 18, 1931.
What Happened Between Edison and Tesla?
Nikola
Tesla and Thomas Edison are two electrical engineering giants whose inventions
changed history. However, the disagreements and injustices called
"war" between the two caused unpleasant thoughts. Edison is often
referred to for his material and moral evils to Nikola Tesla. However, to
mention Edison only with this feature would be as unfair as the injustice he
did to Tesla.
The battle
between Edison and Tesla is over who will light up the world in the 1880s.
Edison's direct current (DC) system faced off against Tesla's alternating
current (AC) system. The inventor of the alternating current (AC) motor was
Nikola Tesla. Edison Electric Light Company was running a campaign against AC.
Direct current (DC) systems were losing market share to Tesla's friends at Westinghouse
Electric Company, and in response the Edison group had decided to question the
safety of AC through sensational stories in the newspapers. Tesla, on the other
hand, was trying to neutralize the negative publicity.
In the
late 1880s, when electrical technology was in the image of the "Wild
West", no one knew which system would be more successful. The race between
these two inventions was resolved by rational means. After all, one invention
might be cheaper than another, while the other was acceptable because it was
safer than the alternative. AC eventually won this war because of its ability
to distribute electrical power widely and cheaply.
Conclusion
Thomas
Edison packed 1093 successful patents (alone or together) in his 84-year life;
the phonograph, incandescent light bulb, and motion picture camera lead these
patents. He received his first patent, the Electric Vote Recorder, on October
13, 1868, when he was just 21 years old. His latest patent developed an apparatus
for holding objects during the electroplating process. He also established the
world's first industrial research laboratory, which will provide an environment
for important research. Edison, known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park"
of the town of New Jersey, was a successful manufacturer and businessman who
was highly skilled in marketing these inventions to the public in addition to
his inventions.
Edison was
also keen on clean energy technologies that would protect the environment; He
was designing small-scale wind-powered prototypes that would generate
electricity. The house he named "Twentieth Century Suburban
Residence" in 1912 was self-sufficient in terms of energy. Every appliance
and system in the house was powered by Edison batteries and a small-scale
electric generator. The New York Times writes that, towards the end of his
life, Edison said to his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone:
I can
invest all my money in solar energy. What a power source! I hope we don't have
to wait for oil and coal resources to run out before we achieve this.
Edison's inventions
continue to influence our lives. In recent years, Edison's battery has come to
the fore again. In 2012, scientists at Stanford University developed a
high-performance, low-cost version of the nickel-iron battery Edison had
developed more than a century ago. The prototype battery developed by the
researchers could be used to power electric vehicles, as Edison originally
envisioned.
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