Edison Essay, Research Paper

Edison

A Biography by

Matthew Josephson

Matthew Josephson does an excellent job of covering the life and works of Thomas Alva Edison. The author of the book covered every aspect of Thomas Edison?s life from the time his grandparent?s lived in the original Thirteen colonies to the point where he was born in Milan, Ohio and later up to the point where he died in 1931. Thomas Alva Edison was both a scientist and an inventor. When he was born in 1847, Edison would see tremendous change take place in his lifetime. He was also to be responsible for making many of those changes occur. When Edison was born, society still thought of electricity as a novelty, a fad. By the time he died, entire cities were lit by electricity. Much of the credit for that progress goes to Edison. In his lifetime, Edison patented 1,093 inventions, earning him the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”

The most famous of his inventions was the incandescent light bulb. hich was quite a time consuming process and quite interesting how Thomas Edison went about finding the right fiber for his incandescent bulb. He went so far as to send people around the world after various fibers to be tested as possible fibers for his light bulb. Besides the light bulb, Edison developed the phonograph and the “kinetoscope,” a small box for viewing moving films. Thomas Edison is also the first person in the US to make his own filmstrip. He also improved upon the original design of the stock ticker, the telegraph, and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. He believed in hard work, sometimes working twenty hours a day or more, depending upon the situation. He has been know to spend several days working on I project without sleep until it worked. Edison was quoted as saying, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” In tribute to this important American, electric lights in the United States were dimmed for one minute on October 21, 1931, a few days after his death.