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    Edison, Thomas Alva (1847–1931)

    Thomas Alva Edison
    American inventor, probably the greatest of all time with over 1,300 patents to his name. His first successful invention, an improved stock-ticker (1869), earned him the capital to set up as a manufacturer of telegraphic apparatus. He then developed the diplex method of telegraphy which allow one wire to carry four messages at once. Moving to a new "invention factory" (the first large-scale industrial research laboratory) at Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876, he devised the carbon transmitter and a new receiver which made Alexander Graham Bell's telephone commercially practical. His tin-foil phonograph followed in 1877 and in the next year he started to work toward devising a practical incandescent light bulb. By 1879 he had produced the carbon-filament bulb and electric lighting became a reality, though it was not until 1882 that his first public generating station was supplying power to 85 customers in New York.

    Moving his laboratories to West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887 he set about devising a motion-picture system (ready by 1889) though he failed to exploit its entertainment potential. In 1892 most of his companies were merged into the General Electric Company (GEC). During World War I Edison worked for the US government on antisubmarine weapons.

    In all his career he made only one important scientific discovery, the Edison effect – the ability of electricity to flow from a hot filament in a vacuum lamp to another enclosed wire but not the reverse (1883) – and, because he saw no use for it, he failed to pursue the matter. His success was probably more due to perseverance than any special insight; as he himself said: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."


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