Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison is an American inventer with 1,093 patents in the US and 2332 in the world, making him one of the greatest inventors of all time (4th most patents in the world). He is most famous for his invention of the light bulb, the motion picture recorder, and the phonograph. He made great improvements in the field of Electrical Engineering.

Early Life
Thomas Edison was born in Ohio, but moved to Michigan, where he was brought up. As with most geniuses, his teacher hated him and he was taken out of school after three months. Most of his education came from reading books. He went deaf in one ear due to scarlet fever and untreated ear infections, but he told people it was because a conductor yanked him onto a train by his ear (actually, the conductor threw him out by the ear after he accidentally started a chemical fire on the train). He worked at a train station, selling candy and newspapers.

Life Before Inventing
After saving a 3 year old boy from being hit by a train, the boy's father was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. He moved to Louisville, Kentucky and worked for Western Union. He lost his job when he was experimenting with a lead acid battery on the job and it spilled onto his boss' desk. He was fired the next morning. In 1871 he met a shop assistant named Mary Stilwell and married her in 1871. They had 3 children, but she died in 1884. He married Mina Miller in 1886.

Inventive Career
Thomas Edison moved to New Jersey and started his career in Newark. He first worked on various devices for and improvements on the telegraph. His first truly original invention was the phonograph, a device that could play back sounds after they were recorded. After this, he started a laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. While most of the inventions he patented were successful, his most famous invention was the practical incandescent light bulb. It was not the first light bulb, but it was the first one that could run for hundreds of hours, be produced cheaply, and would not be dangerous to handle. His vast improvement to electric lighting gained him widespread fame, and only added to his image as the "Wizard of Menlo Park". One lesser know invention of his was the first "video camera", know as the kinetograph. It could take one minute of soundless video only, but was revolutionary for its time. His career and inventions did have one major flaw, however. He supported the low distance low voltage DC current of the high voltage long distance AC current. Much of his time was spent trying to discredit AC current and promote DC current. AC current was eventually proven to be superior to DC current, but DC current is still used in some situations today. he ran his business until his death in 1931.