Edison Electric Light Company In 1878 example essay topic

Thomas Alva Edison was one of America's most important and famous inventors. Edison invented and improved upon things that changed our world. Some of the things he invented, he did by himself. Some he did with other people. Just about all his inventions are still around today and are commonly used.

Thomas Edison is was an individual whose actions have made a significant contribution to life in America. "In 1868 Edison made his first patented invention, the Electrical Vote Recorder" (Silverberg 45). This invention would save hours through the elimination of roll-calls, while the voice vote would no longer be used. "On borrowed money Edison went to Washington to offer his vote-counter to Congress" (Silverberg 45).

Congress was not interested in purchasing this because it counted votes too quickly. Edison then vowed he would never again invent anything unless there was a commercial demand for it. In 1870 "Edison contrived a new version of the stock ticker that used small relay magnets and an electrically driven escapement to drive the printing wheel" (Silverberg 52). Edison sold his Universal Stock Ticker to General Lefferts, the head of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. Edison sold his invention to Lefferts for forty thousand dollars. Edison used the money to set up his first business in Newark, New Jersey.

In Newark, Edison built stock tickers and high-speed printing telegraphs. He also improved on the typewriter that had been slower than writing by hand. "By 1875 Edison had come to be dissatisfied with the Newark operation" (Silverberg 61). Closing out the Newark factory, Edison bought a hilltop site at an isolated spot called Menlo Park.

"Considered his most original invention, Edison patented the phonograph in 1878" (Ellis 37). Edison sketched his new idea and handed it to a man who worked in his shop, John Kure si, and he made the machine. "Edison wrapped a thin sheet of tin foil around cylinder, leaned toward the diaphragm tube, began to turn the handle, and bellowed into the tube the nursery jingle, "Mary had a little lamb" (Silverberg 66). To everyone's amazement the machine repeated the words exactly. The reproduction of the phonograph was poor, so Edison turned his attention to other things. In 1879, Edison decided he would invent a safe, mild, and inexpensive electric light.

Edison searched for the proper filament or wire that would give bright light when electricity flowed through it. Edison sent people to the jungles of the Amazon and forests of Japan in search of a perfect filament material. He tested more than six thousand vegetable growths as filament material. After spending forty thousand dollars and performing one thousand-two hundred experiments, Edison succeeded. "He made a light bulb using carbonized filaments from cotton thread" (Ellis 46). The light bulb burned for two days.

Edison made the first large power station on Pearl Street in New York City in 1882. The station's steam-driven generators of nine hundred horsepower gave enough power for seven thousand two hundred lamps. The success of this station led to the construction of many other power stations. "Edison founded The Edison Electric Light Company in 1878, which eventually merged with other companies into the General Electric Company in 1892, on of the largest U.S. manufacturers" (Ellis 54). The company is still around today. Edison's ideas combined with George Eastman's development of photographic film, eventually led to the multibillion dollar motion picture industry of today.

At first, the movies were crude, silent, and only about forty to eighty seconds long. An Edison employee, Fred Ott, was the first motion picture "star" having the lead part in the first picture, "The Record of a Sneeze", made in the Black Maria, Edison's mobile motion picture studio. "As the sun was the primary source of lighting for the filming, the Black Maria was built on a circular track so that it could easily be turned to face the sun" (Ellis 79). "Edison was almost eighty when he resigned from his companies" (Silverberg 85). "On 17th October, 1931, Edison fell into a coma" (Jones 168). The next day he died, at the age of eighty-four.

Edison is credited with holding one thousand-ninety three patents and is the only person in America to have patents granted every year for sixty-five consecutive years, 1868 to 1933.

Bibliography

Ellis, Keith. Thomas Edison: Genius of Electricity. Great Britain: Priority Press Limited, 1974.
Jones, Francis. Thomas Alva Edison: Sixty Years of an Inventor's Life. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1908.
Silverberg, Robert. Light for the World: Edison and the Power Industry. New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1967.