Thomas Edison 

By on

American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. He was the youngest of seven children and received little formal schooling. Most of his education happened at home under the care of his mother, Nancy.

When he was young, Edison suffered from a bout of scarlet fever that left him with permanent hearing problems. In his late teens he was trained as a telegraph operator by a thankful station master whose son Edison had saved from being run over by a train.

At the age of 24, Edison married Mary Stillwell. Together they had three children, Marion (nicknamed "Dot"), Thomas Jr. (nicknamed "Dash"), and William before Mary died in 1884 from a brain tumor. He later remarried to Mina Miller who gave birth to Edison's younger children, Madeleine and Charles.

Edison possessed extensive entrepreneurial skills which led him to found more than a dozen companies, among them General Electric. His first patent was for inventing an electric vote recorder. However, the device was a commercial failure. It wasn't until he created a highly improved stock ticker that Edison began to make money from his inventions. His most famous and successful inventions, many of which were developed in his personal laboratory at Menlo Park, include the phonograph and the incandescent light bulb.

Thomas Edison died at the age of 84 on October 18, 1931. At his time of death, he held more than 1,000 U.S. patents in his name. In 1983, Congress designated Edison's birthday as National Inventor's Day.

Related Links

Our Wiki page on Thomas Edison



More interesting Notes:
Steven McFadyen's avatar Steven McFadyen

Steven has over twenty five years experience working on some of the largest construction projects. He has a deep technical understanding of electrical engineering and is keen to share this knowledge. About the author

myElectrical Engineering

comments powered by Disqus



IEEE Winds of Change

IEEE TV has a part series of videos on wind power and it's implication. For a really good overview to the technologies and issues around wind power, these...

How Electrical Circuits Work

If you have no idea how electrical circuits work, or what people mean then they talk about volts and amps, hopefully I can shed a bit light.  I’m intending...

Random Numbers

Using laser optical pulses the random number generator utilizes the time between arrival of random photos to generate the numbers, ensuring true accuracy...

Closed Doors

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong...

Frame Leakage Protection

While not as popular as it once was, frame leakage protection does still have some use in some circumstances.  In essence frame leakage is an earth fault...

Skin Tapping Input

Tapping your forearm or hand with a finger could soon be the way you interact with gadgets. A new technology created by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon ...

Our internet address and Vanity URLs

Visitors who like to type web address rather then click menus may be interested in how our URL structure works.

Fault Calculation - Symmetrical Components

For unbalance conditions the calculation of fault currents is more complex. One method of dealing with this is symmetrical components. Using symmetrical...

Voltage Levels – Confused?

I was having a conversation the other day about voltage levels.  While everyone was in agreement that low voltage was 1000 V and less, there was more confusion...

3 Phase Loads

Three phase systems are derived from three separate windings, either connected in delta or star (wye). Each winding can be treated separately, leading...

Have some knowledge to share

If you have some expert knowledge or experience, why not consider sharing this with our community.  

By writing an electrical note, you will be educating our users and at the same time promoting your expertise within the engineering community.

To get started and understand our policy, you can read our How to Write an Electrical Note