Thomas Edison

He married twice in his lifetime. His first marriage was to Mary Stilwell in 1871, who bore him three children. After the tragic death of his wife in 1884, he tied the knot for the second time two years to Mina Miller. The couple had three children.

He breathed his last on October 18, 1931 after suffering from complications of diabetes. He was buried behind his home in Glenmont, West Orange, New Jersey.

His death was mourned by people across the globe, who dimmed or turned off their electrical power to commemorate his death.

Born to Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr and Nancy Matthews Elliott, Thomas Edison was the youngest of the seven children of the couple. While his father was an exiled political activist, his mother was employed as a teacher.

Interestingly, young Edison received his formal education for just about 12 weeks. Thereafter, it was his mother who took the responsibility of teaching him at home. A voracious reader, he read a wide range of subjects and soon developed the habit of self-education.

Since an early age, he had developed hearing difficulties which increased with age and by the middle years he was almost deaf. Scarlet fever is attributed to be the cause of this deafness.

During his early years, he sold newspapers to passengers travelling along the Grand Trunk Railroad line. The access to up-to-date information led him to start off his own newspaper, Grand Trunk Herald, which became quite a hit with the masses. Also, it was his first of the many more to come business ventures.

In addition to selling newspapers, he set up a small laboratory and conducted chemical experiments in one of the baggage cars of the train. Unfortunately, one experiment went wrong and resulted in the car catching fire. This temporarily ended his pursuits.

He moved to New York, where he began his career as an inventor. One of his earliest inventions was a stock ticker. Impressed by the working of the machine, the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company offered him $40,000 for the rights. In 1869, he patented the electric vote recorder, his first in a long list to follow.

He then relocated to Newark, New Jersey, where he set up a small laboratory and employed machinist. The decade of 1870s was devoted to conducting experiments on the telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and other developing inventions.

He expanded his operation and moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey. The one invention that brought him his first round of fame and catapulted his status to greater heights was the phonograph, invented in 1877. The device assisted in recording sound but had loopholes due to which he continued to work on it until the next decade when the ‘Perfected Phonograph’ was finally made available.

The financial gain from selling the quadruplex telegraph to Western Union not only helped him achieve his first monetary success, but assisted him in setting up the laboratory of Menlo Park for achieving greater technological advancements and innovation.

In 1877, he invented the carbon microphone used in telephones, radio broadcasting and public address works.

He is credited with 1093 US patents and is accredited with numerous inventions that contributed greatly in mass communications and telecommunications. Amongst his long list of discoveries, the most notable ones are stock ticker, phonograph, first practical electric light bulb, motion picture camera, mechanical vote recorder and a battery for an electric car.