J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilts).
Edison wired his lights by
parallel circuit, which causes the
current to divide among alternative paths.
In parallel circuits, the failure of one light
bulb does not cause a circuit to fail, which
happens to lamps wired in
series. On
December 31,
1879, Edison demonstrated
incandescent lighting to the public for the
first time with some fanfare in Menlo Park, New
Jersey. On
January 27, 1880 he filed a patent in the
United States for the electric incandescent
lamp. On
February_13,
1880, Edison became the first person to
observe the
Edison Effect. On
October 8,
1883 the U.S. patent office ruled that
Edison's patent was based on the work of William
Sawyer and was invalid.
In
1880, Thomas Edison patented electric distribution
system. The first investor-owned electric
utility was the
1882 Pearl Street Station,
New York City. On
January 25,
1881, Edison and
Alexander Graham Bell formed the
Oriental Telephone Company. On
September 4,
1882, Edison switched on the world's first
electrical power distribution system, providing
110 volts
direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower
Manhattan, around his Pearl Street
laboratory. On
January 19,
1883 the first standardized electric
lighting system employing overhead wires began
service in
Roselle, New Jersey.
Litigation continued until on
October 6,
1889, a judge ruled that Edison's electric
light improvement claim for "a filament of
carbon of high resistance" was valid. Research
exposed in "A Streak of Luck" by Robert Conot (1979),
shows that Edison and his attorneys hid
significant information from the judge, they cut
out the October 7-21, 1879 section of a
notebook. Edison failed to patent the light bulb
in the United Kingdom. After losing a court
battle with Swan, they formed a joint company
(Ediswan) to market the invention. This company
and its technological heritage became a part of
General Electric in 1892.
Much of the work leading to the improvement
of the lightbulb was done by one of Edison's
assistants,
Lewis Latimer, an
African American.
During the initial years of
electricity distribution, Edison's
direct current was the standard for the
United States and Edison was not disposed to
lose all his patent royalties. During the
commonly referred to "War of Currents"
era, Austrian immigrant
Nikola Tesla and Edison became adversaries
due to Edison's promotion of DC for electric
power distribution over the more efficient
alternating current advocated by Tesla, who
patented AC in Graz, Austria. Edison (or,
reportedly, one of his employees) employed the
tactics of misusing Tesla's patents to construct
the first
electric chair for the state of
New York in order to promote the idea that
alternating current was deadly. Popular myth has
it that Edison invented the
electric chair, despite being against
capital punishment, solely as a means of
impressing the public that
alternating current was more dangerous than
direct current, and would therefore be the
logical choice for electrocutions. In fact, the
chair was primarily invented by a few of his
employees, in particular
Harold P. Brown, working at Menlo Park
(though Edison certainly monitored their
operations).
[1]
Thomas Edison went on to carry out a campaign to
discourage the use of alternating current, what
today would be commonly referred to as
FUD. Edison did preside personally over
several executions of animals, primarily stray
cats and dogs, for the benefit of the press to
prove that his inferior system of direct current
was safer than that of
alternating current. Edison's series of
animal executions peaked with the electrocution
of
Topsy the Elephant. Ironically, Edison was
against
capital punishment, but his desire to
disparage the superior system of alternating
current led to the invention of one of the
world's most recognizable killing devices.
Many of Edison's inventions using direct
current ultimately lost to alternating current
devices proposed by others: primarily Tesla's
polyphase systems and other contributors, such
as
Charles Proteus Steinmetz (of
General Electric). AC distribution systems
replaced DC, enormously extending the range and
improving the safety and efficiency of power
distribution. Since the
1950s, High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC)
transmission systems have become more common in
certain situations. HVDC systems are presently
used for some specialised applications like the
underwater interconnection of Power Systems.
As exemplified by the light bulb story, most
of Edison's inventions were improvements of
ideas by others, achieved through a diligent and
industrial approach and team-based development.
He was the undisputed head of the team which
usually did not share credit for the inventions.
He himself said: "invention is 1% of inspiration
and 99% of transpiration."
Nikola Tesla, possibly Edison's most famous
employee and great scientist in his own right,
said about Edison's method of problem-solving:
"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack,
he would proceed at once with the diligence of
the bee to examine straw after straw until he
found the object of his search. I was a sorry
witness of such doings, knowing that a little
theory and calculation would have saved him
ninety per cent of his labor."
At a meeting in late
1885, of Edison, Edward H. Johnson
(President of the Edison Illuminating Company),
Charles Batchellor (Manager of the Edison works)
and Nikola Tesla, one of the group suggested
guessing weights and Tesla was induced to step
on a scale. Edison guessed that Tesla weighed
152 pounds, to an ounce. Johnson confidentially
related to Tesla that Edison could guess
individuals' weight as he had developed the
skill when he was employed for a long time in a
Chicago slaughter-house where he weighed
thousands of hogs every day.
[1]
Initially, it was believed that Thomas Edison
invented the motion picture camera, but it has
since been proven that
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson actually
invented it at the Edison laboratories. However,
Edison's influence on the history of film
stretches beyond that of instigator. He became a
powerhouse of film production and must be given
credit for establishing the standard of using
35mm celluloid film with 4 perforations on the
edge of each frame that allowed film to emerge
as a mass medium and not just a vaudeville
novelty. He built what has been called the first
movie studio, the Black Maria in New Jersey.
Here he made the first copyrighted film,
Fred Ott's Sneeze.
His inventions benefited people world wide
and in
1878, he was appointed Chevalier of the
Legion of Honor of
France and in
1889 was made Commander of the Legion of
Honor.
On
September 30,
1890, Edison obtained patent US437422 for
telegraphy, US437423, US437424, US437426 for
the
phonograph, US437425 for a phonograph-recorder,
US437427 for a "Method of Making Phonograph
Blanks", US437428 for a "Propelling
Device for Electrical Cars", and US437429
for a phonogram blank.
In
1891, Thomas Edison built a
Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This
device was installed in penny arcades where
people could watch short, simple films. This was
important to Thomas Edison especially because he
had been searching for a way to entertain
customers that were listening to music on his
phonograph. Now, people could go to a penny
arcade, put in a coin, put on the headphones and
watch a film through the peep-hole. Later that
same year, on
December 29th, Edison patented the
radio ("transmission of signals
electrically").
On
August 9,
1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way
telegraph.
In
West Orange, New Jersey on
February 1,
1893 Edison finished construction of "Black
Maria", the first
motion picture studio. However, a
United States court of appeals ruled on
March 10,
1902 that Edison did not invent the
movie camera and thus could not exercise
monopoly power over its use (see Edison v.
American Mutoscope). In
1894, Edison experiments with synchronizing
audio with film; the Kinetophone was invented
which loosely synchronizes a
Kinetoscope image with a cylinder
phonograph. In
April of
1896, Edison and Thomas Armat's Vitascope
were used to project
motion pictures in public screenings in New
York City.
Thomas Edison submitted his last
patent application, "Holder for Article
to be Electroplated", on
January 6,
1931 and died later that year. The patent
was granted two years later in 1933.
He was married twice, the first time in
1871 to Mary Stilwell (1855-1884),
with whom he had three children - Marion
Estelle, Thomas Jr., and William Leslie - before
she died at age 29, probably of
typhoid fever. His second marriage was to
Mina Miller (1865-1946),
also with three children, Madeleine,
Charles (who took over the company), and
Theodore Miller. Thomas Edison was an
atheist.
List of contributions
Phonograph
Kinetoscope
dictaphone
radio
electric bulb
autographic printer
tattoo gun
Improvements of Edison's work
Lewis Latimer patented an improved
method of producing the filament in light
bulbs.
George Westinghouse developed
alternating current distribution, which
could be used to transmit electricity over
longer distance than Edison's
direct current due to the ability to
transform the voltage.
