today we're looking at thomas edison
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where you'll find more resources that go with many of the bellringer videos thomas edison was
an american inventor who was a pioneer in the use of electrical power he was one of the first
to use the idea of organized science working with research teams to develop new innovations some of
the inventions he and his teams developed were the phonograph or basically the record player
motion picture cameras and of course the light bulb edison was born february 11 1847 in milan
ohio but spent his childhood growing up in port euron michigan he was the youngest of
seven children he only attended school for a short time as his mother was a former school teacher and
basically homeschooled him from a very young age edison was fascinated with new technologies and
was constantly conducting his own home experiments a passion he carried with him for his entire life
at the age of 12 edison suffered a terrible fever and ear infection which made him go completely
deaf in one ear and he could barely hear out of the other interestingly edison later attributed
his inability to hear as one of the key reasons for a success as he said it helped him to focus
more and avoid distractions when working on new inventions as a teenager edison learned
to be a telegraph operator and at the age of 19 in 1866 he moved to louisville kentucky where he
monitored the telegraph for the western union but he was fired from that job for conducting battery
experiments while at work and he spilled sulfuric acid on his boss's desk in 1869 edison received
his first patent for an electric vote recorder a patent is a is authority given by the government
to an inventor to be the sole or only person with the right to make or use their invention or
profit from it and patents are usually for a set amount of time and later other companies or people
can copy the invention edison would go on to receive over one thousand patents during his
career soon after edison moved to new york city and worked as an electrical engineer continually
working on more inventions on christmas day 1871 edison who was 24 years old married mary stillwell
who was only 16. they would go on to have three children together but it was during this time he
developed a new telegraph system that allowed for multiple messages to be sent at one time
western union bought the invention for ten thousand dollars which would be over two
hundred thousand dollars in today's money in 1876 edison used that money to open the first
industrial research laboratory in america located at menlo park new jersey edison was now running a
business with a staff of other inventors whose primary objective was to conduct research and
develop new technologies legally any invention coming out of the menlo park lab would be patented
to edison's name and edison worked feverishly his average work day was 16 hours and he became known
as the wizard of menlow park as the laboratory began to develop amazing new technologies
edison's first invention that gained him public fame was the phonograph which could record and
play back sound in 1878 edison traveled to washington d.c and demonstrated the device
for president rutherford b hayes in 1879 edison demonstrated what many attribute as his greatest
invention the incandescent light bulb although i must note edison did not invent the light bulb
british inventor warren de la rue actually made a light bulb in 1840 but it was too expensive
to mass produce what edison and his team of researchers did was develop a light bulb that
was economical and could be mass-produced by 1880 edison founded the edison illuminating company
which began to develop and install a system of distributing electricity to homes and businesses
in 1884 thomas edison's wife mary died at the age of 29 from what is to believe to have
been a brain tumor edison remarried two years later to meena miller and together they would
have three children by the early 1890s edison's laboratory introduced the first motion picture
camera which they called the kinetograph the device was only capable of recording short
clips but soon after edison opened edison studios which was america's first film production company
as technology improved longer and longer films were able to be recorded edison's technologies
extended into the development of batteries x-rays communications chemicals and even developing tires
for newly introduced automobiles edison spent his final years continuing to invent an experiment
splitting his time between his home in new jersey and his winter retreat in fort myers florida
thomas edison died october 18 1931 at his glen mount estate in west orange new jersey
he was 84 years old so with that hopefully you learned something and thanks for watching
you