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Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed
many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the photograph, the
motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. He was one of the
first inventors who applied the principles of mass production and teamwork to the
process of invention. He created the first industrial research laboratory. He had a great
number of patents in the USA, the UK, France and Germany.
Thomas Edison was born in Ohio, and grew up in Michigan. He was the seventh
child. In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher called his
"addled". This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later: "
My mother made me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had something to live
for, someone I must not disappoint." His mum taught him at home. Much of his
education came from reading Parker's School of Natural Philosophy.
Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness was
scarlet fever during childhood but his story was different: a train conductor struck his
ears when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire. Later he used to say the injury
had occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted hum be the
ears. However, the injury didn't keep him from research.
His family wasn't rich. Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from
Port Huron to Detroit, and sold vegetables. He also studied qualitative analysis, and
conducted chemical experiments on the train until an accident made further work on the
kind impossible. Edison got the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with
the aid of 4 assistants, he set and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his
other papers. Thus he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually
led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the
largest companies in the world.
The invention that first gained him notice was the photograph in 1877. That was so
unexpected it seemed almost magical. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison
sold it to Western Union that gave him a chance to set up the company Menlo Park.
Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many
employees carried out rescarch and development under his direction ​

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