How many times thomas alva edison

According to DeGraaf, Edison was handling the thin diaphragm the early telephone used to convert words into electromagnetic waves and wondered if reversing the process would allow him to play the words back.

It worked. At first, Edison modeled the invention on spools of paper tape or grooved paper discs, but eventually moved on to a tinfoil disc. He developed a hand-cranked machine called the tinfoil phonograph; as he spoke into the machine and cranked the handle, metal points traced grooves into the disc.

When he returned the disc to the starting point and cranked the handle again, his voice rang back from the machine. Reporters and scientists were blown away by the invention; DeGraaf argues it helped make Edison a household name. He took the device to demonstrations up and down the East Coast—even making a midnight visit to President Rutherford B.

Hayes at the White House—and eventually organized exhibitions across the country. Edison imagined music boxes, talking clocks and dolls, speech education tools and talking books for the blind.

But without a clear marketing strategy, the device did not have a target purpose or audience. The machine also took skill and patience. When Edison revisited the machine 10 years later, he was more involved in both the marketing and the medium—which he eventually changed to a wax cylinder— and his invention took off. When he opened a lab in West Orange, New Jersey, in late , Edison decided he wanted to turn out new inventions quickly and hand them over to factories to be manufactured and sold; what he earned from those sales would be put back into the lab.

Among the first of these attempts was the talking doll. Edison crafted a smaller version of his phonograph and put it inside dolls he imported from Germany. He hoped to have the doll ready for Christmas , but production issues kept the toys from hitting the market until March Consumers complained they were too fragile and broke easily in the hands of young girls; even the slightest bump down the stairs could cause the mechanism to come loose.

Edison reacted quickly—by April, less than a month after they were first shipped to consumers, the dolls were off the market. For years, Edison corresponded with miners throughout the United States. The deposits of ore along the East Coast, Ohio and Pennsylvania were littered with nonferrous rock that had to be removed before the ore was smelted, DeGraaf explains. In , Edison envisioned an ore separator with powerful electromagnets that could parse the fine ore particles from rocks, depositing them into two different bins.

By age 15, he had learned enough to be employed as a telegraph operator. For the next five years, Edison traveled throughout the Midwest as an itinerant telegrapher, subbing for those who had gone to the Civil War. In his spare time, he read widely, studied and experimented with telegraph technology, and became familiar with electrical science. The night shift allowed him to spend most of his time reading and experimenting.

He developed an unrestricted style of thinking and inquiry, proving things to himself through objective examination and experimentation. Initially, Edison excelled at his telegraph job because early Morse code was inscribed on a piece of paper, so Edison's partial deafness was no handicap.

However, as the technology advanced, receivers were increasingly equipped with a sounding key, enabling telegraphers to "read" message by the sound of the clicks. This left Edison disadvantaged, with fewer and fewer opportunities for employment.

In , Edison returned home to find his beloved mother was falling into mental illness and his father was out of work. The family was almost destitute. Edison realized he needed to take control of his future.

Upon the suggestion of a friend, he ventured to Boston, landing a job for the Western Union Company. At the time, Boston was America's center for science and culture, and Edison reveled in it. In his spare time, he designed and patented an electronic voting recorder for quickly tallying votes in the legislature. However, Massachusetts lawmakers were not interested.

As they explained, most legislators didn't want votes tallied quickly. They wanted time to change the minds of fellow legislators. In Edison married year-old Mary Stilwell, who was an employee at one of his businesses. During their year marriage, they had three children, Marion, Thomas and William, who himself became an inventor. In , Mary died at the age of 29 of a suspected brain tumor.

Two years later, Edison married Mina Miller, 19 years his junior. In , at 22 years old, Edison moved to New York City and developed his first invention, an improved stock ticker called the Universal Stock Printer, which synchronized several stock tickers' transactions.

With this success, he quit his work as a telegrapher to devote himself full-time to inventing. By the early s, Edison had acquired a reputation as a first-rate inventor. In , he set up his first small laboratory and manufacturing facility in Newark, New Jersey, and employed several machinists. As an independent entrepreneur, Edison formed numerous partnerships and developed products for the highest bidder. Often that was Western Union Telegraph Company, the industry leader, but just as often, it was one of Western Union's rivals.

In , Edison moved his expanding operations to Menlo Park, New Jersey, and built an independent industrial research facility incorporating machine shops and laboratories. That same year, Western Union encouraged him to develop a communication device to compete with Alexander Graham Bell 's telephone. He never did. Thomas Edison listening to a phonograph through a primitive headphone. In December , Edison developed a method for recording sound: the phonograph.

His innovation relied upon tin-coated cylinders with two needles: one for recording sound, and another for playback. His first words spoken into the phonograph's mouthpiece were, "Mary had a little lamb. Army to bring music to the troops overseas during World War I. While Edison was not the inventor of the first light bulb, he came up with the technology that helped bring it to the masses.

After buying Woodward and Evans' patent and making improvements in his design, Edison was granted a patent for his own improved light bulb in He began to manufacture and market it for widespread use. He even thought about using tungsten, which is the metal used for light bulb filaments now, but he couldn't work with it given the tools available at that time.

One day, Edison was sitting in his laboratory absent-mindedly rolling a piece of compressed carbon between his fingers. He began carbonizing materials to be used for the filament. He tested the carbonized filaments of every plant imaginable, including baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, and bamboo.

He even contacted biologists who sent him plant fibers from places in the tropics. Edison acknowledged that the work was tedious and very demanding, especially on his workers helping with the experiments. He always recognized the importance of hard work and determination.

I cannot say the same for all my associates. Edison decided to try a carbonized cotton thread filament. When voltage was applied to the completed bulb, it began to radiate a soft orange glow. Just about fifteen hours later, the filament finally burned out. Further experimentation produced filaments that could burn longer and longer with each test. Patent number , was given to Edison's electric lamp. The Edison lamp from our Attic is dated January 27, It is a product of the continued improvements Edison made to the bulb.

Even though it is over a hundred years old, this bulb looks very much like the light bulbs lighting your house right now. The base, or socket, on this 19th century lamp is similar to the ones still used today.

It was one of the most important features of Edison's lamp and electrical system. The label on this bulb reads, "New Type Edison Lamp. Patented Jan. In the early s, Edison planned and supervised the construction of the first commercial, central electric power station in New York City. In , Edison began construction of a new laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.

Before he died in , Edison patented 1, of his inventions. The wonders of his mind include the microphone, telephone receiver, universal stock ticker, phonograph, kinetoscope used to view moving pictures , storage battery, electric pen, and mimeograph. Edison improved many other existing devices as well.