Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 - October 18, 1931) 
was an inventor and businessman who developed many important 
devices. "The Wizard of Menlo Park" was one of the first inventors 
to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention.

Edison was considered one of the most prolific inventors of his time, 
holding a record 1,093 patents in his name. Most of these inventions 
were not completely original but improvements of earlier patents, 
and were actually made by his numerous employees - Edison was 
frequently criticized for not sharing the credits. Nevertheless, 
Edison received patents worldwide, including the United States, 
United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Edison started the Motion 
Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major 
film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust).

In the early 1900's, Thomas Edison bought a house in Florida as 
a winter retreat. His neighbor was Henry Ford, the automobile 
magnate. They were friends until one of the men died.

Early years

Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio and grew up in Port 
Huron, Michigan. Partially deaf since adolescence, he became a 
telegraph operator in the 1860s, and a famously fast one. Some 
of his earliest inventions related to electrical telegraphy, 
including a stock ticker.

Edison spent a time in his youth selling snacks and candy on 
the railroad. He also labored as a pig slaughterer and started 
a business selling vegetables. He could reputedly guess a 
man's weight correctly by simply looking at him. Around 1862, 
Edison printed and published "The Weekly Herald". It was the 
first newspaper typeset and printed on a moving train. The Port 
Huron Times-Herald featured a story on Edison and his paper. 
Edison applied for his first patent, the electric vote 
recorder, on October 28, 1868.


Middle years

Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New 
Jersey with the stockticker and improved telegraphic devices 
being invented there, but the invention which first gained 
Edison wide fame was the phonograph in 1877. While 
non-reproducible sound recording was first achieved by 
Leon Scott de Martinville (France, 1857), and others at the 
time (notably Charles Cros) were contemplating the notion 
that sound waves might be recorded and reproduced, Edison 
was the first to publicly demonstrate a device to actually 
do so, and this was so unexpected by the public at large as 
to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard 
of Menlo Park" (after the New Jersey town where he resided). 
His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil cylinders, had low 
sound quality, and destroyed the track during replay such 
that one could listen only once. A redesigned model which 
used wax cylinders was produced soon after by Alexander 
Graham Bell. Sound quality was still low and replays were 
limited before wear destroyed the recording, but the invention 
enjoyed popularity. The "gramophone", playing gramophone 
records, was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887, but in 
the early years the audio fidelity was worse than the 
phonograph cylinders marketed by Edison Records.