The Wizard of Menlo Park
Like Ben Franklin, Thomas Alva Edison was both a scientist
and an inventor. Born in 1847, Edison would see tremendous
change take place in his lifetime. He was also to be
responsible for making many of those changes occur. When
Edison was born, society still thought of electricity as a
novelty, a fad. By the time he died, entire cities were
lit by electricity. Much of the credit for that
progress goes to Edison. In his lifetime, Edison patented
1,093
inventions
, earning
him
the nickname "The Wizard of
Menlo Park." The most famous of his inventions was an
incandescent
light bulb. Besides the light bulb, Edison developed the
phonograph and the "kinetoscope," a small box for viewing
moving films. He also improved upon the original design of
the stock ticker, the telegraph, and
Alexander Graham Bell's
telephone. He believed in hard work, sometimes working
twenty hours a day. Edison was quoted as saying, "Genius is
one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." In
tribute to this important American, electric lights in the
United States were dimmed for one minute on October 21,
1931, a few days after his death.
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