When he was 12 he got
his first job as train-boy on the
Grand Trunk Railroad. It was on this run between Detroit and Port Huron
that he acquired exclusive newsdealer's rights selling candy and papers
on the train.
Edison's career as a
telegraph operator began when he
saved the station agent's young son from the path of a moving freight
car. Out of gratitude the father taught Edison the new science of
telegraphy. By the time he was seventeen, Edison was "on the road" as a
telegraph operator. He drifted from Stratford, Canada, to Adrian,
Michigan, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and Boston.
When he was 21 years old
Edison went to New York, almost
penniless. By fixing a broken-down machine in the Gold and Stock
Telegraph Company, he landed a $300 a month job as superintendent of
the company. At the same time he was making many inventions, among them
the "Universal" stock ticker. For this and other inventions he received
$40.000 and with this money he opened a manufacturing shop in Newark,
making stock tickers.
At the age of 29 he went
to Menlo Park to make perhaps
the greatest invention of all - a successful incandescent electric
lamp. Out of the Edison laboratory in the important years between 1876
to 1886 came the carbon telephone transmitter, the phonograph, the
Edison dynamo and the Edison incandescent lamp. When the electrical
system with which he hoped to light whole cities required a new piece
of machinery or a new device, Edison developed it. And if after
developing it he could find no manufacturer, he would set up his own
plants for manufacturing the equipment he had invented. By the very
force of necessity the wizard of Menlo Park became a manufacturer of
New York City. On September 4, 1882, Edison started operating the Pearl
Street Station, the first central generating station to light New York
City.
The Edison interests
were expanding and in 1886 Edison
sent his agents to look for suitable sites for a new factory. On the
outskirts of Schenectady stood two unfinished factory buildings, which
were to have been the McQueen Locomotive Works. The location of these
buildings impressed Edison and he negotiated to purchase the two plants
which were soon turning out the dynamos needed by the Edison generating
stations. Other buildings sprang up alongside the original shops and in
1892 this plant became the headquarters of the newly formed General
Electric Company.
It began to be
apparent early in the 1890s that
electrical development was being held up because no company controlled
the patents on all the necessary elements for installing an efficient
and serviceable system. The conviction was taking shape that the
incandescent lamp and the alternating-current transformer system
belonged together. The outcome in 1892 was the formation of the General
Electric Company with the consolidation of the Thomson-Houston and the
Edison General Electric Companies. Edison's was one of the many
distinguished names which appeared on the first Board of Directors of
the new Company. At this period, however, he concerned himself less and
less with manufacturing activities and soon devoted his entire time to
his laboratory in West Orange to perfect a modernized phonograph, a
motion picture camera, and an electrical storage battery.
During World War I
Edison experimented on many war
problems for the US Government, among them the sound detection of guns
and submarines, airplane detection, increasing power and effectiveness
of torpedoes, improving submarines and mining harbors. But some of
Edison's greatest contributions to America's war efforts were in
developing synthetic products for goods we could no longer get from
Europe.
Honors and awards were
bestowed lavishly on Mr. Edison
by persons, societies and countries throughout the world. His greatest
honor perhaps, was the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's
highest recognition of service.
Edison died October 18,
1931 in Llewellyn Park, New
Jersey at the age of eighty-four.
