Life story
Thomas Alva Edison was born on 11 February 1847. An American inventor and businessman, he possessed a restless curiosity and a lifelong willingness to try, fail and try again in the pursuit of practical invention.
His work reshaped daily life across the modern world. He is remembered above all for his contributions to the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the distribution of electric power and the earliest motion pictures. In the course of his career he registered 1,093 patents in the United States, a record of persistence rarely matched.
Edison was as much an organiser of industry as an inventor. The merger of the Edison General Electric Company with the competing Thomson-Houston Electric Company brought into being General Electric, a firm that would carry his methods far beyond his own workbench.
Thomas Edison died on 18 October 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey, where his laboratory still stands. He is remembered at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park. His legacy endures in the electric light that fills our evenings and the recorded sound that keeps our voices.
Životopisné údaje z verejných zdrojov. Portrét: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
Constellation of Life
Important milestones that shaped their journey.