A Great Inventor

It is surprising what a man can achieve with imagination and hard work put together. Yet how few of us achieve it. It is futile to say that some are too poor and others too rich to put in the required amount of effort and the necessary amount of concentration. There is an inexplicable something in the makings of a genius. That is why he is a genius! Thomas Alva Edison, the great American inventor with more than one thousand patents to his credit, was one such man. Not at all bright in the ordinary sense of the word, hard of hearing, and frequently absent from school, he was earning eight to ten dollars per day at the age of twelve and was the owner of several newspapers and vegetable shops.

This was the result of initiative and hard work and not of necessity for his parents were fairly well-to-do and could give him a reasonable amount of pocket money. Born on 11 February 1847 in Ohio, he moved with his parents to Port Huron in 1854 where his father became a dealer in grain and cattle feed. His father Samuel Edison came from a line of long-living, hard-working people of Dutch origin, and his mother was of an American Quaker family. He perhaps inherited his shrewdness, and his ability to assess people from his mother, and the capacity of hard work from his father. Thomas Edison started earning money right from the age of nine and from then onwards he never looked back.

Edison’s first invention came at the age of sixteen when he invented a gadget for the automatic transmission of an hourly signal; this he followed up with an automatic vote recorder for recording of votes in the congress. When the politicians laughed at the idea, he realized that an invention should not only be useful but should also be in demand. Later he was to learn that the price of an invention should be measured not according to the effort and labor put in but according to its value to the purchaser. This he learned when he went to finalize the deal with Marshall Lefferts, the President of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company for a stock-ticker which he had invented. He went determined to ask for $3,000 but felt too timid to do so. Timidity paid him dividends for Marshall Lefferts offered him $40,000 with which Edison was able to start a factory.

Edison was not content with merely making money. It was only of secondary importance for it helped him continue his research and experiments. He was responsible for at least fifty different inventions connected with telegraphy. He also invented the quadruplex communication system by which four messages could be sent simultaneously. He also invented what is now known as a stencil, and paraffined paper for wrapping toffees. Edison used his imaginative faculties to the full.

Amongst his major inventions is the phonograph or which is commonly known as the gramophone. He first used it to record telegraphic messages but the paper made a musical noise while rotting. the idea occurred to him that it could also be used for recording music and the human voice. Having very little taste for music he was quite surprised when demands poured in from the Germans for records of classical music. He himself visualized it mainly as a business and educational aid.

Amongst other notable inventions were his inventions related to the world of electricity. He invented the carbon filament electric lamp and erected the first central electric power station in New York. Though he made no direct contribution to communication, he patented a system of wireless communication by electrostatic induction. Edison also devised the first cinema camera and made the first commercial motion pictures.

As a person, he was naive and simple but once exposed to the tricks of the commercial world he was quick to develop business acumen and play his part in the world of business. He was a shrewd judge of character and was also very lucky in having talented young men to work for him who later became inventors in their own right. Henry Ford was among the talented men who worked for him. Edison’s first marriage took place in 1871, which was perhaps a romantic marriage. But his wife died in 1889 and Edison remarried, this time a good eighteen years his junior.

His life acquired a different tone after that but he lacked the finer delicacies of parental life. absorbed as he was in his work. He died in 1931 at the age of 84. His life is an example of what can be achieved by people who may not be brilliant in the conventional sense of the word.