The man who never stopped inventing

He was a genius inventor, and without him humanity would not be what it is today. But he was also a problematic student and a person who was inconsiderate and unpleasant to those around him. The story of Thomas Alva Edison

Article: Tamar the Jordanian, young Galileo

This is the story of a talented and curious boy who only attended school for three months before being kicked out in disgrace; This is the story of the boy who would become a troubled adult who neglected his family and children and a harsh employer who made his employees work hard and exploited their skills to glorify his name; This is the story of Thomas Alva Edison, the man whose rare talent, revolutionary ideas and wonderful inventions overshadowed his problematic personality and earned him the title of "America's Most Useful Citizen".

The boy who read Shakespeare
Almost every class has a "problem child"; The one who is rude to the teachers, doesn't study for the tests and his parents are not necessarily in a nice relationship with the teacher, but the case of the boy Thomas Alva Edison was special. In 1854, the curious and talented boy entered the first grade at the elementary school in the city of Michigan on the outskirts of the Union, but soon became known throughout the school as a disturbed child. He burned the family osm (grain store) just to see how it would turn out, and on another occasion he convinced a friend to swallow a laxative drug that causes severe gas on the grounds that he would be able to fly. In class he bothered his friends, failed to learn to read and write, and made a general impression of "fuzzy and lazy", as the class teacher defined him. One of the more forgiving teachers suggested that the boy's difficulties stemmed from the partial deafness he suffered from an illness.

Be that as it may, after only three months little Edison was expelled from school, along with a warm recommendation for his parents to send him to work. His mother Nancy, a teacher by profession, refused to accept the evil of the decree. "My mother was so sure of me," Edison said later, "that I felt that I had something to live for and that I must not disappoint her." Edison's mother taught him at home, and thanks to her he soon mastered reading and writing, and even before he turned 12 he was already reading Shakespeare's writings, which are not easy to read. His curiosity knew no bounds, and every day he would go out and conduct experiments with materials he found in nature.

Laboratory accident on the train
At the age of 12, Edison was sent to work, like most of his peers at that time. He sold newspapers and sweets on the train from Michigan to Detroit and back, but the work bored him very much, and he often abandoned his shift and disappeared into one of the freight cars. The passengers did not guess at the time that the boy was conducting experiments in an improvised laboratory he had set up in the trailer. His short career on the train ended when a malfunction occurred on one of the trips, and following a failed experiment, the makeshift laboratory exploded and burned the entire carriage.

When Edison was 15 years old he built a printing press and founded his own newspaper, and when he was twenty years old he began working as a telegraph operator - which was the device that preceded the telephone - and transmitted verbal messages by transmitting electromagnetic signals. The work ignited the imagination of the young Edison, and he invented a machine that would automatically translate the signals from Morse to English while he slept. This time, too, the short career ended in heartbreak - Edison blew up a telegraph station in another failed experiment he conducted.

First patent that failed
Edison decided not to work for anyone anymore, but to devote his life to his own inventions and patents. He had incredible patience, and could run an experiment over and over, sometimes thousands of times, until he got the results he wanted. At the age of 22, he registered his first patent, one of 1,093 patents he registered during his lifetime: an electric vote counter. It was a machine that quickly counted ballots for the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, there was no demand for it, as the public insisted on a human eye and a human hand when it comes to counting votes in elections. Edison's hopes for quick money were dashed, and he set a rule for himself: "If it can't be sold, I don't want to invent it." Another rule he established is to look for a solution only to a real problem in the world, and of the kind for which a technological solution can be found. In a short time, he managed a well-equipped laboratory, in which he employed quite a few talented technicians who worked with him on inventions and profitable patents.

A workshop for inventions
Mary Stilwell was a 16-year-old girl who worked in one of Edison's stores when he was 24. He wooed her vigorously for two months, until she married him on Christmas Day 1871. Mary thought her new bride had gone on a honeymoon with her, but she was quickly mistaken: an hour after the ceremony he was already back Edison to his laboratory. Poor Mary did not know what awaited her: in the short years she lived by Edison's side, he neglected her and their three children and invested everything in his patents. And when 29-year-old Mary died of a brain tumor, he didn't even bother to pay the doctor for her treatment.

Edison was not only inconsiderate of his family. A few years after his marriage, he moved to a small town in the state of New Jersey, where he opened a highly sophisticated laboratory called the "Invention Factory". He recruited scientists and technicians who were required to work around the clock, until the townspeople called them the "Insomniac Squads". He also registered all the patents and inventions in his name, even though quite a few of them were the fruit of development by his employees, around the core of an idea he conceived. Despite this, only a few gave up the right to stay in the company of the patent genius. The residents of the town told about sparks of light that would flash through the windows at midnight and create a magical and mysterious aura around the grove house. They would have given much to see with their own eyes how Edison time and again provided the world with an elaborate machine or device that no one had thought of before him.

So what did he invent?
Most of Edison's inventions were born by accident, when he was working on something else. One of them was the phonograph (phono - sound, graf - writer, i.e. writer of sounds) - the first device in the world that made it possible to record sounds. It happened in 1877, when Edison was working with his team on ways to record telegraphic transmissions. While the entire team was completely focused on telegraphy, Edison pondered the possibility of using this technology to record sounds and play them over and over again.

In the following months, he invested enormous effort in developing a music box based on a metal cylinder coated with tin, which is gently scored with a needle by the oscillation of sound waves. When the phonograph was ready, Edison stood in front of the receiver and broke into the singer of the popular children's song, "Mary had a little lamb". The waves of his thunderous voice shook what needed to be shaken, and when the recording was finished, Edison turned the inner cylinder and amazed all those present who heard his voice emanating from the box singing "Mary had a little lamb". For years, the phonograph was sold all over the world and provided a nice income for its proud inventor, until it was overpowered by a more sophisticated and cheaper invention - the gramophone.

The light bulb
A year after Edison invented the phonograph, and he was only 31 years old, he attacked a new invention: the electric light bulb. At that time, they used to use oil and gas lamps, but their maintenance required tedious filling of expensive and dangerous fuels. In Europe, electric bulbs were already being used at that time, but these produced a blinding light and emitted toxic fumes from the coal rods burning inside. Edison wanted to invent a small, closed light bulb that would illuminate its surroundings without a flame at all, and provide cheap lighting.

For a year he worked with his people to find the most suitable material for a filament coil, which would light without igniting. Dozens of materials passed through the laboratory, including nickel, fishing line, coconut fibers and even gold. The lucky winner was a carbonized cotton thread, which remained bleached for more than 13 hours without tearing. Everyone admired the wonderful invention, but had to wait patiently until 1883, when Edison inaugurated the world's first power plant in the state of Massachusetts, which completely changed the face of humanity. Less than twenty years later, America was already lit by 24 million light bulbs.

Edison the inventor and Edison the man
Edison became a rich man, and employed 3,600 workers in the factory for his inventions. He and his people invented hundreds of patents in the next forty years, including a projector and a film for viewing - which preceded the cinema (cinema without sound), an improved phonograph, long record players and more. Based on his ideas and inventions, the electric typewriter, the electric locomotive, the guided torpedo, and many other inventions were later built.

Edison's professional progress did not, unfortunately, affect his behavior or character. He remained stubborn, arrogant and inconsiderate of others, and later also began to neglect himself and stopped showering. His second wife complained about his rude habit of spitting on the floor and his complete disregard for all six of his children. He used to quarrel with inventors and other scientists, and did everything so that his inventions would be accepted, and not those of others. In 1931, Edison passed away. He was 84 years old. The world he left was richer than a thousand wonderful inventions that he devised and which made our world better and more comfortable than it was before it.

Did you know?
Not all of Edison's patents were successful. One of his most interesting inventions that failed is the precast concrete building, in which the walls, the furniture, the refrigerator and even the piano are supposed to be made of durable and cheap concrete. Another invention in which he invested a lot and was not successful is the halkali battery for electric cars. It was pushed aside in front of the gasoline cars, and more than a hundred years would pass until humanity recognized the harms of gasoline cars and slowly moved to electric cars.

Another area in which Edison failed was the electrical system: Edison tried to promote a direct current system (as in an electric battery). On the other hand, the genius scientist Nikola Tesla (who also started as a telegraph operator, and even worked for a while in Edison's laboratory) promoted the idea of ​​using alternating current (which is much more efficient), and this is the method used in electrical systems all over the world.

These days, the play "Edison" of the Orna Porat Theater for children and youth is coming to the stage. To watch a segment from the show: http://youtu.be/G5E_cOjdm6E

see also

Edison, Tesla Westinghouse - The war of the currents

The article was published in the February issue of the Young Galileo magazine

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