History UsefulNotes / ThomasEdison

* YoungerThanTheyLook: In his mid-twenties, his hair started to prematurely grey from stress. By the time he was 30, he was known as "The Old Man" in his own lab for his unkempt and weathered appearance as he worked.

[[AC:Film - Live Action]]

* Edison makes an appearance in ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' as a rival to fellow inventor James Pendrick. He's shown to be so ruthless as to be suspected of trying to kill Pendrick for his revolutionary sound equipment. [[spoiler: He's not the murderer, though after Pendrick rejects his offer to collaborate, he does vow to freeze him out of any success in the moving picture industry in America at the end of the episode.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," Homer becomes obsessed with Edison and tries to invent something to become famous just like he was. When Homey finally makes something useful, [[spoiler: it turns out that Edison already made it.]] Made even better when it's later disovered that [[spoiler: Edison '''stole it from Creator/LeonardoDaVinci''']].

* ''Film/TheGreatTrainRobbery''

* The story of Topsy the Elephant is recounted in the ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'' episode "[[Recap/BobsBurgerS3E16Topsy Topsy]]", complete with a catchy song by Gene.

** From a more meta standpoint, it is nowadays known that Edison can be personally credited with far fewer inventions than he laid claim on during his lifetime, most prominently the incandescent light bulb and the microphone.

* {{UsefulNotes/Agnosticism}}: Edison was not religious, but believed in some form of higher intelligence. He was famously quoted as having witnessed something resembling an afterlife about a week before his death.

In 1876, at the age of 29, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music,[[note]]An invention he tested not really expecting it to work; he more or less shouted "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into the machine expecting nothing to come of it, and was utterly shocked when it actually made a proper sound on playback. This, incidentally, made Edison the first human being ''ever'' to hear a recording of his own voice, and therefore--as everyone since has noted--the first person to wonder if he ''really'' sounded that weird.[[/note]] a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is known today, however, to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb. Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions, rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor.[[note]]His corporate idea was an unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing one to establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached. Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents, though. US patent law has never allowed corporations to apply for patents directly; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

** Thomas Edison is either portrayed as a quirky underdog genius who had to fight to get his honest hard work recognised, or as a concept-stealing CorruptCorporateExecutive who swept away all opposition with threats and slander. There's plenty of evidence [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment for and against both portrayals]], but the market for energy and electricity was absolutely feral back then.

More important than the things he invented though was the technique he developed for it. After a fashion ([[Series/{{Connections}} James Burke]] did), you could say that Edison invented inventing. He came up with the modern R&D cycle, which consists of (as Burke put it): Identify a market, get backing before you start, publicize it ahead of time so the public is wiling to pay for it, and plough back the profits into making more inventions. He also developed the world's first real R&D team--his numerous and largely unsung assistants, working hard on inventions for which Edison would get all the credit (eventually, he had the sense to start crediting things to his corporation, about which see below); before this, invention was usually one guy or a few, and it wasn't their only job.

In 1876, at the age of 29, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music,[[note]]Which, incidentally, made Edison the first human being ''ever'' to hear a recording of his own voice, and therefore--as everyone since has noted--the first person to wonder if he ''really'' sounded that weird.[[/note]] a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is known today, however, to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb. Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions, rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor.[[note]]His corporate idea was an unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing one to establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached. Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents, though. US patent law has never allowed corporations to apply for patents directly; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

In 1876, at the age of 29, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music,[[note]]Which, incidentally, made Edison the first human being to hear his own voice, and therefore--as everyone since has noted--the first person to wonder if his voice ''really'' sounded that weird.[[/note]] a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is known today, however, to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb. Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions, rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor.[[note]]His corporate idea was an unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing one to establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached. Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents, though. US patent law has never allowed corporations to apply for patents directly; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

In 1876, at the age of 29, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music, a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is known today, however, to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb. Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions, rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor.[[note]]His corporate idea was an unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing one to establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached. Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents, though. US patent law has never allowed corporations to apply for patents directly; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

In 1876, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music, a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is known today, however, to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb. Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions, rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor.[[note]]His corporate idea was an unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing one to establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached. Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents, though. US patent law has never allowed corporations to apply for patents directly; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

** In particular, Edison's relationship with UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla is often exaggerated to make them seem like archenemies, usually to Edison's detriment. Some accounts even blame Edison for the later collapse of Tesla's career, which had nothing to do with Edison. The two men were hardly friends, but respected each others' work and were more occasional competitors than lifelong rivals. Edison even offered Tesla the use of his workshop after a fire at Tesla's laboratory in 1895, while the War of the Currents was ongoing, further suggesting that there was no personal animosity between them.[[note]]At worst, their dislike extended to criticisms of the other man's methods: Edison would occasionally needle Tesla for his more eccentric ideas and behavior, while Tesla would criticize Edison's inefficient methods of research and development. But Tesla always qualified his remarks by calling Edison a "genius," while Edison in turn called Tesla a "hard worker," which for him was the highest complement one could bestow.[[/note]]

** In particular, Edison's rivalry with UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla is often exaggerated to make them seem like archenemies, usually to Edison's detriment. The short version is that they respected each other without harboring any personal affection, as you might expect from people who were longtime competitors and possessed very different tempraments. Some sources even claim that Edison sabotaged Tesla's career after the War of the Currents out of spite, something for which there's no evidence.

* The graphic novel ''ComicBook/TalesFromTheBullyPulpit'' features his ghost and UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt stealing a time machine from Creator/HGWells and [[CrazyAwesome going to the future to fight a descendant of]] UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler [[CrazyAwesome and his army of evil Martians.]]

* Edison is featured in the "American Inventors" episode of ''Series/ThisIsAmericaCharlieBrown''.

* Edison is featured in the "American Inventors" episode of ''This Is America, [[ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}} Charlie Brown]]''.

* {{UsefulNotes/Agnosticism}}: Edison was no religious, but believed in some form of higher intelligence. He was famously quoted as having witnessed something resembling an afterlife about a week before his death.

Edison did not practice large-scale philanthropy the way some of his "Robber Baron" peers such as Rockefeller and Morgan did; for him, his inventions were his gift to the world. An example was his lab's development of commercial X-ray viewing machines for medical use. One notable stab at public service was his leadership of the Naval Consulting Board, which was established during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI as an attempt at Federal Government sponsored research and development. He did not like the idea of developing offensive weaponry that could be used to kill people, and instead focused on developing technologies such as batteries for submarines and methods for producing large quantities of chemicals which had previously been bought from Germany.

Edison's birthplace in Milan, Ohio was rescued by one of his daughters and is now a historic house. The Menlo Park lab fell into disrepair after Edison left it, but Henry Ford saved the remaining buildings by taking them apart and rebuilding them as part of his Greenfield Village museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Today the original site hosts an Edison memorial tower and volunteer-run education center. Edison's lab at Fort Myers, Florida and the twin vacation homes he and Henry Ford used down there are now a museum as well. Edison's laboratory at West Orange, NJ and his nearby mansion, Glenmont, are maintained by the National Park Service as Thomas Edison National Historical Park.

Edison made both many friends and many enemies during his career, reflecting both the light and dark sides of his personality. He was seen as a BenevolentBoss by most of his employees at Menlo Park, working them hard but working just as hard himself, and periodically treating them to food or declaring a day off to take everyone fishing. However, the huge numbers of strangers who came knocking on his door starting when he struck fame with the phonograph made him wary of people trying to take advantage of him. As a result, he tended to put his trust in old friends and longtime employees whom he had worked with in the frat house atmosphere of telegraph offices and machine shops. Charles Batchelor and Samuel Insull were examples of employees who gave years of devoted service during the electrification of Manhattan, and whom he eventually rewarded with large salaries and positions managing his various enterprises. At the same time, he was very sensitive to disloyalty, whether real or perceived. Ezra Gilliland was Edison's best friend from his telegraphy days, and became an increasing presence in his life after the death of his wife Mary in 1884. Gilliland introduced Edison to an eligible girl named Mina Miller, who would become his second wife. Edison and Gilliland were partners in the commercial introduction of the phonograph, and at one point they even had matching vacation homes in Fort Myers, UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}. Unfortunately, after Gilliland persuaded him to sign a deal with an entrepreneur for the rights to market Edison's perfected phonograph, Edison found out that Gilliland had accepted a kickback for doing so. Enraged and hurt, Edison basically cut his friend out of his life. A similar story of partnership gone sour occurred with W.K.L. Dixon, an experimenter who had an equal role with Edison in conceiving the technology of the film camera and did most of the actual work of making Edison films a reality. Dixon was frustrated that Edison ignored the need to transition from peephole machines to film projection, and felt that he wasn't being paid or credited enough for his work. When he left to go into film-making for himself, taking his experimental notes with him, Edison considered it a great betrayal. Edison might have felt lonely after 1900 as his old Menlo Park cadre dwindled due to moving on, dying, or falling out. His friendship with Henry Ford, to whom he had given vital encouragement when Ford was seen as just a crazy young tinkerer, bore fruit in his later years. They were able to relate to each other as equals, and perhaps it helped that they didn't have strong business entanglements with each other. Ford moved into the winter home in Fort Myers evacuated by Gilliland, and would give a heartfelt eulogy at Edison's funeral.

Edison was undeniably ruthless towards his competition, as were many of the great figures who built industrial America. He saw outdoing other inventors as a vital motivation for his own progress, and he didn't necessarily have much respect for people who were trying to tackle the same problems as him. The issue of how unethical Edison's behavior was is made murky by the very different atmosphere around patent and copyright law when he lived. Different countries did not respect each other's patents as a matter of course, and if an invention hadn't been patented in the United States by its originators then it could be perfectly legal to take that invention and make it your own. Patents were difficult to enforce even in one's own country. For his part, Edison felt that U.S. patent law made it too easy for people to profit by infringing on his patents, since by the time the case made its way through court and they were ordered to stop, they would have already made their money. Despite making many of his greatest successes by improving other people's inventions, he jealously guarded the inventions on which his fame rested: when Chichester Bell (Alexander Graham Bell's cousin) approached him with an improved phonograph design and proposed that they collaborate, Edison called the Bell associates "pirates" and rebuffed their overtures in favor of developing it himself.

Unfortunately, Edison took the wrong side of history when alternating current systems developed in Europe appeared as competition to his direct current system. The difference for potential customers was that Edison's DC power grid used a low 110 volts from generation to its final destination, and could only transmit power about a mile or two away from the generator. As a result the Edison grid depended on a distributed network of small, local power stations: this was fine for a dense city like New York, but infeasible for serving rural customers. Unlike DC at the time, AC was compatible with an important invention called the transformer, which enabled the voltage of the electricity flowing from the power station to be stepped up for long distance transmission, and stepped down again to a low voltage when it reached the customers. This allowed power to flow from large central power stations to customers near and far, yielding much greater range and economies of scale while allowing power plants to be removed from residential areas. Edison's associates begged him to switch the business to AC when other companies such as Westinghouse and Thomson-Houston began undercutting their prices and beating them for contracts, but AC was a much more technically complicated system than DC. Edison, lacking advanced formal education in the theory of electricity, was ill-equipped to understand it and held stubbornly to what he knew. Meanwhile, the use of high voltage wires by Westinghouse and other AC companies to carry power into communities was seen by many as a potential danger, and the public was aware of several incidents where linemen were electrocuted by high voltage AC arc lighting systems. Edison was convinced that safety had to be the number one selling point in order to convince people to give up gas lighting and allow electricity into their homes; experiments and anecdotal reports indicated that a given amount of AC current was more harmful than the same amount of DC current.

Edison's attacks, while making a big splash in public, failed to make a dent in AC's business dominance. In 1893, the investors in his company sidelined him and merged with Thomson-Houston, dropping the name "Edison" to become General Electric and switching to AC. Edison was thus largely kicked out of the very industry he had helped to pioneer. Never one to miss a beat, he poured his dividends from that deal into an ultimately unfruitful ore milling venture, as well as a little side project called "motion pictures".