EDISON, THOMAS ALVA, an Amer. ican inventor; born in Milan, O., Feb. 11, 1847. In early life he was denied the privileges of continuous schooling, but acquired a large and varied stock of knowledge by his own industry. Before he was 12 years of age he became a train boy on the Detroit and Port Huron branch of the Grand Trunk railroad, and learned to operate the telegraph. He be gan to study batteries, wires, and instru ments, wherever he could find them. His first invention to be patented was a coin• mercial stock indicator, and the proceeds of this invention, which at once came into wide use, enabled him to establish a labo. ratory at Newark, N. J., afterward re moved to Menlo Park, and then to its present location at West Orange, N. J. From this beginning he became known to all the world as one of the greatest in ventors of the 19th century. Among his
more important inventions may be named the phonograph, a telephone for long dis tance transmission, a system of duplex telegraphy (which he subsequently de veloped into quadruplex and sextuplex transmission), the carbon telephone transmitter, the microtasimeter, the aero phone, megaphone, the incandescent elec tric lamp, the kinetoscope, and a storage battery for street railway cars and auto mobiles. In 1913 by synchronizing the phonograph and kinetoscope he produced talking moving pictures; but the inven tion is still imperfect. In 1878 he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French Government, a commander of the Legion in 1889, and was the re cipient of the insignia of a grand officer of the Crown of Italy bestowed the same year by King Humbert.