EIYISON, TuomAs ALv.t (1817— ). A cele brated American electrician and inventor. lie was born at Milan, Ohio, February II. 1847. and when he was seven years of age his family moved to Port Huron, Mich., where the remainder of his boyhood was passed. While a mere lad he started in business :is a newsboy on the t;rand Trunk Railway. His spare hours were Spent in reading and in boyish experiments, largely with printing-presses and electrical and mechanical apparatus. In 1562 he published a weekly. known as the amml Trunk Herald. and did the printing in a freight-ear that al-a served as a laboratory where he could Carry on further eX pernilents. For saving the child of a station master from the wheels of an approaching., ear, he Was received as a pupil at the telegraph office at Clemens, and there learned to become an operator. While a brilliant and rapid operator. lie was 'besides fun-loving and erratic, as well as too fond of experimenting and disregarding the rules of the office to renfain long in any one situation. It was while thus engaged that he made his first important in vention, a repeating instrument, which enabled a message to be transmitted automatically on a second line without the presence of an operator. From the West Edison went to Boston, where. owing to his skill as a rapid operator, he soon secured a position, and was also able to work on various mechanical inventions which sug gested themselves to his ingenious mind. Among these was a vote-recorder, which, while accom plishing its object, did not possess merits of a sufficiently practical character to warrant its adoption. Recalling this failure, \]r. Edison said that afterwards lie investigated minutely the necessity of any particular invention before he attempted to reduce it to practice. In this has been his great success as an inventor. Few, if any, great scientific discoveries are to he cred ited to Edison, but he has triumphed over al most insurmountable difficulties, and by his skill and ingenuity brought to practical use and the advancement of civilization what had often been suggested by sonic scientific investigator unable to bring it to a successful ()Weenie or practical realization. While in Boston. Edison devised and partly completed a stock-quotation printer, and later became connected with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company of New York, whose appa ratus and service he greatly improved. Valuable inventions of stock-printing and other telegraph appliances were sold for $40.000, which enabled Edison to establish a laboratory on his own ac count and to work out sonic of his more important ideas. About this time came his automatic tele graph system, by means of which increased speed and range of action were alit:killed. Edison':
crowning achievement in telegraphy TELE 1(fc urn ) was his invention of the quadruple\ system, which followed a duplex system he had previously devised. and which was a great commercial success and made possible a far greater use of existing telegraph Of the greatest value in the ffiwelopment of the tele phone (9.v.), then recently invented by Bell. were the microphone and the carbon transmitter, and the latter of these devices was employed exten sively in the earlier instruments. In Edison brought out his phonograph With the tin-foil cylinder. and about this time the megaphone. The most-used of all Edison's inventions, and the one that required the most careful research and experimenting to secure its was that of the incandescent light, which. brought out in IS79, was publicly exhibited in Ism). This new light soon achieved a remarkable success, and the inventor was fully occupied in improving the lamps themselves and the dynamos for gener ating the current. Mr. Edison also worked on the question of electric traction, but his achieve ments here, while attemb41 with some were not so remarkable as in other fields. In 1886 his laboratory at orange was built and furnished a commodious workshop for his later experiments. Here the kineto-phonograph was developed, and the instrument in its well-known form of the kinetoscope was made a commercial success. Among his commercial ventures have been the magnetic treatment of iron ore and a plant for the manufacture of Portland cement, Edison has received numerous honors at inter national expositions and from foreign govern ment-. among which are his appointment as a chevalier of the Legion of Honor from France in and as a •ommander in 1S89. In IS92. he received the Albert Medal of the Society of Arts of Great Britain. Edison as an inventor stands unique among those men of the nineteenth century who have applied scientific discoveries to the ordinary uses of man. His boldness in over coming experimental difficulties, and his snecess ful achievement of what might be termed all but impossible, secured for him the name of Wizard. In considering his life and work, how ever, the distinction must be made between the pure scientist with mathematical and philosophi cal knowledge, and the ingenious inventor who can apply a scientific truth to a practical end. Of this latter class Edison stands at the head. For a life of Edison, consult Dickson, Lifc and nrcni1071• of Thomas A. Edison. (New York, 1894), a popular biography which leaves con siderable to be desired.