Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) was an American inventor. Some of his inventions were improvements on those that already existed. He turned them into versions that could be widely used. His inventions included the earliest sound recording device, called the phonograph, a greatly improved telephone and an electric light bulb that worked better than anything that had gone before.

Early career

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Ohio in 1847, and grew up in Michigan. He did badly at school, so his mother, a teacher, taught him at home. At the age of 12, Thomas was selling snacks and sweets on the railway. By the age of 14, he was producing and selling his own newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, on a train. With the money he made he set up a chemistry laboratory at home. (When his mother complained, he moved the chemicals to the locker room on the train where he was working.)

Telegraph operator

In 1862, aged 15, Edison worked full-time as a telegraph operator. At that time, the telegraph was the fastest way to send messages. It worked by sending electrical pulses representing letters in Morse Code along wires. In 1869, Edison made his first invention: an automatic vote-counting machine.

Phonograph

Edison re-used the parts of the improved telephone he invented to create the first recording machine. His phonograph was like a telephone, but the vibrating parts were linked to a steel needle.

Edison did not invent electric lighting, but the improvements he introduced made his version a success. About the same time as Edison was working on his version, the British inventor Joseph Swan (1828–1914) produced a working electric light bulb. Swan’s light was made by passing an electric current through a carbon filament (a thin strand) inside a glass vacuum. The carbon filament became so hot it glowed—although it needed a lot of electricity to make it do so. Edison's version, which he demonstrated in 1879, used a very fine filament (actually made of bamboo). This needed much less electricity.

Kinetoscope

Edison continued to work on many inventions almost until his death in 1931. In 1891 he invented an early form of motion picture, the Kinetoscope. It was the first successful moving-picture machine. Only one person at a time could view through an eyepiece as the sequence of photographs on a strip of film wound past.