working on the phonograph, Edison began working on a device that, "does
for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear", this was to become motion
pictures. Edison first demonstrated motion pictures in 1891, and began
commercial production of "movies" two years later in a peculiar looking
structure, built on the laboratory grounds, known as the Black Maria. Like
the electric light and phonograph before it, Edison developed a complete
system, developing everything needed to both film and show motion pictures.
Edison's initial work in motion pictures was pioneering and original. However,
many people became interested in this third new industry Edison created,
and worked to further improve on Edison's early motion picture work. There
were therefore many contributors to the swift development of motion pictures
beyond the early work of Edison. By the late 1890s, a thriving new industry
was firmly established, and by 1918 the industry had become so competitive
that Edison got out of the movie business all together.
The success of the phonograph and
motion pictures in the 1890s helped offset the greatest failure of Edison's
career. Throughout the decade Edison worked in his laboratory and in the
old iron mines of northwestern New Jersey to develop methods of mining
iron ore to feed the insatiable demand of the Pennsylvania steel mills.
To finance this work, Edison sold all his stock in General Electric. Despite
ten years of work and millions of dollars spent on research and development,
Edison was never able to make the process commercially practical, and lost
all the money he had invested. This would have meant financial ruin had
not Edison continued to develop the phonograph and motion pictures at the
same time. As it was, Edison entered the new century still financially
secure and ready to take on another challenge.
Edison's new challenge was to develop
a better storage battery for use in electric vehicles. Edison very much
enjoyed automobiles and owned a number of different types during his life,
powered by gasoline, electricity, and steam. Edison thought that electric
propulsion was clearly the best method of powering cars, but realized that
conventional lead-acid storage batteries were inadequate for the job. Edison
began to develop an alkaline battery in 1899. It proved to be Edison's
most difficult project, taking ten years to develop a practical alkaline
battery. By the time Edison introduced his new alkaline battery, the gasoline
powered car had so improved that electric vehicles were becoming increasingly
less common, being used mainly as delivery vehicles in cities. However,
the Edison alkaline battery proved useful for lighting railway cars and
signals, maritime buoys, and miners lamps. Unlike iron ore mining, the
heavy investment Edison made over ten years was repaid handsomely, and
the storage battery eventually became Edison's most profitable product.
Further, Edison's work paved the way for the modern alkaline battery.
By 1911, Thomas Edison had built
a vast industrial operation in West Orange. Numerous factories had been
built through the years around the original laboratory, and the staff of
the entire complex had grown into the thousands. To better manage operations,
Edison brought all the companies he had started to make his inventions
together into one corporation, Thomas A. Edison Incorporated, with Edison
as president and chairman. Edison was sixty-four by this time and his role
with his company and in life began to change. Edison left more of the daily
operations of both the laboratory and the factories to others. The laboratory
itself did less original experimental work and instead worked more on refining
existing Edison products such as the phonograph. Although Edison continued
to file for and receive patents for new inventions, the days of developing
new products that changed lives and created industries were behind him.
In the 1915, Edison was asked to
head the Naval Consulting Board. With the United States inching closer
towards the involvement in World War One, the Naval Consulting Board was
an attempt to organize the talents of the leading scientists and inventors
in the United States for the benefit of the American armed forces. Edison
favored preparedness, and accepted the appointment. The Board did not make
a notable contribution to the final allied victory, but did serve as a
precedent for future successful cooperation between scientists, inventors
and the United States military. During the war, at age seventy, Edison
spent several months on Long Island Sound in a borrowed navy vessel experimenting
on techniques for detecting submarines.
role in life began to change from inventor and industrialist to cultural
icon, a symbol of American ingenuity, and a real life Horatio Alger story.
In 1928, in recognition of a lifetime of achievement, the United States
Congress voted Edison a special Medal of Honor. In 1929 the nation celebrated
the golden jubilee of the incandescent light. The celebration culminated
at a banquet honoring Edison given by Henry Ford at Greenfield Village,
Ford's new American history museum, which included a complete restoration
of the Menlo Park Laboratory. Attendees included President Herbert Hoover
and many of the leading American scientists and inventors.
The last experimental work of Edison's
life was done at the request of Edison's good friends Henry
Ford, and Harvey Firestone in the late 1920s. They asked Edison to
find an alternative source of rubber for use in automobile tires. The natural
rubber used for tires up to that time came from the rubber tree, which
does not grow in the United States. Crude rubber had to be imported and
was becoming increasingly expensive. With his customary energy and thoroughness,
Edison tested thousands of different plants to find a suitable substitute,
eventually finding a type of Goldenrod weed that could produce enough rubber
to be feasible. Edison was still working on this at the time of his death.
During the last two years of his
life Edison was in increasingly poor health. Edison spent more time away
from the laboratory, working instead at Glenmont. Trips to the family vacation
home in Fort Myers, Florida became longer. Edison was past eighty and suffering
from a number of ailments. In August 1931 Edison collapsed at Glenmont.
Essentially house bound from that point, Edison steadily declined until
at 3:21 am on October 18, 1931 the great man died.
page > A Second
Biography: The Life of Thomas A. Edison
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