February 11
INVENTOR’S DAY
Who could have guessed that when little Thomas Alva Edison entered the world on this day in 1847 the world would never be the same.
Little Al (his folks called him Alva or Al) was a curious child, always asking questions. When he didn’t get an answer, he’d try to figure it out for himself by experimenting. His incessant questions exasperated his school teacher so much that Al’s mother had to take him out of school after only three months. A lack of formal education didn’t stop Thomas Edison. He is now considered the greatest inventor in history. In 1928, the U.S. Congress awarded a gold medal to Thomas Edison for “development and application of inventions that have revolutionized civilization in the last century.”
His first invention was an automated telegraph message machine. He attached a gadget to a clock that would send a signal even if he was asleep. From then on, Edison invented more than 2000 gadgets, holding 1,093 patents, some which improved the inventions of others, like the telephone, typewriter, motion pictures, the electric generator and electric-powered trains. He was very close to inventing the radio; he predicted the use of atomic energy, and received $40,000 for his stock-ticker patents. And Al was only going to ask for $5,000, hoping to get $3,000.
One of the world’s most original inventions, the phonograph, was Thomas Edison’s favorite.
He is also credited with inventions such as the storage battery, a cement mixer, the dictaphone, a duplicating machine ... even a way to make synthetic rubber.
Edison received so many awards for his accomplishments that he once joked, “I have to measure them by the quart.”
But, the invention that virtually changed the world forever was his electric incandescent light bulb.
A century later, the genius of Thomas Alva Edison still permeates every part of our lives. He died October 18, 1931, but if he was alive today, we are sure he would still remain humble and insist that his genius was “one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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