Thomas Edison: Inventor and Entrepreneur. Through its 1985 acquisition of the McGraw-Edison Company, Cooper inherited the legacy of Thomas Edison, an inventor of great achievement and also an entrepreneur with a very strong commercial sense. Over the course of his life, Edison earned over a thousand patents including the first commercially practical incandescent light, the motion picture camera, the phonograph, the carbon telephone-microphone and the electric car. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the invention process and is credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

He began his career in 1868 at the age of 17 as a telegraph operator, but left soon after to focus on his passion as an inventor. He got his first break in 1869 when he invented the Universal Stock Printer for which he was compensated $40,000, a large sum of money at the time. With this money he set up a factory in Newark, New Jersey to manufacture his new stock ticker and high-speed telegraphs. He also established the first industrial lab of its kind in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876 where he could focus his energies on inventing. One year later, he introduced the phonograph which was such a radically new invention that the public thought it was almost “magical”. As a result, he became known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park”.

His first major breakthrough in lighting came in 1879, when he demonstrated the carbon-filament incandescent light bulb, which greatly improved upon previous designs. In the ensuing years there were many inventions in lighting, power distribution, sound and motion pictures and Edison built over 170 companies around his various inventions. As a result, virtually all electrical products today trace their origin in some fashion to the work of Thomas Edison. The picture above shows Edison with his incandescent light bulb.

Edison finally consolidated many of the disparate companies into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1911 which later merged with McGraw Electric in 1957 to form the McGraw-Edison Company. One notable company that was not part of the consolidation into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. was the Edison General Electric Corporation, which is known today as General Electric.