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.
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