A metal cylinder, thin foil and a needle. In 1877, this seemingly simple combination caused the voice to return back to the person who recorded it. Thomas Edison's phonograph was the first machine capable of simultaneously recording and reproducing sound. It turned its creator into a world celebrity and earned him the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park“.
Edison died on October 18, 1931, at his Glenmont home in West Orange, New Jersey. The National Park Service states that death occurred at 3:21 a.m. He was 84 years old. He left behind 1,093 patents in the United States - a number that includes both major inventions and numerous technical improvements.
Not just a light bulb, but a whole system
Most often his name is associated with the light bulb, but the story is more accurate and more interesting. Edison did not create the first electric lamp. His contribution was in the development of a practical incandescent lamp and a system to make it reliable, safe and affordable - generators, cables, switches, sockets and power plants. This is the reason why his patent is seen as an improvement on already existing electric lamps, and not as their emergence from nowhere.
On September 4, 1882, the Pearl Street Power Plant in New York began supplying electricity to 25 buildings. Lighting thus ceased to be a mere laboratory experiment and became a service that could reach urban neighborhoods and homes.
The Inventor as Organizer
Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. At the age of 12, he began working on the railroad, and the telegraph led him into the world of electricity and communications. His first patent, obtained in 1869, was for an electric voting recorder - an idea that technically worked but did not find a market.
More importantly, Edison changed the very model of invention. In Menlo Park, and later in the vast laboratory in West Orange, he worked with teams, machine shops, and manufacturing plants. Invention was no longer just a solitary idea, but a series of experiments, prototypes, tests, and production. West Orange developed improvements to the phonograph, rechargeable batteries, X-ray machines, a talking doll, and moving-picture technology.
This explains his lasting importance. The phonograph launched the recording industry, the electrical system changed urban life, and his work on the “Kinetograph“ camera and “Kinetoscope“ viewer paved the way for the cinema.
When Edison died, he left behind more than a collection of patents. He left behind a habit that seems natural today: to see every idea through to completion - into a device, into a network, into a product, into a part of everyday life. Therefore, his greatest monument is not a lamp, but the world that began to work on its principle.
Sources: history.com, biography.com