Thomas Edison: Inventor of the Future
The Standard of living prior to Thomas Edison's great inventions was of poorer quality. Up to the latter half of the nineteenth century, the machine had always been closely bound to its prime mover (Baldwin 50). It could not be placed too far because of the inefficiency of belts and shafting as a method of distributing energy (Clark 53). Energy and power is everything, it is the key to a working invention. Each gear, joint, or wheel was a source of power loss (Conot 43). Known for his brilliant inventions and ideas, Thomas Edison improved the standard of living at the turn of the twentieth century with such inventions as the electric light bulb and the electric generator. At the start of the nineteenth century, electricity was a scientific curiosity, a plaything of the laboratory. As the result of widespread investigation and experiment, however, it became a commercially useful form of energy, such as illumination (Jehl 92). For the first time electricity offered something useful not only in industry, or in commerce, or on the theatre stage, but in every home. Electric lighting would now replace the traditional gaslights that were used (Baldwin 51). Thomas Edison improved the standard of living during the late 1
Once it came time for the exhibition, people gathered at Menlo Park waiting in high anticipation. Edison courteously let his visitors look through his laboratory. Before he turned on the lights, he predicted to the audience that he would revolutionize lighting around the world. Finally, Edison turned on the lights and the darkness was gone (Conot 53). The onlookers gasped in delight, and then broke into wild cheering (54). After starting small, in 1882 Edison began to make a profitable success of his incandescent lighting system (Jehl 92). Edison put his lighting aboard the vessel Columbia and the Jeannette, a ship assigned to the Arctic exploration to start his business (Conot 55). Later on he built a power plant in London and lighted the area around Holburn Viaduct. When he moved to new York City, he strung more than eight hundred light bulbs around the Pearl Street Station. He also sold his generators and lights to businesses to help them stay open later (Clark 18). Now that Edison began making a nice profit from his electric lighting systems and generators, he founded his own company, The Edison Machine Works in New York City. People and businesses knew about Edison's reputation as both an inventor and a businessman and were eager to have his factory in their city. Not long after, Edison joined his company with several others to create The Edison Electric Company. Three years later The Edison General
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Approximate Word count = 964
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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