THOMAS ALVA EDISON, CREATOR OF THE FIRST INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH LABORATORY

Thomas Alva Edison Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847 — Orange, New Jersey, October 18, 1931

American inventor, self-taught, in 1863 he began working as a telegraph operator at the Western Union Telegraph Company, studying and experimenting during his spare time. In 1868 he registered his first patent, a recording device for voting. In the years immediately following he designed a teletype and perfected the automatic telegraph system. He collaborated with Christopher L. Sholes in the construction of the first typewriter, and achieved widespread practical application of the Bell telephone by incorporating the carbon microphone (1877-78). In 1876 he set up research laboratories in Menlo Park (New Jersey) where most of his many inventions came from (he registered more than 1,000 patents during his lifetime), among which the phonograph ( 1877), the incandescent lamp (1879), the induction telegraph (1885), the kinetoscope (1891), various types of dynamos and motors, and a type of alkaline accumulator much used today (1900-10).

He presented, at the first exhibition of electricity, held in Paris in 1881, the study of a global lighting installation using incandescent lamps, which was quickly adopted by the USA and many states of 'Europe as a public lighting system. In 1875 he described, in an article published in "Scientific American", an unknown "etheric force" and, continuing his studies on this point, in 1883 he patented the thermionic valve, which is based on the emission of electrons produced by metals incandescent, a phenomenon known as the Edison effect. During the First World War he worked for the US government in the study of a series of naval problems and in the production of phenol and other chemical products. In 1927 he was named a member of the American National Academy of Sciences. Source: Catalan Encyclopedia.