Thomas Edison's Greatest Accomplishments

Thomas Edison once said, “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this, you haven’t.” Edison invented many things throughout his lifetime, and he never gave up on the impossible. He received over 1,000 patents, including the incandescent light bulb, motion picture, and the phonograph. This is to only name a few of his greatest accomplishments. Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman whose memorable inventions changed the world. Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847, to his parents, Samuel and Nancy. His father was a Canadian political activist, and his mother was a school teacher. In the year of 1854, Thomas and his family moved to Port Huron. Here, he attended a public school, but Tom was a troublesome

The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company paid him $40,000. After this he chose to commit his life to inventing. In 1874, Thomas Edison invented a multiplex telegraphic system for the Western Union, which made up to be a quadruplex telegraph that could send two messages at the same time in different directions (“Thomas Edison”). Another invention he created an electric pen in 1875 (“Life of Thomas Alva Edison…”) Tom moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876 and he built his own research facility and laboratory. In December of 1877, he invented the phonograph, which brought him worldwide fame (“Thomas

In 1890 he started to try to create the vitascope which would later help make the motion picture. In the early 1900’s, Edison invented the dictaphone, mimeograph, and the storage battery. He had created the kinetoscope and silent motion picture in 1904. He contributed to the making of “talking pictures” (“Life Of Thomas Alva Edison…”).

In Thomas Edison’s personal life, he married Mary Stilwell in 1871. She was only 16. They were married for thirteen years and they had three children. Their names were Marion, Thomas, and William. Mary died in 1884, at the age of 29 because of a presumed brain tumor. Two years later, Tom married Mina Miller (“Thomas Edison”).

Tom worked hard to invent until he couldn’t do it anymore. His last patent he had was when he was 83, which would be his 1,093rd patent. By the 1920’s Thomas’s health had started to fail because of his diabetes (“Edison Biography”). Edison died October 18, 1931, in his home. When he laid to rest, many companies worldwide had dimmed their the lights or turned the electricity off for a short while to honor him (“Thomas