Inventor Thomas Alva Edison Biography

Inventor Thomas Alva Edison Biography

Fascinating facts about Thomas Alva Edison one of the most prolific inventors of practical electrical devices in history. Thomas Alva Edison AT A GLANCE: The modern world is an electrified world. The light bulb, in particular, profoundly changed human existence by illuminating the night and making it hospitable to a wide range of human activity. The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was invented in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison. He put together what he knew about electricity with what he knew about gas lights and invented a whole of electrical system. THE STORY RELATED INFO BOOKS VIDEOS WEB SITES QUOTATIONS DID YOU KNOW? Inventor: Thomas Alva Edison Criteria: First practical. Modern prototype. Entrepreneur. Birth: February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio Death: October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey Nationality: American Invention: electric light bulb in 1879 Function: noun / electric light bulb / incandescent lamp Definition: An electric lamp in which a filament is heated to incandescence by an electric current. Today's incandescent light bulbs use filaments made of tungsten rather than carbon of the 1880's. Patent: 223,898 (US) issued January 27, 1880 Milestones: 1868 Edison's first invention was a Vote Recorder 1869 Printing Telegraph 1869 Stock Ticker 1872 Automatic Telegraph 1876 Electric Pen 1877 Carbon Telephone Transmitter 1877 Phonograph 1879 Dynamo 1878 Thomas Edison founded the Edison Electric Light Company 1879 Incandescent Electric Lamp 1880 223,898 Thomas Edison 1/27 for Electric Lamp and Manufacturing Process 1881 Electric Motor 1881 238,868 Thomas Edison 3/15 for Manufacture of Carbons for Incandescent Lamps 1881 251,540 Thomas Edison 12/27 for Bamboo Carbons Filament for Incandescent Lamps 1883 he observed the flow of electrons from a heated filament—the so-called "Edison effect" 1886 Talking Doll 1889 Edison Electric Light Company consolidated and renamed Edison General Electric Company. 1890 Edison, Thomson-Houston, and Westinghouse, the "Big 3" of the American lighting industry. 1892 Edison Electric Light Co. and Thomson-Houston Electric Co. created General Electric Co. 1897 Projecting Kinetoscope 1900 Storage Battery capS: Edison, Thomas Alva Edison, Incandescent Electric Lamp, electric lamp, electric light bulb, light bulb, General Electric, most U.S. patents, electric industry, inventor, biography, profile, history, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of, fascinating facts. The Story: Thomas Alva Edison, whose development of a practical electric light bulb, electric generating system, sound-recording device, and motion picture projector had profound effects on the shaping of modern society. His greatest invention may not have been his products but the funding and impotence he placed on his company's research and development efforts. Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847. He attended school for only three months, in Port Huron, Michigan. When he was 12 years old he began selling newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railway, devoting his spare time mainly to experimentation with printing presses and with electrical and mechanical apparatus. In 1862 he published a weekly, known as the Grand Trunk Herald, printing it in a freight car that also served as his laboratory. For saving the life of a station official's child, he was rewarded by being taught telegraphy. While working as a telegraph operator, he made his first important invention, a telegraphic repeating instrument that enabled messages to be transmitted automatically over a second line without the presence of an operator. Edison next secured employment in Boston and devoted all his spare time there to research. He invented a vote recorder that, although possessing many merits, was not sufficiently practical to warrant its adoption. He also devised and partly completed a stock-quotation printer. Later, while employed by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company of New York City he greatly improved their apparatus and service. By the sale of telegraphic appliances, Edison earned $40,000, and with this money he established his own laboratory in 1876. Afterward he devised an automatic telegraph system that made possible a greater speed and range of transmission. Edison's crowning achievement in telegraphy was his invention of machines that made possible simultaneous transmission of several messages on one line and thus greatly increased the usefulness of existing telegraph lines. Important in the development of the telephone, which had recently been invented by the American physicist and inventor Alexander Graham Bell, was Edison's invention of the carbon telephone transmitter. In 1877 Edison announced his invention of a phonograph by which sound could be recorded mechanically on a tinfoil cylinder. Two years later he exhibited publicly his incandescent electric light bulb, his most important invention and the one requiring the most careful research and experimentation to perfect. This new light was a remarkable success; Edison promptly occupied himself with the improvement of the bulbs and of the dynamos for generating the necessary electric current. In 1882 he developed and installed the world's first large central electric-power station, located in New York City. His use of direct current, however, later lost out to the alternating-current system developed by the American inventors Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse. In 1887 Edison moved his laboratory from Menlo Park, New Jersey, to West Orange, New Jersey, where he constructed a large laboratory for experimentation and research. (His home and laboratory were established as the Edison National Historic Site in 1955). In 1888 he invented the kinetoscope, the first machine to produce motion pictures by a rapid succession of individual views. Among his later noteworthy inventions was the Edison storage battery (an alkaline, nickel-iron storage battery), the result of many thousands of experiments. The battery was extremely rugged and had a high electrical capacity per unit of weight. He also developed a phonograph in which the sound was impressed on a disk instead of a cylinder. This phonograph had a diamond needle and other improved features. By synchronizing his phonograph and kinetoscope, he produced, in 1913, the first talking moving pictures. His other discoveries include the electric pen, the mimeograph, the microtasimeter (used for the detection of minute changes in temperature), and a wireless telegraphic method for communicating with moving trains. At the outbreak of World War I, Edison designed, built, and operated plants for the manufacture of benzene, carbolic acid, and aniline derivatives. In 1915 he was appointed president of the U.S. Navy Consulting Board and in that capacity made many valuable discoveries. His later work consisted mainly of improving and perfecting previous inventions. Altogether, Edison patented more than 1000 inventions. He was a technologist rather than a scientist, adding little to original scientific knowledge. In 1883, however, he did observe the flow of electrons from a heated filament—the so-called Edison effect—whose profound implications for modern electronics were not understood until several years later. Edison died in West Orange on October 18, 1931.

Inventor Tim Berners-Lee Biography

Inventor Tim Berners-Lee Biography

Fascinating facts about Tim Berners-Lee inventor of the World Wide Web in 1991. Tim Berners-Lee AT A GLANCE: The World Wide Web (WWW) has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, computer and Internet set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. Invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, the Web has become a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard to geographic location. Inventor: Tim Berners-Lee Criteria; Modern prototype.. Birth: June 8, 1955 in London, England Nationality: British Invention: World Wide Web unction: noun / hypertext document Retrieval system Definition: Enquire was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. The Web consisted of URL, HTTP and HTML. Patent: The Web is considered to be an open source project. Milestones: CAPS: Berners-Lee, Berners Lee, Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web, Enquire, Vinton Cerf, WWW, ARYS, Web, World Wide Web, communication, computer, url, http, html, SIPS, history, biography, inventor, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of, fascinating facts. The Story: Tim Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen's College at Oxford University, England, 1976. Whilst there he built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television. He spent two years with Plessey Telecommunications Ltd (Poole, Dorset, UK) a major UK Telecom equipment manufacturer, working on distributed transaction systems, message relays, and bar code technology. In 1978 Tim left Plessey to join D.G Nash Ltd (Ferndown, Dorset, UK), where he wrote among other things typesetting software for intelligent printers, and a multitasking operating system. A year and a half spent as an independent consultant included a six month stint (Jun-Dec 1980)as consultant software engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Whilst there, he wrote for his own private use his first program for storing information including using random associations. Named "Enquire", and never published, this program formed the conceptual basis for the future development of the World Wide Web. From 1981 until 1984, Tim worked at John Poole's Image Computer Systems Ltd, with technical design responsibility. Work here included real time control firmware, graphics and communications software, and a generic macro language. In 1984, he took up a fellowship at CERN, to work on distributed real-time systems for scientific data acquisition and system control. Among other things, he worked on FASTBUS system software and designed a heterogeneous remote procedure call system. In 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the World Wide Web. Based on the earlier "Enquire" work, it was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. He wrote the first World Wide Web server, "httpd", and the first client, "WorldWideWeb" a what-you-see-is-what-you-get hypertext browser/editor which ran in the NeXTStep environment. This work was started in October 1990, and the program "WorldWideWeb" first made available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991. Through 1991 and 1993, Tim continued working on the design of the Web, coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His initial specifications of URLs, HTTP and HTML were refined and discussed in larger circles as the Web technology spread. In 1994, Tim joined the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS)at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1999, he became the first holder of the 3Com Founders chair. He is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium which coordinates Web development worldwide, with teams at MIT, at INRIA in France, and at Keio University in Japan. The Consortium takes as its goal to lead the Web to its full potential, ensuring its stability through rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations of its usage.

Inventor Philo T. Farnsworth

Inventor Philo T. Farnsworth

Fascinating facts about Philo T. Farnsworth inventor of Television in 1927.	Philo Farnsworth
Inventor: Philo Taylor Farnsworth Criteria: First to invent. First to patent. First practical. Entrepreneur. Birth: August 19, 1906 in Beaver, Utah Death: March 11, 1971 in San Francisco, California Nationality: American
Philo Taylor Farnsworth, American inventor and pioneer in television technology. Farnsworth developed a television system complete with receiver and camera, but he failed to produce his system commercially. Farnsworth was born in Beaver, Utah. His family moved to Rigby, Idaho, when he was 11 years old, where Farnsworth began experimenting with electricity. In 1920, when Farnsworth was 14, he showed his high school chemistry teacher a design he had made for an electronic television. The next year Farnsworth entered Brigham Young University as a special freshman. Farnsworth soon left school and worked at odd jobs until he met a willing investor who lent him money to start building his television. The television systems being experimented with at that time consisted of a system of spinning disks with holes punched in them and mirrors designed to convert light to electricity. These disks and mirrors could give only poor resolution. Farnsworth called his device an image dissector because it converted individual elements of the image into electricity one at a time. He replaced the spinning disks with cesium, an element that emits electrons when exposed to light. Farnsworth applied for a patent for his image dissector in 1927. The development of the television system was plagued by lack of money and by challenges to Farnsworth's patent from the giant Radio Corporation of America (RCA). He spent his career as head of the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation, which he founded in 1929. In 1934, the British communications company British Gaumont bought a license from Farnsworth to make systems based on his designs. In 1939, the American company RCA did the same. Both companies had been developing television systems of their own and recognized Farnsworth as a competitor. World War II (1939-1945) interrupted the development of television. When television broadcasts became a regular occurrence after the war, Farnsworth was not involved. Instead, he devoted his time to trying to perfect the devices he had designed. Farnsworth also worked as a consultant in electronics and later as a researcher in atomic energy. He conducted research on radar and on nuclear energy. Farnsworth held 165 patents, mostly in radio and television.