Thomas Edison

General Electric · 1847–1931

Born February 11, 1847 · Died October 18, 1931

Thomas Alva Edison (11 February 1847 – 18 October 1931) left school at 12, taught himself telegraphy, and at 21 began a career as a professional inventor, securing over 1,000 US patents. He built industrial research laboratories at Menlo Park (1876) and West Orange (1887), invented the phonograph in 1877, perfected a practical incandescent light bulb in 1879, and organized the Edison Electric Light Company that became General Electric. He lost the 'war of the currents' to Westinghouse and Tesla's alternating current, and J.P. Morgan later erased his name from corporate existence when the former Edison company was reorganized — a founder who both created and was displaced by the modern corporation.

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Contents

Career highlights

1847Born 11 February in Milan, Ohio; deaf in one ear from childhood, he left school at about 12 and taught himself.
1868Files his first patent, for an electric vote recorder, which no one buys — teaching him the lesson of inventing what people actually want.
1869Invents the improved stock ticker and sells the rights for $40,000, his first significant money from invention.
1876Opens the Menlo Park research laboratory in New Jersey, built as an 'invention factory' dedicated to turning out new technology on demand.
1877Invents the phonograph, the first machine to record and reproduce sound, announced in December and making him world-famous.
1879Demonstrates a practical, long-burning incandescent light bulb at Menlo Park and files for patent protection on the electric lamp.
1882Opens the Pearl Street Station in New York, the first central electric-power plant, supplying direct current (DC) to customers.
1887Moves to West Orange, New Jersey, opening a larger laboratory complex that becomes the prototype for modern industrial R&D.
1891The 'war of the currents' tilts against his direct-current system as Westinghouse and Tesla's alternating current wins scale economies; Edison's is the losing campaign.
1914His West Orange laboratory complex, with many of his works in progress, is severely damaged by fire; he reportedly replies that the catastrophe was valuable because it burned up his mistakes.
1931Dies 18 October at West Orange; at his funeral much of the world dims lights briefly in tribute to the inventor of practical electric lighting.

Lessons for founders

Invention is a discipline, not a flash of genius. Edison built Menlo Park as an 'invention factory' — a lab engineered to turn out usable technology on schedule, working with assistants rather than alone, and iterating relentlessly until the thing worked.
Make it work; don't just conceive it. His own maxim — 'Remember, nothing that's good works by itself. You've gotta make the damn thing work' — captures the difference between a patent and a product.
Persistence beats brilliance at the margins. As he put it, 'The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want' — a doctrine of sticking with a problem past where rivals stop.
A founder can be displaced by the institution he creates. Edison's companies were merged into the Edison General Electric combine, and later reorganizations by J.P. Morgan removed his name entirely — the corporation outliving and absorbing the visionary who built it.