Who Was Thomas Alva Edison

One day in 1882, Thomas Edison flipped a switch that lit up lower Manhattan with incandescent light and changed the way people live ever after. The electric light bulb was only one of thousands of Edison’s inventions, which include the phonograph and the kinetoscope, an early precursor to the movie camera. As a boy, observing a robin catch a worm and then take flight, he fed a playmate a mixture of worms and water to see if she could fly! Here’s an accessible, appealing biography with 100 black-and-white illustrations.

Thomas Edison’s greatest invention? His own fame. At the height of his fame Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as “the Napoleon of invention” and blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light and the first motion picture cameras, Edison’s name became emblematic of all the wonder and promise of the emerging age of technological marvels. But as Randall Stross makes clear in this critical biography of the man who is arguably the most globally famous of all Americans, Thomas Edison’s greatest invention may have been his own celebrity. Edison was certainly a technical genius, but Stross excavates the man from layers of myth-making and separates his true achievements from his almost equally colossal failures. How much credit should Edison receive for the various inventions that have popularly been attributed to him—and how many of them resulted from both the inspiration and the perspiration of his rivals and even his own assistants? This bold reassessment of Edison’s life and career answers this and many other important questions while telling the story of how he came upon his most famous inventions as a young man and spent the remainder of his long life trying to conjure similar success. We also meet his partners and competitors, presidents and entertainers, his close friend Henry Ford, the wives who competed with his work for his attention, and the children who tried to thrive in his shadow—all providing a fuller view of Edison’s life and times than has ever been offered before. The Wizard of Menlo Park reveals not only how Edison worked, but how he managed his own fame, becoming the first great celebrity of the modern age.

Beginning with Thomas Edison's childhood, when he set up his first laboratory in his basement as a 10-year-old, and following through his many jobs before he was able to support himself as an inventor, this is the true story of the man who brought the world the phonograph, motion pictures, and even the electric light bulb--revolutionary inventions that forever changed the way people live. "One of the most critically acclaimed, best-selling children's book series ever published."--The New York Times Margaret Cousins is also the author of the Landmark Book Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia.

A biography of the inventor who patented more than 1,100 inventions in 60 years, among them the electric light and the phonograph.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Morris comes a revelatory new biography ofThomas Alva Edison, the most prolific genius in American history.

An important figure in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks' actions led to the desegregation of buses in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1960s. In this biography for middle-grade readers, Brandt offers an inspiring profile of this brave woman. Part of Troll's History Makers series.

Ellen M. Dolan explores the life and career of America's best inventor. Focusing on Edison's development from his early years as a telegraph operator to a powerful and influential businessman, it shows how Edison's inquisitive nature helped him become an inventor with over a thousand registered patents and become popularly known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park."