| Thomas Edison Inventor of motion pictures |
| Is there anything this man did not invent?? "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," he often was quoted as saying. When ever you turn on a light, listen to recorded music or watch a motion picture - you are utilizing one of Thomas Edison's inventions. In his lifetime, he patented 1,093 inventions, including the motion picture camera. Thomas Alva Edison, was born on Febuary 11th, 1847. As a kid, even at age 3, he would look at any book or peice of literature he could get his hands on. When he could talk, he would ask whoever was around about whatever was around him, and demanded to know why if they could not give him an answer. Curious kid indeed! Edison had only three months of formal schooling. When a schoolmaster called him "addled," his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Thomas Edison said many years later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint." At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and for chemical experiments. At the ripe age of 10, he created his own lab in the basement of his home and the inventor in him was let out! At age 16 - he struck out on his own making numberous improvents for companies that he worked for. Eventually he was married, and settled into this house in New Jersey. (He also had a winter home in Ft. Myers, Florida.) It was here he made the first tin-foil phonograph. It was crude, but it proved his point - that sound could be recorded and played back. Edison was never a man to rest. He was always on the move to improve something, do the next impossible or find someway to get his name in the press. Not long after the phonographs introduction to society, he left it for a new frontier, Incandescent Lighting and the Power The Execution of Mary StuartDistribution system. The phonograph had disappeared as quickly as it had entered the scene. By 1880 the phonograph was pretty much a memory for Edison. The light bulb and power distribution systems had made Thomas Edison a showman again. There were great parties and cheers, but no one to record them. He had a thought, a vision, for motion-pictures and in 1888, started putting that vision into play. Edison began working on a device that, "does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear", this was to become motion pictures.Thomas Edison's vision for motion pictures began before 1888, however, the visit of Eadweard Muybridge to his laboratory in West Orange in February of that year certainly stimulated his resolve to invent a camera for motion pictures. Muybridge proposed that they collaborate and combine the Zoopraxiscope with the Edison phonograph. Although apparently intrigued, Edison decided not to participate in such a partnership, perhaps realizing that the Zoopraxiscope was not a very practical or efficient way of recording motion. In an attempt to protect his future, he filed a caveat with the Patents Office on October 17, 1888, describing his ideas for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear" -- record and reproduce objects in motion. He called it a "Kinetoscope." Edison's first motion picture ever copyrighted showed an employee pretending to sneeze. One problem was that a good film for motion pictures was not available. In 1893, Eastman Kodak began supplying motion picture film stock, making it possible for Edison to step up the production of new motion pictures. He built a motion picture production studio in New Jersey. The studio had a roof that could be opened to let in daylight, and the entire building was constructed so that it could be moved to stay in line with the sun. C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat invented a film projector and called it the Vitascope. Eventually, the Edison Company developed its own projector, known as the Projectoscope, and stopped marketing the Vitascope. The first motion picture shown in a nikelodeon were on April 23, 1896, in New York City. The name of the film was "The Execution of Mary Stuart." Audiences loved it!! Motion-pictures were born. Edison went on to invent, as he was never happy with one thing, he strived to make more visions become a reality. He died October 18th, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey. On an interesting note, Edison was friends with Henry Ford. Ford believed that your soul left your body with your last breath. Somehow, he convinced Edison's son to clamp a test tube on his mouth and capture Edison's last breath. The picture is here. Anyhoo - RIP Thomas - may your bulbs always burn!! See his grave here!! some info used from about.com site...check it out!! See Homer Simpson as Edison here ... |
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