What fascinates me so much about this man is the way he not only invented something, but he created the APPLICATION for his invention. It was one thing to invent electricity- Ben Franklin managed it 100 years earlier. But it was a totally other thing to figure out how to get people to WANT electricity. And to make it possible. Like cable tv, the internet, how many applications that are not immediately apparent? Cable tv wasn’t viable without actually laying the cables. And I can remember saying to my dh, back in 1987, “But what would I use the internet FOR?” -Carole

It’s the birthday [February 11] of Thomas Alva Edison, born in Milan, Ohio (1847). He did not do well in school, in part because he’d spent his early childhood sick in bed, and he suffered from bad hearing. So he was home-schooled by his mother. He started working odd jobs when he was 13, bouncing around various jobs at machine shops, jewelry shops, and telegraph offices, and he soaked up as much as he could about the operation of different kinds of technology. His first important invention was an improvement on the stock ticker. Western Union paid him $40,000 for the device.

That helped Edison set up one of the first independent industrial research laboratories in the world. He eventually amassed 1,093 patents, the most patents ever issued to a single person in American history. His most important inventions were the phonograph, the light bulb, and the movie camera. But perhaps his greatest achievement was managing to make these things a part of everyday life. When he invented the light bulb, it might have been just a novelty. Edison had to invent the electricity industry in order to make the light bulb useful. He built the first power plant in the world, designed his own steam-powered generators, built a 14-mile network of underground wiring, and installed meters to measure the flow of the electricity. He’s now regarded as the father of the modern electronic world. Today’s History Lesson

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