Edison Phonograph Works issued to and signed by Thomas A. Edison and Transfer to Mina M. Edison - 1914 dated Autographed Stock Certificate

Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) Edison had a late start in his schooling due to childhood illness. His mind often wandered which soon ended Edison’s three months of formal schooling. His mother had been a school teacher in Canada and happily took over the job of schooling her son. She encouraged and taught him to read and experiment. He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me.”  Partially deaf since adolescence, he became a telegraph operator through a friend’s father. Edison's deafness aided him as it blocked out noises and prevented Edison from hearing the telegrapher sitting next to him.

One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the then impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his NJ home. Edison applied for his first patent, the electric vote recorder, on October 28, 1868.

Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, NJ with the automatic repeater and other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained Edison fame was the phonograph in 1877. It was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical.

An example of different inventions among his 1,093 are the many types of printing telegraphs, galvanic batteries, stencil and perforating pens, phonographs, electricitiy, the light bulb, telephones, electric motors, preserving fruit, vacuum apparatus, electric and locomotive railways, apparatus for exhibiting moving figures, film for moving picture machines, automobiles, and the list goes on and on. At the time of his death he was working on an alternative supply of rubber for the making of tires for his  friend, Henry Ford.

Edison's major innovation was the Menlo Park research lab in New Jersey. It was the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement.