Edison Phonograph Works issued to and signed by Thomas A. Edison and Mention of Mina M. Edison - 1923 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.

Mina Miller Edison (July 6, 1865 – August 24, 1947) was an American community activist and the second wife of the renowned inventor and industrialist, Thomas Edison. In Fort Myers, Florida, she made significant contributions to the development of public spaces and educational initiatives. Mina Miller met Thomas Edison in 1885 at the home of Ezra Gilliland, a mutual acquaintance of her father and Edison, in Boston. After he taught her Morse code, he used it to propose marriage. They wed on February 24, 1886.

At the tender age of twenty, Mina became the stepmother to Edison’s three children: Marion Estelle Edison (nicknamed “Dot”), born in 1873; Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (nicknamed “Dash”), born in 1876; and William Leslie Edison, born in 1878. While this role was challenging, Mina and her husband went on to have three more children: Madeleine Edison (born in 1888), Charles Edison (born in 1890), and Theodore Miller Edison (born in 1898). As Thomas Edison oversaw his laboratory down the hill, Mina took charge of hiring and supervising a staff of maids, a cook, a nanny, and a gardening team. She even referred to herself as the “home executive.” After 1891, Mina assumed ownership of the house, safeguarding it from potential seizure to settle Edison’s debts in case of bankruptcy.