Edison Manufacturing Co. signed by Thos. A. Edison - 1917 dated Autograph Stock Certificate

Stock issued to Edison Manufacturing Company and signed by Thomas A. Edison as president. Rare!

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.

Edison Records was among the pioneering record labels that advanced sound recording and reproduction, playing a significant role in the nascent recording industry. The initial phonograph cylinders were produced in 1888, coinciding with Edison's establishment of the Edison Phonograph Company in that same year. The wax cylinders that were recorded, which were later succeeded by Blue Amberol cylinders and vertical-cut Diamond Discs, were produced by Edison's National Phonograph Company starting in 1896, which was reorganized as Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1911. Up until 1910, the recordings did not feature the names of the artists. The company began to fall behind its competitors in the 1920s, both in terms of technology and the popularity of its artists, ultimately ceasing production of recordings in 1929.

Thomas A. Edison invented the phonograph, the first apparatus for recording and reproducing sound, in 1877. Following the patenting of this invention and the subsequent publicity and acclaim it garnered, Edison and his laboratory shifted their focus to the commercial development of electric lighting, refraining from further involvement in the phonograph's advancement for nearly a decade. Edison's original phonograph recorded on sheets of tinfoil and was little more than a rudimentary curiosity, albeit one that captivated much of the public. These initial phonographs were primarily sold to entrepreneurs who earned a living by traveling across the country to deliver "educational" lectures in rented halls or otherwise demonstrating the device to audiences for a fee. The tinfoil phonograph was not suitable for any genuine practical application, and public interest soon diminished.

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