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A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison
Edison's Hectic Years
With his success as an inventor and manufacturer at the age of twenty-three, Thomas Alva Edison
in 1870 plunged into a period of feverish endeavor that has no parallel in the lives of other great men of science. His
fertile brain and boundless energy drove him from one great invention to another, each of which, in turn, launched new
manufacturing enterprises, giving employment to thousands of people. Few were his working days that did not extend through
twenty of the twenty-four hours. The group of men who worked closely with him as his immediate assistants earned him the
name of the "insomnia squad" as they tried valiantly to follow the pace set by the "boss."
Actually there was no "boss" since, as the men who worked with him have testified, he worked
harder, longer, and looked less like the owner of the plant than anyone present. A casual visitor, we are told, would have
regarded Edison as one of the least likely persons to have been in charge, judging by outward appearances. Democracy walked
with him through his laboratory.
Work in his Newark plants constantly demanded more time for production than creation, so in
1876, in order to devote more of his energies to invention, he turned the management of his factories over to trusted
assistants and established laboratories at Menlo Park, New Jersey.
Before moving to Menlo Park, however, Edison made one of his great discoveries, an electrical
phenomenon he called "etheric force." This was the discovery that electrically generated waves would traverse an open
circuit - the principle on which wireless telegraphy and radio are founded. The idea that electricity would traverse space
was almost beyond belief at that time.
In a related field of research, Edison also discovered that messages could be sent through
space by induction, in which a current generated in one set of wires induced a like current to flow through another set
of wires between which no connection existed. As a result of this research, he received patents in 1885 on the
transmission of signals, by induction, between moving train and a station and between ship and shore.
 
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