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A Brief Biography of Thomas Alva Edison
Edison Aids Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi had become a personal friend of Edison's and, because of this friendship,
Edison made these patents available to him rather than to a competitor who offered more money. Thus, these patents helped
Marconi to become recognized as the inventor of the wireless telegraph.
Edison was the first to give credit where credit was due, even though some of his earlier
experiments and discoveries laid the groundwork for his successors.
It was at Newark, too, that Edison invented the "electric pen," forerunner of the mimeograph
machine.
With the opening of his Menlo Park laboratories, Edison devoted most of his time to invention
rather than to the manufacture of things. The results were astounding.
One of the greatest of the many "firsts" attributed to Edison is the carrying out of research
on an organized basis. Before Edison did this, the process of invention was usually a one-man and one-brain undertaking.
At Menlo Park, Edison surrounded himself with scientific apparatus and trained assistants who handled the drudgery and
time-consuming details of research, making possible his most acclaimed invention, the incandescent electric lamp. Menlo
Park itself was an experiment for Edison, and he did not really perfect his invention of organized research in industry
until eleven years later, when he transferred operations to West Orange on a greatly enlarged scale.
 
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