Thomas Edison: The Inventor of the Light Bulb? Thomas Edison, most famously known for the invention of the incandescent light bulb, was an American inventor born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He was born in a poor family as the first of seven children. Interestingly, his father was an banished political activist from Canada. In his childhood, he was left with hearing difficulties after he got scarlet fever and ear infections. This turned into almost complete deafness in his later years. He claimed later that he lost his hearing from a train incident but obviously that is not the only reason! In 1854 Thomas and his family moved to Michigan where he started going to public school. This did not last long as he got distracted easily and was judged a “difficult” child by the teacher. His mother then began …show more content…
At the age of 12, Edison began publishing a small newspaper and selling it to people on the Grand Trunk Railroad. However when he began to execute experiments in a baggage cart of the train and accidently started the cart on fire, he was kicked off. By 15, he had become a telegrapher and in his spare time, researched and experimented with electrical science. When he turned 22, he made his first invention, a refined stock ticker and was paid generously. After this he became a full-time inventor. In 1877, he created the phonograph, a new way of recording sound. Edison was not the inventor of the first light bulb. Instead, he perfected a incandescent bulb following Humphry Davy’s invention of the electric arc lamp. Many other scientists attempted to perfect electric light bulbs but Edison was the only one who succeeded. In a huge research laboratory in New Jersey, he made the