Thomas Edison was a great inventor and businessman. He was born in February 1847, and he lived for eighty-four years until he died in October 1931. Through his life he created many inventions such as the standard long-lasting lightbulb, the phonograph (a basic tape recorder) and the motion camera. Early Life On February 11th 1847, Thomas Alva Edison was born to Nancy and Samuel Edison in Milan, Ohio. His father Samuel was a pub owner and his mother was a schoolteacher. He had six siblings and tragically only four (including Thomas) survived to adulthood. From an early age, Edison was a sickly, weak child which may have been why his mother cared for him so much. The Edisons moved to a larger town called Port Huron in 1854 because they were in a difficult financial situation and the village had a …show more content…
He found, when he got back that his beloved mother had a mental illness. The family was getting extremely impecunious. Becoming an inventor In 1869, Edison moved to New York and developed his first invention, a stock ticker at the age of twenty-two. One company was so impressed with the invention, they paid him $40,000. With this money he quit his job and started inventing full time. Edison set up his first small laboratory in Newark, New Jersey and employed a few workers. He invented the quadruplex telegraph but the mogul Jay Gould took the invention paying Edison $100,000. In 1871, Edison married a sixteen year old called Mary Stillwell. During the thirteen years of their marriage they had three children, William, Thomas and Marion. Later William followed in his father’s footsteps and became an inventor and, tragically, Marion died of a brain tumor in 1884. By the early 1870s Edison had earned a reputation as an unparallel inventor, in 1876 he created an industrial research facility and in December 1877 he created the phonograph. That and the lightbulb were the inventions that made him famous.