Thomas Edison was one of the greatest minds of his generation, known as a skilled scientist, inventor, and innovator. With over 1093 patents at the time of his death, Edison proved to be one of the most successful inventor’s that the world has ever seen. Born in 1847 in Milan Ohio, Edison served as the youngest of seven kids. Edison received little to no formal education, and started out his career as a railroad worker near Detroit, Michigan. What made Thomas Edison so intriguing was the fact that he couldn’t, “simply apply existing knowledge to industrial ends, but was forced to develop systems for creating new knowledge”, (Pretzer 28). Edison was not fortunate enough to work in today’s conditions with the new abundance of scientific technology, …show more content…
A phonograph is a record player that can reproduce sounds when spoken into it. In August of 1877, while working on a transmitter, Edison noticed, “the movement of the paper tape through the machine produced a noise resembling spoken words when played at a high speed.” (History 1). Edison began to experiment with his new findings by using a tinfoil cylinder and large needles. To his surprise, the machine recorded and reproduced his spoken words. The first ever message recorded was, “Mary had a little lamb”. The invention of the phonograph was a colossal scientific breakthrough, and at first some people wouldn’t even believe it was real. As word spread, America soon became a sound recording industry, much thanks to Thomas Edison, now earning the nickname, “The Wizard of Menlo …show more content…
Starting in 1888, Edison based his motion picture prototype on the phonograph, which he initially created to play back recordings. Edison wanted to have an instrument that, “does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. By creating spiral arrangements with 1/16 inch photographs, indecent pictures were soon visible through a microscope. Edison credits Eadweard Muybridge on giving inspiration for his first motion picture camera. Thomas Edison soon opened his own movie studio nicknamed, “The Black Maria”. Visitors one by one could view small 20 second films through a kinetoscope. Like the light bulb, Edison was not the first to work on motion pictures, but was able to provide the first commercial system for