Thomas Alva Edison is considered by most to be one of the greatest inventors of all times. He received patents for over 1000 inventions, most involving electric light and power, batteries, the phonograph and the telegraph. Many if not most of Edison's inventions were little more than improvements on existing ideas or technology. The key to Edison's success is embodied in perhaps his most famous quote: "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."

Thomas Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. As a young boy, Thomas suffered hearing problems and did not do well in school as a result. At the age of ten, his mother pulled him out of public school and began educating him at home. Edison became interested in chemistry and set up a lab in the basement.

He got job as a trainboy at the Grand Trunk Railway when he was twelve. He was allowed to set up a laboratory in an empty railcar and also learned telegraphy during this time. He became a skillful telegrapher and began working on improvements to the telegraph, such as the automatic telegraph and duplex telegraph. He also developed a message printer and stock ticker.

Edison set up a lab in Newark, New Jersey and became a full-time inventor in 1870.

Although Edison is famous for inventing electric light, it was not an original idea. The idea of electric bulbs had been around for quite some time. This was an invention where Edisons's "99 percent perspiration" paid off. He and the workers in his lab tried some 6000 different filament materials before hitting on one that would provide a reasonable life span. Edison then went on to develop a power plant system that would operate his lights.

A man named Leon Scott had patented what he called a "Phonautograph" in 1857. It did not playback sound, but recorded sound waves on a rotating cylinder. Beginning it 1859, it was sold as a device for analyzing sound. Thomas Edison worked with this concept and developed his phonograph using a cardboard cylinder wrapped in tinfoil. He received a patent for it in 1878, but did little to further develop it. Alexander Graham Bell begin working on a phonograph using wax cylinders, but could not achieve better sound quality than Edison. Edison, however, resumed work on the phonograph using solid wax cylinders. By the 1890's, musicians were using Edison phonographs to record their music. Coin-operated phonographs began appearing in arcades and stores. Edison continued to improve on the phonograph and would later declare it his favorite invention.

In 1879, British photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, invented the Zoopraxiscope, a device that projected a series of photographic images placed on disks. His classic work involved a series of images of a trotting horse, shot with 700 cameras.

in 1888, Edison met with Muybridge to discuss combining the Zoopraxiscope device with a phonograph to combine sound and vision. Muybridge was not interested so Edison resolved to develop his own moving picture device. The original Kinetograph involved a cylinder covered with light-sensitive material, much like the phonograph. Most of the work on this project was done by a lab assistant names William Dickson.

About that same time, George Eastman developed celluloid film. Edison quickly incorporated this in the Kinetograph and set up a motion picture studio in West Orange. Kinetescopes became features in arcades and stores as the phonographs had become. For a nickel, patrons could watch a few seconds of film.

Unfortunately, Edison did not patent his kinetoscope overseas and Robert Paul of England began selling reproductions throughout Europe and Africa. Edison tried to limit their use by refusing to sell films to locations where he new his company had not sold Kinetoscopes, however, this only spurred to develop their own cameras. Later inventors built on the technology to produce film projectors, such as the Panopticon, the "Bioskop" and the Lumiere Brother's Cinematograph, which debuted in Paris in 1895.

Edison's success relied not only on his creativeness, but also on the fact that he was a savvy businessman. He set up numerous companies develop and market his products. The success of the light bulb was largely due to his ability to produce and market it. Edison developed and controlled the electrical plants that would power his inventions. Edison fought to defeat his competitors. In the electrical realm, Edison worked hard to discredit Nicola Tesla who had developed the alternating current system, whereas Edison used direct current. Ironically, AC is the system used today. Edison was known to be jealous of talented employees and often took credit for others' work. Nonetheless, Edison and his assistants developed much of the technology that has shaped the modern world.

Thomas Edison died On Oct. 18th, 1931 in New Jersey at age 84. Two years later, a patent was granted for a device to hold items for electroplating, Edison's last patent.