Short biography thomas edison book

Although Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous American of his time, and remains an international name today, he is mostly remembered only for the gift of universal electric light. His invention of the first practical incandescent lamp years ago so dazzled the world — already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other revolutionary devices — that it cast a shadow over his later achievements.

One of the achievements of this staggering new biography, the first major life of Edison in more than twenty years, is that it portrays the unknown Edison — the philosopher, the futurist, the chemist, the botanist, the wartime defense adviser, the founder of nearly companies — as fully as it deconstructs the Edison of mythological memory. Edmund Morris, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, brings to the task all the interpretive acuity and literary elegance that distinguished his previous biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Thomas edison inventions

Morris sweeps aside conspiratorial theories positing an enmity between Edison and Nikola Tesla and presents proof of their mutually admiring, if wary, relationship. Edison was certainly a technical genius, but Stross excavates the man from layers of myth-making and separates his true achievements from his almost equally colossal failures.

How much credit should Edison receive for the various inventions that have popularly been attributed to him — and how many of them resulted from both the inspiration and the perspiration of his rivals and even his own assistants? The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds.

They would continue their summer road trips until , when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life.

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