Thomas Alva Edison invented many of the earliest and most popular devices to make electricity useful. He was born on February 11, 1847, at Milan, Ohio, the seventh and youngest child in his family. At the age of 7, Edison moved with the family to
Port Huron. He did not enjoy the public schools and his mother ended his formal education after three months. He became a telegraph operator as a teenager.
The first invention that he tried to sell was an electric vote-recording machine. He later sold an improvement to the ticker machine for $40,000 and used the money to open his first workshop. Among his inventions were the carbon transmitter for telephones, the phonograph, and the incandescent light bulb.
Later, using the inventions of George Eastman, he invented the motion picture camera. In 1929, the golden anniversary of the light bulb, Henry Ford moved Edisons's original Menlo Park laboratory to Greenfield Village, a museum in Dearborn MI. He died in 1931.
