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Thomas Edison's Accomplishments

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Thomas Edison best known for his invention of the light bulb, had many great inventions including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, an electric car, and an electric power station. But what made him so great? How did he succeed? As a young boy he worked at different odd jobs just to try and make a living for example he sold candy, vegetables and newspapers. He definitely had a knack for business. Any extra income he had went towards a growing chemistry set. In the 1870s Thomas Edison sold the rights to his quadraplex telegraph for $10,000. This gave him the money to create a proper research laboratory and to extend his experiments. By 1877 He had developed the phonograph. This got him a lot of attention. Many people were amazed at the first recording device they called him “The wizard of Menlo park”. Although his invention would …show more content…
Thomas Edison then joined with William Joseph Hammer in producing the electric light bulb it turned out to be a great commercial success and in 1878 he formed the Edison Electric light company so that he could profit from this great invention. Thomas successfully predicted that he would be able to make electric light so cheap it would be come universal. He then went ahead to work on distributing electricity. During the fledgeling years of electric generation Thomas was involved in a battle between his DC current system and the AC current system favored by George Westinghouse, but was invented by Nikola Tesla, this became known as the “current war”. Both sides were so desperate to show that they were superior that the Edison Company on a few occasions electrocuted animals to show how dangerous the AC current could be. During world war one Thomas was asked to be a naval consultant but he only wanted to work on defensive weapons as he had a strong nonviolent belief system. He was proud that none of his inventions were used for killing. Thomas Edison once said “Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all

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