Letter to the Editor

Thomas Edison's early life and greatest invention

Friday, October 20, 2023

EDITOR’S NOTE: Helen Ruth Arnold was a retired teacher and long-time contributor to the Gazette’s Open Forum columns.

Dear Editor,

One day while I was in elementary school, I shared the facts I had learned about Thomas Alva Edison, the famous inventor, with my father, Ted Hancock.

I was surprised to hear that from 1928 until Edison’s death in 1931, my father had worked for G.E. After serving as a young missionary in Australia and New Zealand for nearly three years, my dad returned to the U.S. and worked for General Electric X-ray for 39 years. This was a medical division of the General Electric Co., once owned by Edison.

Edison’s incandescent lamp, phonograph, microphone, multiplex telegraph, first operable motion picture camera and talking movies are just a few of his inventions.

There are a lot of stories about his early life and the cause of his deafness. Family members said that it was due to scarlet fever and constant ear infections. He taught his second wife, Mine (Miller) Edison the Morse Code and communicated by taping it with his fingers.

His first wife, Mary (Stilwell) Edison died from typhoid fever in 1884.

Mina and Thomas Edison went to the Universal Exposition in France in 1889.

All the greatest inventions of the 19th century were displayed. She had to help him communicate because of his profound deafness.

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, toured Paris with the Edisons.

An overall plan was devised by Edison. It was a design for a central power system that would light up cities. From 1880-1883 he worked on an underground conductor network using copper wire.

Menlo Plark, N.J., was the location of his first laboratory. Finding the right filament for his light bulb took from 1878 to 1880.

Quite by accident, he discovered that the perfect coating for this filament could be made from the carbon formed in the chimney of a kerosene lamp. He rubbed it on a cotton thread and later used a piece of bamboo.