Summary

Read the summary and fill in the gaps 1-6 with the sentences A-G. There is one sentence that you do not need to use.
  1. The development of the telegraph was the first step in the communication revolution and the telegraph industry expanded rapidly in the second half of the 19th century.
  2. Edison depended upon dozens of young inventors to build and test his ideas.
  3. Thanks to it he was often able to see possibilities others missed because he was constantly learning.
  4. He received his first patent on an electric vote recorder.
  5. Although it did not get practical application for the vehicle propulsion this work paved the way for the modern alkaline battery.
  6. It became the model for later, modern facilities such as Bell Laboratories.
  7. He is referred to as 'the person who lit the world'.
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He had very little formal education, being taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother and reading books on a wide range of subjects on his own. His belief in self-improvement remained throughout his life. 1 
Edison began working at an early age, first as a newsboy, then as a telegrapher. It gave Edison a chance to travel, see the country and gain experience. When in Boston he began to change his profession from telegrapher to inventor. 2   One year later he developed his first successful invention, an improved stock ticker called the “Universal Stock Printer”. For this and some related inventions Edison was paid $40,000. Edison set up his first laboratory and manufacturing facility in New Jersey where he was inventing and manufacturing devices that greatly improved the speed and efficiency of the telegraph.
Later in Menlo Park Edison established a new facility containing all the equipment so as to work on any invention. This research and development laboratory was the first of its kind anywhere. 3   This is sometimes considered Edison’s greatest invention. Here Edison began to change the world and became known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park”. There he invented the tin foil phonograph which created a sensation and brought Edison international fame and the carbon microphone that turned the telephone into an indispensible machine.
Later he moved on to a more ambitious machine that he called the Analytical Engine. It would be a programmable machine with memory, a central processor and many structural elements of the modern digital computer. But Babbage did not manage to construct any so in 1842 the government stopped funding for his work. Edison’s greatest challenge was the development of a practical incandescent, electric light. After one and a half year of work, success was achieved marking the beginning of the electric age. Edison spent the next several years creating the electric industry. 4  The success of his electric light brought Edison to new heights of fame and wealth, as electricity spread around the world. Edison’s various electric companies continue to grow until they were brought together to form Edison General Electric.
When Edison moved to West Orange he decided to build a new laboratory. Edison possessed both resources and experience by this time to build the best equipped and largest laboratory which not only allowed Edison to work on any sort of project, but also allowed him to work on as many as ten or twenty projects at once. One of the projects he was involved in was the development of a better storage battery for use in electric vehicles. It proved to be Edison's most difficult project, taking ten years to develop a practical alkaline battery. 5   He is credited with the invention of ophthalmoscope, the cowcatcher, the black-box recorder, a submarine automated by compressed air, a seismograph for measuring earthquakes, a "coronagraph" for generating artificial eclipses, a pen that drew dotted lines, ergonomic paper.
In general, Edison was probably the world’s greatest inventor. He had patented on 1,093 inventions. Edison's career was the quintessential rags-to-riches success story that made him a folk hero in America. He was often able to see possibilities others missed because he was constantly learning. He had enough genius to see the genius in others so men came from all over the US and Europe to work with the famous inventor. 6   On the other hand he was an uninhibited egoist and could be ruthless to defeat his competitors. By the time he died he was one of the most well-known and respected Americans in the world. He had been at the forefront of America’s first technological revolution and set the stage for the modern electric world.