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Inventor of Electric Light
The great scientist Thomas Alva Edison - (1847 – 1931)
In March 1878 he began to research for making an electric
lamp. Those days there were no electric light. He performed one thousand and two hundred experiments only then he succeeded in making an electric lamp. On New Year’s Day 1880 he put up electric light at his laboratory and streets at Manto Park, New Jersey, U.S.A. People from all over America came to see that grand scene. On 4th September 1882 for the first time New York was shone with the bright electric light.
In 1877 he invented gramophone, a machine which can reproduce human voice. At that time people called it talking machine.
Edison lived in America. Young Edison was very curious. He was always full of questions. One day his teacher was telling a story about birds. He got up asked the teacher, `` madam, why cannot we fly like a bird?’’ the teacher replied, `` because you have no wings’’. Edison thought for a second and commented on the answer, `` but kites have no wings and still we can fly them in the sky’’. All the boys laughed thinking him stupid. The teacher thought that the boy was naughty. Edison was eight years old then.
He asked her mother the same question. She tried to satisfy him. But he refused to accept anything unless he could test it for himself.
One morning he was watching a bird eating worms. Young Edison thought an idea. ``the bird is able to fly because it eats worms. Man can also fly if he eats worms’’. He caught a few worms, beat them into a pulp and mixed it in water. He gave this mixture to a girl to drink saying the mixture will make her fly like a bird. The poor girl believed and drank the mixture. She could not fly but fell ill. Edison’s mother scolded him much about for this.
At last he came to know that his ideas were wrong. First he should study and think a lot. Gradually he bought many books and set up a small laboratory at the age of ten years.
He did many jobs. Selling sweets, fruits and newspapers and printing his own newspaper etc. but he made good use of libraries and met experts in factories and workshop. He used to ask them questions and learnt a lot from them and worked harder at his experiments.
He said once, `` the world has been in darkness too long. I would like to give to the world more laughter and more light’’. So he gave gramophone and electric lamp.
Edison made more than one thousand inventions. In the entire history of scientific progress, no other single scientist has given so many inventions and discoveries to the world. He became famous as a `wizard of the technical age’.
His message for us is, ` `genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine percent per cent perspiration’’.
Published: September 17, 2009
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