Thomas A. Edison filed for a patent on his cylinder phonograph on December 24, 1877.
The inventor accumulated more than 1,000 U.S. patents, but always considered
the phonograph to be his favorite invention.
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
November marks the anniversary of two important milestones in Thomas A. Edison's inventing career—the announcement that he invented a cylinder phonograph and development of a practical and long-lasting incandescent light bulb.
Thomas A. Edison was born in Milan, OH, in 1847, and grew up in Port Huron, MI. As a child, Edison received little formal education. His mother instructed him at home and he was an avid reader of books about nature and the sciences. As a teenager, while selling newspapers to train passengers, he was introduced to the stations' telegraph systems. During the Civil War, he worked as an itinerant telegrapher before accepting a permanent position with telegraph giant Western Union. His years as a telegrapher influenced some of his earliest inventions, including a stock "ticker" and voting machine.
In 1870, Edison established a workshop in Newark, NJ, and moved to Menlo Park, NJ, in 1876. While attempting to improve components of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone at his Menlo Park lab, Edison developed what he considered one of his greatest inventions (his "baby")—the cylinder phonograph. The phonograph reproduced the human voice for the first time by transferring vibrations from a speaker's voice through a stylus and on to foil cylinders which could be amplified and played repeatedly. Edison announced the cylinder phonograph on November 21, 1877, and played "Mary had a Little Lamb" on one of the invention's foil cylinders. He submitted a patent application for the phonograph on December 24, 1877, and received approval (Patent No. 200,521) on February 19, 1878.
Edison next turned his attention to developing an economical electric light bulb that would rival candles, gas, and lighting oils. Borrowing from previous electric light bulb research, he sought to improve the durability and quality of existing bulbs and materials. He spent months examining materials, including metal wire, human hair, and even coconut husks, before settling upon a carbon filament. After successfully using a carbon filament to light a bulb for 13 1/2 hours on October 22, 1879, Edison made additional improvements and filed for a patent on November 4, 1879. Edison announced a public display of his improved light bulbs on New Year's Eve 1879. The announcement was so enthusiastically received that the Pennsylvania Railroad chartered special trains to Menlo Park to satisfy the crowds of people eager to see the strings of bulbs Edison's employees hung between the labratory's buildings.
In the decades following these events, Edison would receive more than 1,000 U.S. patents for inventions that continue to impact the way we live more than 8 decades since his death in 1931. You can learn more about Thomas Edison using data and records collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and other federal agencies. For example:
While working on improvements to the telegraph and the telephone in 1877, Edison discovered a method for recording sound on foil cylinders. When
Edison spoke into the mouthpiece of the phonograph, the sound vibrations created by his voice caused a needle to etch the machine's rotating foil cylinder.
In 1878, Edison established the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company to sell his new invention. He would continue tinkering with his beloved phonograph
for the rest of his life.
Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.
Soon after Edison electrified Washington, DC's street lights in 1881, Census Bureau employee Herman Hollerith began studying the power source as a means to improve data tabulation.
The resulting Hollerith Tabulator used electrically operated components to capture and process 1890 Census data stored on paper punch cards.
In 1924, Thomas J. Watson renamed the conglomerate of companies that included Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company to the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
November 30 marks the 182nd birthday of Samuel Langhorne Clemens—the author better known as Mark Twain.
A 1910 Census enumerator interviewed Clemens at his Redding, CT, home hours before he died on April 21, 1910.
Learn more about Clemens and his "final interview" at our November 2015 Web page commemorating his life and work.