Thomas Edison Abraham Archibald Anderson

Thomas Edison, Abraham Archibald Anderson
National Portrait Gallery

Edison had only three months in a school and was mainly taught by his mother. But he conducted experiments at home. At twelve, a sort of Huckleberry Finn figure, he sold newspapers in the railroads, traveling far. At thirteen he edited a newspaper himself. He learned telegraphy. At sixteen he was an itinerant telegraphic expert, and already an inventor. He lived in cheap boarding houses or simply slept on any floor available.

Western Union multiplied its offices to 2,250 in 1866, over 4,000 by 1870, 6,500 in 1875, and nearly 10,000 by 1880.

At Menlo Park, a New Jersey whistle-stop settlement, Edison established the first true industrial laboratory in the world. He found the electric phonograph or gramophone (1877), the incandescent lamp (1879), and in the process he produced a ‘rectifier’ which converted alternating current into direct current. In 1881-2 he constructed in New York City the first central electrical power-plant ever assembled. This made possible the widespread use of electricity in downtown Manhattan.

Charles Lewis Tiffany, went into the jewelry business in 1837, aged twenty-five, on a borrowed $1,000 and in thirty years built up his firm (he was a master-salesman) into the most profitable of its kind in the world selling, above all, diamonds. He made a cheap killing in 1848, when the price of diamonds in Europe dropped by half, stocking up for the inevitable revival.

Edison and Louis Comfort Tiffany, working together, equipped the Lyceum not only with electric sconces throughout but with the first electric footlights. This 1885 innovation was the envy of European impresarios.

God Bless America
Kate Smith