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The electric light system, phonograph,
and motion pictures
 What were Thomas Edison's top three inventions? The question is harder than you might think. Edison earned 1,093 United States patents for his inventions.
How do you make a filament for the light bulb? What machine can make enough electric power to light up all those bulbs? How do you get electric power to all those light bulbs out there? All these questions have to be answered; all these things have to be invented. That is why each of the inventions below took years of hard work. No wonder Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration!"
These three inventions are considered Edison's greatest: the electric light system, the phonograph and motion pictures. If Edison had only invented one of these, he would have made an important contribution to the world. But even these top three inventions were not enough for him. Other patents included the alkaline storage battery, improvements to the telegraph, the telephone and the stock ticker, Portland cement and even a substitute for rubber. At Edison's three laboratories (Newark, Menlo Park and West Orange), his "muckers" worked night and day on his many ideas.
The Electric Light System
Thomas Alva Edison did not invent the first light bulb. Surprised? Even before Edison was born, scientists had experimented with making light bulbs. These bulbs burned out after a few minutes.  What Edison invented was the first incandescent light that was practical, that would light for hours and hours. He and his "muckers" also had to invent hundreds of other parts to make the light bulbs in your home work. Light switches, electric meters, wiring--all these had to be invented too. This took several years of experiments. Ludwig Boehm of Germany carefully blew the glass to make light bulbs. Charles Batchelor of Great Britain tested one thing after another to make the filament, the tiny thread that glows inside a light bulb. Platinum, rubber, even the black soot from kerosene lamps--Batchelor tried thousands of materials. The lights still would not burn long enough.In the fall of 1879, the muckers tested a small cotton thread as a filament. (Some books give the date as October 21, but new research has proven this to be false.) First they carbonized it, burning it to make it hard. They placed it inside the glass, carefully forced the air out with a special vacuum pump and sealed the bulb. All the months of experiments paid off! The bulb burned at least 13 hours. (Some books say it burned even longer.)
Edison and his muckers had a long lasting light bulb. For the next several years the muckers built and tested the different parts of the electric power system. John Kruesi of Switzerland designed the dynamo that generated electric power, the "Long-Waisted Mary Ann." Batchelor found an even better filament than the cotton thread--bamboo from Japan.
In 1882 Edison helped form the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, which brought electric light to parts of Manhattan. But progress was slow. Most Americans still lit their homes with gas light and candles for another fifty years. Only in 1925 did half of all homes in the U.S. have electric power. Top
The Phonograph
In 1885, Thomas Edison wrote, "I have not heard a bird sing since I was twelve." No one is really sure just how Edison lost most of his hearing. Yet this man invented the first machine that could capture sound and play it back. In fact, the phonograph was his favorite invention.  The first phonograph was invented in 1877 at the Menlo Park lab. A piece of tin-foil was wrapped around the cylinder in the middle. You shouted a short message into the piece on one side of the cylinder while you turned the handle. Inside this piece was a needle. Your voice would make the needle shake, or vibrate. The sound vibrations would go through the needle and make a line, or groove, into the tin-foil. A needle on the other side could play back what you had just recorded.  After just a few plays, the tin-foil would tear up and the message could no longer be played. That is why the tin-foil recordings cannot be played anymore. Later phonographs played records. The first ones were in the shape of a cylinder, with the music on the outside. Later records were shaped like discs, or large CDs. Edison loved the phonograph so much that he called it his "baby". He improved it over and over for the next fifty years. Top
Motion Pictures
Sometimes one invention might give you an idea for making something else. That is what happened to Thomas Edison with motion pictures. In October 1888 Edison wrote, "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear . . ." Actually, "motion" pictures only seem to move. A modern movie camera takes still pictures like a regular camera does. However, it takes 24 of these pictures, or frames, per second. When you show these pictures at a very fast rate, they look like they are moving. Even before Edison's work on movies, this basic idea had already been developed by a British photographer named Eadward Muybridge. He wanted to prove that when a horse ran, all four of its legs could be up in the air at once. By taking several photos very fast, Muybridge proved his point.  Around 1889 Edison picked a team of muckers to work on this project, headed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. They built the Strip Kinetograph, which was a very early movie camera. The "strip" was a piece of long, flexible film that had been invented for regular camera. Unlike older photographic film, it could be wrapped around a wheel or a spool. The Strip Kinetograph took pictures so fast that they would seem to move.
Then Edison and his muckers built a Kinetoscope, a machine to watch these movies. One person at a time would pay five cents to watch a short, silent movie about twenty to thirty seconds long. The first kinetoscope parlor, or movie theater, opened on April 14, 1894, at 1155 Broadway in New York City.  To film these movies, the muckers needed a stage. Edison's light bulbs were not bright enough to make these films. They built a stage out of wood planks and tar paper, with a roof that opened up to the sun. This strange building looked a little like a police wagon or a hearse (which took coffins to the graveyard). A police wagon was sometimes called a "black Maria" (pronounced Ma-RI-uh). This "Black Maria" was built in 1893. Short films were made there for ten years until it was torn down around 1903. By then Edison had a newer, better movie studio in New York City.
Edison was one of the inventors of motion pictures, but he should not get all the credit. Other inventors in different parts of the world made important discoveries as well. For just one example, in 1896 Thomas Armat and Francis Jenkins designed the phantascope. This early movie projector showed the film onto a screen, so that a roomful of people could watch at the same time. Edison bought the rights to this machine and started making his own projectors. The Lumiere brothers in France were also extremely important in the development of movies. Other inventors also helped find pieces of the puzzle.
But, with his huge laboratory here in West Orange, Edison put the pieces of the puzzle together. That is why he is sometimes called the "Father of Motion Pictures."
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