The inventor Thomas Alva Edison had a major effect on the lives of people around the world. Thomas Edison is remembered most for the electric light, his phonograph, and his work with motion pictures.

Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was mostly self-taught. His mother taught him reading, writing, and mathematics. He learned from books, and he experimented.

At the age of 10, he experimented with chemicals and electricity. He built a telegraph machine and, at the age of 16, he went to work as a telegraph operator.

He continued his work with electricity, making improved telegraph machines, and he invented an electrical voting machine.

Edison earned enough money from his early inventions to start his own company in 1871. Instead of working alone, he worked with a group of employees on many different projects at one time. They asked the United States government for patents to protect more than one hundred devices or inventions each year. He was an extremely busy man.

In 1913, a popular magazine at the time called Thomas Edison the most useful man in America.

He almost never slept more than four or five hours a night. He usually worked 18 hours each day because he enjoyed what he was doing.

A reporter asked Edison in 1917 which of his many inventions he enjoyed the most. He answered, the phonograph was really the most interesting. The hardest invention to develop, he said, was the electric light. He said that it was the most difficult and the most important. He also invented the modern motion picture film.

In 1928, he received a special medal of honor from the Congress of the United States. Thomas Edison died on January 6, 1931. People worldwide have had easier and more enjoyable lives because of his inventions.

I’m John Russell.

Paul Thompson reported this story for VOA’s People in America program. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English.

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Words in This Story

phonograph – n. device to play records

telegraph – n. an old-fashioned system of sending messages over long distances by using wires and electrical signals

patent – n. an official document that gives a person or company the right to be the only one that makes or sells a product for a certain period of time

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