Edison

Edison, Thomas Alva, an American inventor and electrician, born in Ohio in 1847. He became a railway newsboy in 1859, and soon obtained the exclusive right of selling papers on his line. His next step was to print a paper on the train while travelling. Shortly after he was able to learn the telegraph, and from that time devoted himself to electricity. He has invented an automatic repeater, a system of duplex telegraphy, the printing telegraph. In the field of telegraphy he has taken out very many patents, and has made many inventions in the megaphone, the phonograph, a telephone, the kinetoscope, and in the management of the electric light.