Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman whose devices helped define modern electrical and recorded-media technology. He gained his first wide recognition in 1877 for the phonograph, which could record and play back sound using a tinfoil-wrapped cylinder, and between 1879 and 1880 his laboratory developed a commercially practical incandescent light bulb using a carbonized bamboo filament that could burn for more than 1,200 hours, patented as United States Patent 223,898. He built the electrical infrastructure to bring that lighting to customers, including the Pearl Street Station generating plant in lower Manhattan, which began supplying direct-current power to nearby buildings in 1882, and he later established one of the first motion-picture production studios. The Edison General Electric Company he founded merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892 to form General Electric, which came to control roughly three-quarters of the American electrical business. He held 1,093 United States patents and received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1928.