oratory. Soon he had 40 different projects going at the same time. He applied for as many as 400 patents a year. (Denmark pg. 54) His ideas and inventions ranged from the practical to the crazy. Edison worked at Menlo Park for over 10 years. Edison became a business partner with some of New York's richest people, J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilts. Together they formed the Edison Electric Light Company. They made this company before electric light bulbs had been invented. Today this company is called General Electric. The phonograph was Edison's favorite invention. He invented the "talking machine" by accident while working on telegraphs and telephones. But the phonograph didn't go on sale to the public for another 10 years. It was a tinfoil phonograph. Edison called it a "talking machine" and a "sound writing" machine. (Allen pg. 54) This was no improvement of existing technology. It was not something he planned to invent. This was something brand new and Edison's most original invention. And it happened by accident. He was working on ways to record telegraph messages automatically. The first words he recorded were "Mary Had A Little Lamb". He was 30 years old. He worked on and off for more than twenty years to perfect the record player. Scientists had been working to invent electric light for many years. Back then people used candles and gaslights to light their homes. But gaslights were smelly and smoky. After two years in his new laboratory, Edison boasted he would invent a safe, mild, and inexpensive electric light. Edison searched for the proper "filament" or wire, which would give good light when electricity flowed through it. He sent people to the jungles of the Amazon and forests of Japan in his search for a perfect filament material. He tested over 6,000 vegetable growths (baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, and bamboo) as filament material. In 1879, after spending $40,000, and performing 1,200 experiments, he succeeded. He m...
