Thomas Edison: The Greatest Inventions In World History

Many inventors have left their mark on society. One inventor, in particular, is commonly found at the top of the list of the greatest inventors in world history. He has influenced and impacted many facets of our lives. His inventions laid the foundation of many industries and products which still exist today.

Thomas Alva Edison, born in Ohio in 1847, obtained his first patent at the age of 21. The last patent in his name was granted two years after his death, in 1933. In between, he registered 1,093 United States patents and another 1,239 patents in other countries. Biographers have estimated that Edison averaged one patent every two weeks during his working life. A prodigious creator, Edison was nicknamed “the Wizard of Menlo Park“ after the numerous creations that came out of his first industrial research center, another first of its kind.

His most notable works include the light bulb, the

Among his improvements was an easier-to-use version of the world’s first stock ticker. It was this mode of thought that led Edison to work on his first issued patent, the electrographic vote-recorder. He was one of several inventors at the time developing methods for the U.S. Congress to record their votes in a more timely fashion than the traditional voice vote system.

The idea for electrographic vote-recorder was for a device that was connected to a central clerk's desk. At the desk, the names of the legislators were embedded in metal type in two columns, "yes" and "no." Legislators would move a switch on a voting device at their desk to point to the "yes" or "no," sending an electric current to the device at the clerk's desk. The system allowed officials voting on a bill to cast their decision to a central recorder that calculated the counts automatically. Edison dreamed the invention would “save several hours of public time every day in the