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Thomas Edison Accomplishments

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Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was a Progressive Era figure that deserves a place in history because he patented over one thousand inventions, making the world a better place. This paper will focus mainly on his motivation to invent, the preparation that it took for him to be able to invent so many things, and finally, some of his major accomplishments throughout his life.
Motivation
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio in 1847, but soon moved to Port Huron,
Michigan with his family. In Port Huron he started his education in a one-room schoolhouse taught by Reverend G. B. Engle and his wife. Within the first month of school, he heard his teacher call him “addled”, which he reported to his mother, who immediately pulled him out of school and began teaching him …show more content…

He had so many throughout his lifetime, that it would be almost impossible to name them all. While he was inventing, he was not one of those inventors that was very knowledgeable about all the sciences, but he was more of an “Edisonian” type inventor. He was
“an uneducated tinkerer who spurns science for endless hours of aimless cut-and-dry testing, somehow being led by luck, pluck, and virtue to inventions that revolutionized the world.”
(Misa, 1989). Some of Edison’s biggest accomplishments were: inventing the phonograph, improving the lightbulb so that it was incandescent, inventing the early motion picture machine, and even coming up with the idea of an ‘invention factory.’ (Israel, 2005). Many people believe that Thomas Edison actually invented the lightbulb, though that is not true. He merely improved it, to make it last longer, and work on AC current. His idea of an invention factory may have been his greatest idea of all because instead of just one person working for years on an invention, there were many people who were all smart that could all throw their ideas in, and it took less time to develop an idea into an invention. This was also the reason that Edison was able to

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