Thomas Edison The Inventor Of The Gilded Age

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Thomas Edison was one of the greatest inventors and entrepreneurs of the Gilded Age, bringing forth great changes in our society many years ago. Some may be wondering why someone would say this, primarily knowing Edison as the inventor of the modern day lightbulb, but there is more to the inventor than meets the eye upon further examination. Entrepreneurs are defined by the Edison Innovation Foundation as “agents of change”, who create products and services for the world, thus creating massive change (2012). Thomas Edison not only invented the lightbulb, he revolutionized the world with it, as this discussion will soon illuminate on.

Thomas Edison, born in the city of Milan, Ohio on February 11th, 1847, started off as an eccentric child. He was massively uninterested in school and showed an inability to follow instructions from his frustrated teacher. He received his education, however, through reading numerous books on the library shelf, including Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, which is where his studies with science began. Meanwhile, he tried various odd jobs to earn a living as well as buy a chemistry set, mostly selling and printing newspapers. He also gained the opportunity to learn how to operate a telegraph after saving a young
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Hayes, who invited the inventor for a demonstration of the device in April 1878. After this rousing success, he developed and began producing the electric light bulb with the help of William Joseph Hammer. His greatest advancement in the technology was to use a bamboo filament that could last over a thousand hours for home use rather than for exclusive areas. This development helped Edison create the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878, which capitalized on the suddenly universal product (Biography Online,

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