Thomas Edison's Accomplishments

Honor means honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs and actions. To me, honor means the ability to stay calm and be brave in a crisis. The scientist I have chosen as an honorable scientist is Thomas Edison. He was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. He was the youngest of seven children. From an early age, Edison was always interested in inventing things. Edison’s father was exiled from Canada for being a political activist. When Edison was young he got scarlet fever. As a result of the fever, he developed hearing loss that progressed to Edison being nearly deaf by adulthood. At age seven Edison and his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan. In Michigan, Edison was enrolled in a public school. He was there for only twelve …show more content…
After Edison got funding from the Vanderbilt family and JP Morgan, he set up an electric light company. In 1879 Edison came up with a bulb that used platinum filling in the center. In 1880 Edison decided to use carbonized bamboo as a replacement filament to the platinum. From 1881 to 1882 he traveled around the world making light exhibitions. Through all this publicity it did not take long for competitors to emerge. Nikola Tesla was one of Edison major competitors, the difference in the two was that Edison used DC current and Teslas used AC current. Edison used very cruel methods to show the danger of DC power with the electrocution of a circus elephant in Coney Island, New York. In 1896 Edison became the first person to project a movie, this was in Koster & Bial’s Music Hall in New York City. In 1912 Edison invented a self starter for the Model T, it was used by most auto manufactures for decades. In World War I Edison was head of the Naval Consulting Board, there he examined inventions for use in the military. Edison only examined weapons for defense because he did not believe in inventing weapons made for killing. By the end of Thomas Edison’s life he had 1,093 patents. On October 18, 1931