Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous and prolific inventor in American history, the man whose creations — from the phonograph to the practical electric light — helped usher in the modern age. Born in Milan, Ohio, and raised in Michigan, he had almost no formal schooling; largely self-taught and partly deaf from boyhood, he began work young as a telegraph operator, tinkering all the while.
Edison's first great success was an improved stock ticker, and the money it brought allowed him to set up his famous "invention factory" at Menlo Park, New Jersey — arguably the world's first industrial research laboratory. There, with a team of assistants, he turned invention into an organized enterprise. In 1877 he astonished the world with the phonograph, the first device to record and reproduce sound.
His most consequential achievement was the development, in 1879, of a practical and long-lasting incandescent electric light bulb, followed by the entire system needed to make it useful — generators, wiring, and the first central power stations — which together brought electric light and power into everyday life.
Holding well over a thousand patents, Edison also contributed to motion pictures, storage batteries, and many other fields, and built companies that became part of General Electric. Famous for his maxim that genius is "one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration," he died in 1931, mourned as a national hero.