The Impact of Family on Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison was a great inventor but his family also had a great impact on his life. His parents Nancy and Samuel brought Thomas up right and he became a successful inventor.
In 1871 Edison’s mother died. To overcome his grief Edison went back to work. At the factory he met Mary Stilwell. The two immediately fell in love and married on Christmas Day in 1871. In 1872 one year after the marriage Mary gave birth to a baby girl they named Marion. In 1876 Thomas Junior was born and in 1878 Mary gave birth to her last child, William.
The Edison family moved to a bigger apartment in Gramercy Park. Eventually he created a new company for lighting called the Edison Company for Isolated Lighting.
In the summer of 1883 Mary and her kids moved back to Menlo Park. However things did not go as planned. Mary came down with typhoid fever. At first it wasn’t that severe but later on it became more severe and on August 9 1884 Mary died. Edison was very depressed from Mary’s death and tried to immerse himself back into his work. His children stayed wit their aunt Alice. While Edison continued work he fell in love again with Mina Miller. They married on February 24, 1886 and took their honeymoon in Florida.
During this time Edison learned that Chester Bell and Charles Tainter were working to improve the phonograph that he had invented. Edison ordered his workers to work full time to beat the competition and on June 16, 1888 Edison invented the phonogram. Over the years Edison and has staff had been working on a new invention. Edison put holes on the side of film and invented a film projector that could show a film picture. This invention would have a sprocket wheel that would feed and rewind automatically. When the invention was completed Edison named it the Kinescope.
Edison had great success with his electrical inventions. His company called Edison General Electric Company and the Thomas Houston Electric Company merged, making it one of the most powerful businesses in the country. One of the last inventions that Edison worked on was a camouflage to hide American troops from the German troops during World War 1.
A few years later Mina gave birth to her first child. They named her Madeline. Mina gave birth to two more children, Theodore and Charles but Edison’s happiness turned to sorrow when his dad Samuel died in 1893.
In 1929 Edison was really having a lot of trouble with his health. He had an ulcer, diabetes. He also had ureic poisoning with was very painful. On Sunday October 18 1931 Thomas Edison died at the age of eighty-four.
He will always be remembered as one of the greatest inventors of all time.
