What did Edison invent?

American inventor Thomas Edison(1847-1931) for his career issued 1903 patents for inventions (an average of 1.5 patents per month). And this is only in the US. In other countries, he has issued more than 3,000 patents. What did Edison invent?

Let us dwell on particularly significant inventions that have had the greatest impact on the everyday life of his contemporaries and on the further development of technology.

Phonograph

Phonograph - a device for recording and playbacksound - was demonstrated by Edison in 1877. The principle of the Edison device: the sound was fed into the microphone and there with the help of the membrane it was transformed into mechanical vibrations. The oscillations were recorded with a needle on the foil. The recording medium - a foil, and later waxed paper - was wound on a cylinder, and the recording of the sound track was conducted in a spiral. The sound was played in the reverse order: the needle read mechanical irregularities, transferred them to the membrane, which converted mechanical vibrations into sound ones. Later phonographs were replaced by gramophones. They worked on the same principle, but they did not record the sound on the cylinder, but on the disk from the ebonite.

Kinetoscope

A kinetoscope is a device for demonstratingmoving image. Inside the device there was a film with a sequence of static photoimages and perforations along the edges. The film was moved by a special tape mechanism. As a result of the motion of the film, a person could observe the change and movement of images. The peculiarity of the device was that it was necessary to look through the eyepiece inside the box to see the "cinema". Thus, the viewing was carried out individually.

The invention of the kinetoscope influenced thebrothers Lumiere. When creating their own cinematograph, they used the same film and tape mechanism. The main difference is that films were shown to the public on the big screen, which turned out to be more convenient and profitable.

Incandescent lamp

The invention of a light bulb by Edison is a fact, solidlystrengthened in the mass consciousness. But in fact, the principle of the light bulb is not invented by Edison. Work in this direction was carried out earlier by Lodygin, Yablochkov, Svan, Maxim, Soyer and other researchers. However, it was Edison who developed and arranged the production of the lamp variant, because of its cheapness suitable for mass consumption. For example, Edison began using a filament of charred bamboo fibers, found a way to create a stable vacuum in the bulb of bulbs. His light bulbs are widely used.

Read also the article Who invented the light bulb.