History UsefulNotes / ThomasEdison

* In ''[[VideoGame/WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time]]'', the titular villain has V.I.L.E. henchman Dee Cryption steal Edison's first light bulb, and he doesn't have any cotton left to make a new one before investors arrive the next morning. [[PlayerCharacter An ACME agent]] and Ivan Idea help him get a new spool of cotton thread.

* ThemeNaming: He nicknamed his first two children, Marion and Thomas, Jr., [[Videogame/MegaMan "Dot" and "Dash"]] after telegraphy lingo.

* UsefulNotes/Agnosticism: Edison was no religious, but believed in some form of higher intelligence. He was famously quoted as having witnessed something resembling an afterlife about a week before his death.

Edison made both many friends and many enemies during his career, reflecting both the light and dark sides of his personality. He was seen as a BenevolentBoss by most of his employees at Menlo Park, working them hard but working just as hard himself, and periodically treating them to food or declaring a day off to take everyone fishing. However, the huge numbers of strangers who came knocking on his door starting when he struck fame with the phonograph made him wary of people trying to take advantage of him. As a result, he tended to put his trust in old friends and longtime employees whom he had worked with in the frat house atmosphere of telegraph offices and machine shops. Charles Batchelor and Samuel Insull were examples of employees who gave years of devoted service during the electrification of Manhattan, and whom he eventually rewarded with large salaries and positions managing his various enterprises. At the same time, he was very sensitive to disloyalty, whether real or perceived. Ezra Gilliland was Edison's best friend from his tellegraphy days, and became an increasing presence in his life after the death of his wife Mary in 1884. Gilliland introduced Edison to an eligible girl named Mina Miller, who would become his second wife. Edison and Gilliland were partners in the commercial introduction of the phonograph, and at one point they even had matching vacation homes in Fort Myers, UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}. Unfortunately, after Gilliland persuaded him to sign a deal with an entrepreneur for the rights to market Edison's perfected phonograph, Edison found out that Gilliland had accepted a kickback for doing so. Enraged and hurt, Edison basically cut his friend out of his life. A similar story of partnership gone sour occured with W.K.L. Dixon, an experimenter who had an equal role with Edison in concieving the technology of the film camera and did most of the actual work of making Edison films a reality. Dixon was frustrated that Edison ignored the need to transition from peephole machines to film projection, and felt that he wasn't being paid or credited enough for his work. When he left to go into filmmaking for himself, taking his experimental notes with him, Edison considered it a great betrayal. Edison might have felt lonely after 1900 as his old Menlo Park cadre dwindled due to moving on, dying, or falling out. His friendship with Henry Ford, to whom he had given vital encouragement when Ford was seen as just a crazy young tinkerer, bore fruit in his later years. They were able to relate to each other as equals, and perhaps it helped that they didn't have strong business entanglements with each other. Ford moved into the winter home in Fort Myers evacuated by Gilliland, and would give a heatfelt eulogy at Edison's funeral.

While he was in the film business he litigiously enforced his motion picture patents, joining with Eastman Kodak to keep a monopoly on the sale of cameras and film. If indepenent filmmakers tried to make movies using cameras brought from Europe, Edison could call up any judge in New Jersey and get a cease and desist order. He might even send security guards to confiscate or smash their cameras. Some got fed up and moved to Hollywood, UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, UsefulNotes/{{California}}, which had fine weather, varied geography, and most importantly was 3,000 miles away from Edison and his lawyers. After 1902 he was one of several U.S. film producers to pirate the groundbreaking science fiction film ''Film/ATripToTheMoon'', which was financially ruinous for its creator Creator/GeorgesMelies. To us this was certainly {{hypocri|sy}}tical, but Edison thought the whole film business was his intellectual property. For what it's worth, international copyright was practically unenforcable back then, and Edison also suffered from competitors producing remakes and knockoffs of his most successful short films.

* GladIThoughtOfIt: If he couldn't invent it first, then he'd be at the front of the line to improve and patent it. However, Alexander Graham Bell creating the telephone was a major sore spot for him as Edison was on the very cusp of premiering the technology.

** He ventured to create the world's first electric car only to decommission his experiments when he admitted that Ford's internal combustion engine was far more practical.

* PsychoElectro: Elephant incident aside, even early in his career, Edison was fond of using electricity for pranks. From sabotaging public wash basins to advertising that a domestic electrode used to alleviate rheumatism could also be used to "amuse" oneself by shocking their friends and family.

[[caption-width-right:250:"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."[[note]]Edison poses with a special bulb which demonstrates the phenomenon of thermionic emission, a.k.a. the "Edison Effect".]]

* RagsToRiches: Edison was born in a poor family, but when he died in 1931 he was a successful businessman and respected inventor with an estate of about $10 million.

->''"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."''

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was a world-famous American inventor and businessman, nicknamed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by the press. Edison made his first invention, a type of stock ticker, when he was only 22. By the time he died, 1,093 inventions were patented to him, which was the record for several decades.

Born in Milan, Ohio, he moved with his family to Port Huron, Michigan, when he was young. As a child, Edison's inquisitive mind wasn't challenged by his school work and his teachers called him "difficult." He may also have been affected by undiagnosed hearing loss after a bout of scarlet fever, which could have given them the misimpression that he was ignoring them intentionally. His mother Nancy (a former schoolteacher) pulled him out to home school him, and when he was twelve he started working. Edison was thus largely self-taught. Throughout life he disliked lectures because he could hardly hear what the presenter was saying, so instead he voraciously read books.

Port Huron is just across the border from Canada, and at the time was a major railroad crossing, bringing the Grand Trunk Railway into the US on its way from Toronto to Detroit and Chicago. As a teenager, Edison rescued a little boy from an oncoming runaway train; in gratitude, the boy's father, who worked as a telegrapher along the railroad, offered to give Edison lessons in telegraphy. Edison accepted, getting his first job on the Grand Trunk telegraph line in Canada, and worked as a telegraph operator in Michigan and Kentucky before his poor hearing--and an incident where the lead-acid battery he was tinkering with spilled sulfuric acid that dripped on to his boss' desk on the floor below--forced him to look for other means to make money. He found refuge with one of his telegraphy friends, who let him stay in his basement in Elizabeth, UsefulNotes/NewJersey, starting around 1869. By 1871, he had moved to nearby Newark, as his inventions were making him enough money to live on, and married Mary Stillwell, a young female employee. It was at that point that he had his biggest idea.

In 1876, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music, a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is today, however, known to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb. Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions,[[note]]An unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing you to easily establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached.[[/note]] rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor[[note]]Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents. US patent law has never allowed corporations to directly apply for patents; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

More important than the things he invented though was the technique he developed for it. After a fashion ([[Series/{{Connections}} James Burke]] did), you could say that Edison invented inventing. He came up with the modern R&D cycle, which consists of (as Burke put it): Identify a market, get backing before you start, publicize it ahead of time so the public is wiling to pay for it, and plough back the profits into making more inventions. He also developed the world's first real R&D team--his numerous and largely unsung assistants, working hard on inventions for which Edison would get all the credit (eventually, he had the sense to start crediting things to his corporation, about which see below); before this, invention was usually one guy or a few, and it wasn't their only job.

He was also very important as a businessman. In 1892 he merged the aforementioned various corporations he had founded into one company: the General Electric Corporation. Yes, ''that'' General Electric Corporation. ([[Series/ThirtyRock That one, too]]). He used several extravagant public demonstrations to bring attention to his inventions, such as lighting up entire city streets using his light bulbs. He aggressively used his media attention and his powerful connections to make his company the nation's chief electric powerhouse.

Unfortunately, Edison took the wrong side of history when alternating current systems developed in Europe appeared as competition to his direct current system. The difference for potential customers was that Edison's DC power grid used a low 110 volts from generation to its final destination, and could only transmit power about a mile or two away from the generator. As a result the Edison grid depended on a distributed network of small, local power stations: this was fine for a dense city like New York, but infeasible for serving rural customers. Unlike DC at the time, AC was compatible with an important invention called the transformer, which enabled the voltage of the electricity flowing from the power station to be stepped up for long distance transmission, and stepped down again to a low voltage when it reached the customers. This allowed power to flow from large central power stations to customers near and far, yielding much greater range and economies of scale while allowing power plants to be removed from residential areas. Edison's associates begged him to switch the business to AC when other companies such as Westinghouse and Thomson-Houston began undercutting their prices and beating them for contracts, but AC was a much more technically complicated system than DC. Edison, lacking advanced formal education in the theory of electricity, was ill-equipped to understand it and held stubbornly to what he knew. Meanwhile, the use of high voltage wires by Westinghouse and other AC companies to carry power into communities was seen by many as a potential danger, and the public was aware of several incidents where linemen were electrocuted by high voltage AC arc lighting systems. Edison was convinced that safety had to be the number one selling point in order to convince people to give up gas lighting and allow electricity into their homes; experiments and anecdotal reports indicated that a given amount of AC current was more harmful than the same amount of DC current.

After going all-in on DC power he tried to get AC banned, colluding with electrical engineer and anti-AC crusader Harold P. Brown to turn the public against it. He sponsored Brown's use of AC current to kill cats, dogs, mules, and horses in demonstrations at his West Orange laboratory. When New York State's Gerry Commission was investigating the use of a proposed invention--the electric chair--as a replacement for hanging, Edison was consulted. Despite opposing the death penalty as a matter of principle, Edison expressed a desire for it to at least be carried out as humanely as possible, and claimed that an alternating current would cause instantaneous death. Because of his fame his advice carried a lot of weight with the commissioners, and he ensured that the first ever electric chair would use Westinghouse AC generators surreptitiously acquired by Brown. The chair failed to kill its first victim quickly and [[EpicFail set him on fire]], which Edison afterwards blamed on the executioner not following all of his instructions. Also famous in the popular imagination is an Edison film depicting the electrocution of Topsy the elephant. However, we should be fair in judging Edison. He believed sincerely, albeit self-servingly, that AC was more dangerous than DC. Experiments in the 1970s showed that there was some truth to this. He also had a point that companies often cut corners when installing AC, and many of the safety mechanisms such as fuses and breakers we have to make AC power safe today didn't exist initially. Edison avoided the problem of tangled overhead wires through the expensive measure of burying his wires under the streets. Finally, the elephant was actually electrocuted by the Coney Island Circus because it had killed its trainer (who had [[TheDogBitesBack abused and provoked the elephant]]), and Edison had no part in the electrocution, especially since he had already long since exited the current wars by that time; all that he did was send a crew to film it.

Edison made both many friends and many enemies during his career, reflecting both the light and dark sides of his personality. He was seen as a BenevolentBoss by most of his employees at Menlo Park, working them hard but working just as hard himself, and periodically treating them to food or declaring a day off to take everyone fishing. However, the huge numbers of strangers who came knocking on his door starting when he struck fame with the phonograph made him wary of people trying to take advantage of him. As a result, he tended to put his trust in old friends and longtime employees whom he had worked with in the frat house atmosphere of telegraph offices and machine shops. Charles Batchelor and Samuel Insull were examples of employees who gave years of devoted service during the electrification of Manhattan, and whom he eventually rewarded with large salaries and positions managing his various enterprises. At the same time, he was very sensitive to disloyalty whether real or perceived. Ezra Gilliland was Edison's best friend from his tellegraphy days, and became an increasing presence in his life after the death of his wife Mary in 1884. Gilliland introduced Edison to an eligible girl named Mina Miller, who would become his second wife. Edison and Gilliland were partners in the commercial introduction of the phonograph, and at one point they even had matching vacation homes in Fort Myers, FL. Unfortunately, after Gilliland persuaded him to sign a deal with an entrepreneur for the rights to market Edison's perfected phonograph, Edison found out that Gilliland had accepted a kickback for doing so. Enraged and hurt, Edison basically cut his friend out of his life. A similar story of partnership gone sour occured with W.K.L. Dixon, an experimenter who had an equal role with Edison in concieving the technology of the film camera and did most of the actual work of making Edison films a reality. Dixon was frustrated that Edison ignored the need to transition from peephole machines to film projection, and felt that he wasn't being paid or credited enough for his work. When he left to go into filmmaking for himself, taking his experimental notes with him, Edison considered it a great betrayal. Edison might have felt lonely in the years after 1900 as his old Menlo Park cadre dwindled due to moving on, dying, or falling out. His friendship with Henry Ford, to whom he had given vital encouragement when Ford was seen as just a crazy young tinkerer, bore fruit in his later years. They were able to relate to each other as equals, and perhaps it helped that they didn't have strong business entanglements with each other. Ford moved into the winter home in fort Myers evacuated by Gilliland, and would give a heatfelt eulogy at Edison's funeral.

While he was in the film business he litigiously enforced his motion picture patents, joining with Eastman Kodak to keep a monopoly on the sale of cameras and film. If indepenent filmmakers tried to make movies using cameras brought from Europe, Edison could call up any judge in New Jersey and get a cease and desist order. He might even send security guards to confiscate or smash their cameras. Some got fed up and moved to Hollywood California, which has fine weather, varied geography, and most importantly was 3,000 miles away from Edison and his lawyers. After 1902 he was one of several U.S. film producers to pirate the groundbreaking science fiction film ''Film/ATripToTheMoon'', which was financially ruinous for its creator Creator/GeorgesMelies. To us this was certainly hypocritical, but in Edison's mind the whole film business was his intellectual property. For what it's worth, international copyright was practically unenforcable back then, and Edison also suffered from competitors producing remakes and knockoffs of his most successful short films.

UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla, who worked briefly for Edison in the early 1880s, said that ''the manager'' of Edison Machine Works, Charles Batchelor, offered US$50,000 to improve his DC generators, but when Tesla fulfilled the conditions, Batchelor said that [[JustJokingJustification it was just a joke]]. This is often mistold as Edison himself having put up the offer, but Tesla stated in his autobiography that it was Batchelor (Whether this story is true or not, though, has been disputed[[note]]Some have noted that it would make little sense for Batchelor, who was notoriously stingy with pay, to make such an offer, especially since Edison Machine Works ''did not have that much money on hand'' (That's about $12 million USD nowadays). Batchelor himself was also the one that recommended that Tesla be brought over to the States to work for them, while Tesla's diary has very little in it about the exact reasons for him quitting, with the only entry on it being a note scrawled across two pages reading "Good by (sic) to the Edison Machine Works"[[/note]].) A fed-up Tesla quit to work for George Westinghouse, but in subsequent years he and Edison were relatively cordial. It was actually Westinghouse, and not Tesla, with whom Edison had a bitter rivalry.

Edison did not practice large-scale philanthropy the way some of his "Robber Baron" peers such as Rockefeller and Morgan did; for him, his inventions were his gift to the world. An example was his lab's development of commercial X-ray viewing machines for medical use. One notable stab at public service was his leadership of the Naval Consulting Board, which was established during World War I as an attempt at Federal Government sponsored research and development. He did not like the idea of developing offensive weaponry that could be used to kill people, and instead focused on developing technologies such as batteries for submarines and methods for producing large quantities of chemicals which had previously been bought from Germany.

Edison's birthplace in Milan, Ohio was rescued by one of his daughters and is now a historic house. The lab at Menlo Park, NJ fell into disrepair after Edison left it, but Henry Ford saved the remaining buildings by taking them apart and rebuilding them as part of his Greenfield Village museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Today the original site hosts an Edison memorial tower and volunteer-run education center. Edison's lab at Fort Myers, Florida and the twin vacation homes he and Henry Ford used down there are now a museum as well. Edison's laboratory at West Orange, NJ and his nearby mansion, Glenmont, are maintained by the National Park Service as Thomas Edison National Historical Park.

* ItWillNeverCatchOn: His electric voting system was tossed out by the politicians of his time because they believed it would compromise lobbying and his attempt at creating private business telegraphy channels ala a proto-Bloomberg utterly failed. However, it was through this latter business that he met his first wife, Mary Stilwell.

* MassiveNumberedSiblings: Thomas Edison was the last of seven children born to his parents, and he went on to have six children during his lifetime divided between two marriages. One, his son Charles, ended up Governor of New Jersey.

* ThemeNaming: He nicknamed his first two children [[Videogame/MegaMan "Dot" and "Dash"]] after telegraphy lingo.

* The graphic novel ''ComicBook/TalesFromTheBullyPulpit'' features his ghost and UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt stealing a time machine from Creator/HGWells and [[CrazyAwesome going to the future to fight a descendant of]] UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler [[CrazyAwesome and his army of evil martians.]]

* On ''Series/NewsRadio'', Joe insists on making his own components for every device he fixes rather than buy "any of that mass-produced garbage." When an impatient Bill asks Joe to just give up and buy the piece in question, Joe answers, "Did Thomas Edison give up?" [[AnalogyBackfire Bill points out that "Thomas Edison wasn't trying to invent something that was readily available in a variety of stores near his home."]]
* In the short-lived show ''The Secret Adventures Of Jules Verne'', the protagonists meet a young American boy named Al, deaf in one ear, who makes amazing inventions and is able to reverse-engineer a hovering machine from the future (or the past; not sure about this one). When leaving, he reveals that Al is a shortened form of his middle name - Alva. Yep, that's Thomas Alva Edison.

* Appears as an antagonist, and later on an ally, in the America chapter of ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' as a Caster-class Servant. [[HalfHumanHybrid As a man with a lion head]], and in a [[CaptainPatriotic red, white, and blue]] jumpsuit. [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/edison.png Yes, really]]. And he's also the President of the United States due to an altered timeline. Tesla also appears as Archer-class Servant and is Edison's [[TheRival Rival]]/SitcomArchNemesis[=/=]WorthyOpponent.
* Edison is one of several guests invited to Tesla's mansion in ''VideoGame/TheInvisibleHours''. When Tesla is killed, Edison is an obvious suspect, and his self-important JerkAss attitude doesn't help.

* In ''WebVideo/EpicRapBattlesOfHistory'', he makes an appearance alongside Tesla and he's depicted as an outright {{Jerkass}}, deriding Tesla as a poor businessman(which he was) and claiming that he(Edison) was mainly in it for the money.
-->'''Edison:''' The truth [[IncrediblyLamePun hertz]], you're broke and washed up\\
Don't give a smidgen 'bout your visions if they can't make a buck\\

* Edison is featured in the "American Inventors" episode of ''This is America, [[ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}} Charlie Brown]]''.

* TooDumbToLive: He was almost killed by a high-speed badger corpse when he insisted on sitting on the cow-catcher grill at the front of a train instead of just riding inside of it like a normal passenger.

* Appears as an antagonist, and later on an ally, in the America chapter of ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' as a Caster-class Servant. [[PettingZooPeople As a man with a lion head]], and in a [[CaptainPatriotic red, white, and blue]] jumpsuit. [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/edison.png Yes, really]]. And he's also the President of the United States due to an altered timeline. Tesla also appears as Archer-class Servant and is Edison's [[TheRival Rival]]/SitcomArchNemesis[=/=]WorthyOpponent.

* GladIThoughtOfIt: If he couldn't invent it first, then he'd be at the front of the line to improve and patent it. However, Alexander Graham Bell creating the telephone first was a major sore spot for him as Edison was on the very cusp of premiering the technology.

* ItWillNeverCatchOn: His electric voting system was tossed out by the politicians of his time because they believed in would compromise lobbying and his attempt at creating private business telegraphy channels ala a proto-Bloomberg utterly failed. However, it was through this latter business that he met his first wife, Mary Stilwell.

** Thomas Edison is either portrayed as a quirky underdog genius who had to fight to get his honest hard work recognised, or as a concept-stealing CorruptCorporateExecutive who swept away all opposition with threats and slander. There's plenty of evidence [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment for and against both portrayals]], but the market for energy and electricity was absolutely feral back then.

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was a world-famous American inventor and businessman. Nicknamed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by the press. Edison made his first invention, a type of stock ticker, when he was only 22. By the time he died, 1,093 inventions were patented to him, which was the record for several decades.

UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla, who worked briefly for Edison in the early 1880s, said that Edison offered US$50,000 to improve his DC generators, but when Tesla fulfilled the conditions, Edison said that [[JustJokingJustification it was just a joke]]. (Whether this story is true or not, though, has been disputed.) A fed-up Tesla quit to work for George Westinghouse, but in subsequent years he and Edison were relatively cordial. It was actually Westinghouse, and not Tesla, with whom Edison had a bitter rivalry.

Edison made both many friends and many enemies during his career, reflecting both the light and dark sides of his personality. He was seen as a BenevolentBoss by most of his employees at Menlo Park, working them hard but working just as hard himself, and periodically treating them to food or declaring a day off to take everyone fishing. However, the huge numbers of strangers who came knocking on his door ever since he struck fame with the phonograph made him wary of people trying to take advantage of him. As a result, he tended to put his trust in old friends and longtime employees whom he had worked with in the frat house atmosphere of telegraph offices and machine shops. Charles Batchelor and Samuel Insull were examples of employees who gave years of devoted service during the electrification of Manhattan, and whom he eventually rewarded with large salaries and positions managing his various enterprises. At the same time, he was very sensitive to disloyalty. Ezra Gilliland was Edison's best friend from his tellegraphy days, and became an increasing presence in his life after the death of his wife Mary in 1884. Gilliland introduced Edison to an eligible girl named Mina Miller, who would become his second wife. Edison and Gilliland were partners in the commercial introduction of the phonograph, and at one point they even had matching vacation homes in Fort Myers, FL. Unfortunately, after Gilliland persuaded him to sign a deal with an entrepreneur for the rights to market Edison's perfected phonograph, Edison found out that Gilliland had accepted a kickback for doing so. Enraged and hurt, Edison basically cut his friend out of his life. A similar story of partnership gone sour occured with W.K.L. Dixon, an experimenter who had an equal role with Edison in concieving the technology of the film camera and did most of the actual work of making Edison films a reality. Dixon was frustrated that Edison ignored the need to transition from peephole machines to film projection, and felt that he wasn't being paid or credited enough for his work. When he left to go into filmmaking for himself, taking his experimental notes with him, Edison considered it a great betrayal. Edison might have felt lonely in the years after 1900 as his old Menlo Park cadre dwindled due to moving on, dying, or falling out. His friendship with Henry Ford, to whom he had given vital encouragement when Ford was seen as just a crazy young tinkerer, bore fruit in his later years. They were able to relate to each other as equals, and perhaps it helped that they didn't have strong business entanglements with each other. Ford moved into the winter home in fort Myers evacuated by Gilliland, and would give a heatfelt eulogy at Edison's funeral.

* ''Film/Frankensterin1910''

Nikola Tesla, who worked briefly for Edison in the early 1880s, said that Edison offered US$50,000 to improve his DC generators, but when Tesla fulfilled the conditions, Edison said that [[JustJokingJustification it was just a joke]]. (Whether this story is true or not, though, has been disputed.) A fed-up Tesla quit to work for George Westinghouse, but in subsequent years he and Edison were relatively cordial. It was actually Westinghouse, and not Tesla, with whom Edison had a bitter rivalry.

* ''ComicBook/AtomicRobo'' stars a robot invented by Nikola Tesla, so naturally Edison is one of the series' {{Big Bad}}s. Here he's presented as doing highly immoral things in a quest for immortality; and the War of the Currents was a fight to stop one such scheme. [[spoiler:He dies in a climactic battle with Tesla in 1931, but somehow re-forms as a ghost in 1999.]]

* According to ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'', [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy Edison was an agent of the Templars]], and his feud with the Assassin-affiliated Nikola Tesla was one of the great Templar-Assassin battles of the early 20th century that escalated to TheTunguskaEvent.

* Mentioned, but not outright depicted in ''VideoGame/TheOrder1886''. UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla, TheEngineer of the eponymous order, [[HistoricalInJoke still isn't a fan]].

* Edison is one of several guests invited to Nikola Tesla's mansion in ''VideoGame/TheInvisibleHours''. When Tesla is killed, Edison is an obvious suspect, and his self-important JerkAss attitude doesn't help.

* He is portrayed in a very unflattering light in ''Webcomic/TheOatmeal'''s [[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived"]], mainly because of his feuds with rival Nikola Tesla. ''Webcomic/TheOatmeal'' also sells a variety of [[http://shop.theoatmeal.com/collections/tesla Tesla > Edison merchandise]] in its store.

* In ''WebVideo/EpicRapBattlesOfHistory'', he makes an appearance alongside Nikola Tesla and he's depicted as an outright {{Jerkass}}, deriding Tesla as a poor businessman(which he was) and claiming that he(Edison) was mainly in it for the money.

After going all-in on DC power he tried to get AC banned, colluding with electrical engineer and anti-AC crusader Harold P. Brown to turn the public against it. He sponsored Brown's use of AC current to kill cats, dogs, mules, and horses in demonstrations at his West Orange laboratory. When New York State's Gerry Commission was investigating the use of a proposed invention--the electric chair--as a replacement for hanging, Edison was consulted. Despite opposing the death penalty as a matter of principle, Edison expressed a desire for it to at least be carried out as humanely as possible, and claimed that an alternating current would cause instantaneous death. Because of his fame his advice carried a lot of weight with the commissioners, and he ensured that the first ever electric chair would use Westinghouse AC generators surreptitiously acquired by Brown. The chair failed to kill its first victim quickly and [[EpicFail set him on fire]], which Edison afterwards blamed on the executioner not following all of his instructions. Also famous in the popular imagination is an Edison film depicting the electrocution of Topsy the elephant. However, we should be fair in judging Edison. He believed sincerely, albeit self-servingly, AC was more dangerous than DC. Experiments in the 1970s showed that there was some truth to this. He also had a point that companies often cut corners when installing AC, and many of the safety mechanisms such as fuses and breakers we have to make AC power safe today didn't exist initially. Edison avoided the problem of tangled overhead wires through the expensive measure of burying his wires under the streets. Finally, the elephant was actually electrocuted by the Coney Island Circus because it had killed its trainer (who had [[TheDogBitesBack abused and provoked the elephant]]), and Edison had no part in the electrocution, especially since he had already long since exited the current wars by that time; all that he did was send a crew to film it.

One of the unfortunate side effects of this was delaying the adoption of the alternating current system--which UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla had helped to develop for the Westinghouse Electric Corporation--in favor of Edison's own direct current. The difference was basically that Edison's DC power grid used a low 110 volts from generation to its final destination, and could only transmit power less than a mile away from the generator. As a result the Edison grid depended on a distributed network of small, local power stations: this was fine for a dense city like New York, but infeasible for serving rural customers. Unlike DC at the time, AC was compatible with an important invention called the transformer, which enabled the voltage of the electricity flowing from the power station to be stepped up for long distance transmission, and stepped down again to a low voltage when it reached the customers. This allowed power to flow from large central power stations to customers near and far, yielding much greater economies of scale, range, and accessibility. However, the use of high voltage wires by Westinghouse and other AC companies to carry power into communities was seen by many as a potential danger, and the public was aware of several incidents where linemen were electrocuted by high voltage AC arc lighting systems. Edison could have gone into AC if he'd wanted to, but he was convinced that safety had to be the number one selling point in order to convince people to give up gas lighting and allow electricity into their homes; experiments and anecdotal reports indicated that a given amount of AC current was more harmful than the same amount of DC current. After going all-in on DC power he tried to get AC banned, colluding with electrical engineer and anti-AC crusader Harold P. Brown to turn the public against it. He went so far as to recommend to New York State's Gerry Commission that the first ever electric chair use a Westinghouse AC generator (Brown surreptitiously acquired the generators. The chair failed to kill its first victim quickly and [[EpicFail set him on fire]], which Edison afterwards blamed on the state not following all of his instructions). He invited Brown to his West Orange Lab to demonstrate the electrocution of animals before the press, and later filmed the electrocution of Topsy the elephant. However, there are some factors everybody is forgetting. Edison honestly believed AC was more dangerous than DC, and experiments in the 1970s showed that there was some truth to this. He also had a point that companies often cut corners when installing AC, and many of the safety mechanisms such as fuses and breakers we have to make AC power safe today didn't exist initially. Edison avoided the problem of tangled overhead wires through the expensive measure of burying his wires under the streets. Finally, the elephant was actually electrocuted by the Coney Island Circus because it had killed its trainer (who had [[TheDogBitesBack abused and provoked the elephant]]), and Edison had no part in the electrocution, especially since he had already long since exited the current wars by that time; all that he did was send a crew to film it. However, Edison ''did'' sponsor Brown's use of AC current to kill cats, dogs, mules, and horses. As for the Electric chair, Edison was [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone so horrified]] by the prisoner execution, he became an ardent anti-death penalty activist.

Still, this might have set back electrical development by decades, though most modern day devices use both rather than one or the other. He also tried to use his law connections to keep a monopoly of the motion picture camera, forcing many aspiring film moguls to move to a town in California named Hollywood, which was out of his reach.

Edison was a piece of work, and there were two sides to him. To his friends he could be very pleasant and chummy, but you would not want to have him as an enemy. He was mostly a BenevolentBoss to his employees at Menlo Park, working them hard but working just as hard himself, and periodically treating them to food or declaring a day off to take everyone fishing. He got along well with and rewarded employees such as Charles Batchelor who got him results and showed loyalty. On the other hand he didn't like sharing credit for inventions which had come partly from the work of his assistants, and demanding more pay or public recognition from the boss--as W.K.L. Dixon did for his work on the kinetograph--was a good way to get yourself fired. He got very grumpy when he was interrupted during his private experiment time, and more than once fired an employee for barging into his lab room uninvited. However, there were various benefits for employees, including relatively high wages, as well as company festivals and sports events. Edison appreciated practical jokes, and when his employees took a candid photo of him napping in an undignified position he took it in good fun. As we have already seen he was ruthless towards his competition, and did some unethical things like being one of many U.S. exhibitors to pirate Creator/GeorgesMelies' film ''Film/ATripToTheMoon''. On the other hand he made a few attempts at public service, such as helming the Naval Consulting Board during WWI and working on the development of X-rays for medical use.

Nikola Tesla, who worked briefly for Edison in the early 1880s, said that Edison offered US$50,000 to improve his DC generators, but when Tesla fulfilled the conditions, Edison said that [[JustJokingJustification it was just a joke]]. (Whether this story is true or not, though, has been disputed.) A fed-up Tesla quit to work for George Westinghouse, but in subsequent years he and Edison were relatively cordial. It was actually Westinghouse, and not Tesla, with whom Edison had a bitter rivalry. Edison was best buddies with Henry Ford, wintering with him in Fort Myers, Florida, and the two of them were part of a group of millionaire friends called the Vagabonds who went on camping trips.

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade & HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Thomas Edison is either portrayed as a quirky underdog genius who had to fight to get his honest hard work recognised, or as a concept-stealing CorruptCorporateExecutive who swept away all opposition with threats and slander. There's plenty of evidence [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment for and against both portrayals]], but the market for energy and electricity was absolutely feral back then.
** From a more meta standpoint, it is nowadays known that Edison can be credited with far fewer inventions than he laid claim on during his lifetime, most prominently the incandescent light bulb and the microphone.
* MassiveNumberedSiblings: Thomas Edison had six children over his lifetime,[[note]]Who were quite advantaged by their father's success; one, his son Charles, ended up Governor of New Jersey[[/note]] and was the seventh child in his family.
* RagsToRiches: Edison was born in a poor family, but when he died he was a successful businessman and respected inventor.

In 1876, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music, a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is today, however, known to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb[[note]]Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much.[[/note]]. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions,[[note]]An unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing you to easily establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached.[[/note]] rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor[[note]]Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents. US patent law has never allowed corporations to directly apply for patents; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

Because of his numerous inventions and his influence on world history, he's depicted quite a lot in popular culture. Any help listing and organizing all of them will be appreciated!

In 1876, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music, a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is today, however, known to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb.[[note]]Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered practical. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much.[[/note]] Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions,[[note]]An unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing you to easily establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached.[[/note]] rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor[[note]]Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents. US patent law has never allowed corporations to directly apply for patents; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]

Edison was a piece of work, and there were two sides to him. To his friends he could be very pleasant and chummy, but you would not want to have him as an enemy. He was mostly a BenevolentBoss to his employees at Menlo Park, working them hard but working just as hard himself, and periodically treating them to food or declaring a day off to take everyone fishing. He got along well with and rewarded employees such as Charles Batchelor who got him results and showed loyalty. On the other hand he didn't like sharing credit for inventions which had come partly from the work of his assistants, and demanding more pay or public recognition from the boss--as W.K.L. Dixon did for his work on the kinetograph--was a good way to get yourself fired. He got very grumpy when he was interrupted during his private experiment time, and more than once fired an employee for barging into his lab room uninvited. However, there were various benefits for employees, including relatively high wages, as well as company festivals and sports events. Edison appreciated practical jokes, and when his employees too a candid photo of him napping in an undignified position he took it in good fun. As we have already seen he was ruthless towards his competition, and did some unethical things like being one of many U.S. exhibitors to pirate Creator/GeorgesMelies' film ''Film/ATripToTheMoon''. On the other hand he made a few attempts at public service, such as helming the Naval Consulting Board during WWI and working on the development of X-rays for medical use.

[[caption-width-right:250:"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."[[note]]Edison photographed holding a special bulb which demonstrates thermionic emission, a.k.a. the "Edison Effect".]]

In 1876, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Menlo Park and Edison's later and bigger lab in West Orange include phonographs and recorded music, a practical light bulb and commercial electrical power system, an electric railroad, nickel-iron storage batteries, devices for filming and exhibiting motion pictures, methods for producing cement and cement buildings, an X-ray flouroscope, and an improved telephone microphone. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants was groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is today, however, known to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors. For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb.[[note]]Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered useful. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as much.[[/note]] Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions,[[note]]An unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing you to easily establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached.[[/note]] rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically ''he'' didn't claim to be the inventor[[note]]Edison couldn't ''directly'' credit his companies with patents. US patent law has never allowed corporations to directly apply for patents; that privilege is restricted to the inventors. However, assignment of patent rights to corporations has always been allowed, and typically a company will require that its employees assign the rights any inventions made on company time or using company resources as part of their employment agreement. If such an assignment has been made, it will appear on the front page of the published patent application.[[/note]]