美国著名发明家爱迪生的故事

爱迪生（Thomas AlvaEdison，1847～1931）美国著名发明家。1847年2月11日生于俄亥俄州米兰镇。8岁上学只读了3个月。老师骂他“小笨蛋”，因为他经常爱问为什么而让老师下不了台，他辍学后随母亲学习。他对大自然非常好奇。他可以专心致志注视榆树叶芽怎么生长，秋风如何使枫叶变色。为了试验孵小鸡，他可以长时间趴在鸡窝里；为了探索蜂巢的奥秘，他愿意被蜇得鼻青脸肿；为了试验摩擦生电，他在雄猫身上狠命搓揉直到双手伤痕累累。9岁那年，他得到一本帕克著《自然与实验哲学》，如获至宝，逐页研读，逐项实验。他在家中地窖里建起一座小实验室。从12岁起，在底特律－休伦间铁路列车上卖报，把自己的实验室搬到火车上，利用一切机会学习和实验。他还在列车上自己编印《先锋周报》，从而认识到刚问世不久的电报的作用。1862年他奋不顾身地从火车轮下救出一幼童，幼童的父亲为答谢他，教他掌握了电报技术。

1873年～1874年，他发明了同时发送二条和四条消息的发报机。1876年在纽约附近的门罗公园建立起他的“发明工厂”，一座大型实验室。许多发明就是在这里完成的。第一次世界大战时他任美国海军技术顾问委员会主席，完成多项军事产品的发明研制。1931年10月18日在新泽西州西奥兰治逝世。

他以罕见的热情及惊人的精力，在一生中完成发明2000多项，其中申请专利登记的达1328项。人们颂扬他：“他虽不发明历史，却为历史锦上添花”。这位传奇式人物取得杰出成就的奥秘在于刻苦、勤奋、坚持不懈地学习。他自己曾多次表示：“停止就意味着生锈”，“必须时常收获，而不能一生只收一次”，“我要做的事如此之多，而生命又如此短促，我不得不挤出时间。”美国著名物理学家、诺贝尔奖获得者密立根赞誉他：“他差不多已70高龄了，还在阅读科学领域出现的新书，而且不断地提出问题。”

他的主要研究领域在电学方面。在他掌握电报技术后，就日夜苦心钻研，完成了双路及四路电报装置及自动发报机。1877年改进贝尔电话装置，使电话从传送2～3英里扩大到107英里，同年发明留声机。在这期间，他付出巨大精力，研制白炽电灯。除电弧灯外，过去的“电灯”往往亮一下就烧毁了，为寻找合适的灯丝，曾对1600多种耐热材料及6000多种植物纤维进行实验，终于在1879年10月21日用碳丝做成可点燃40小时的白炽电灯。其后又不断反复改进、完善，又完成了螺纹灯座、保险丝、开关、电表等一系列发明，在此基础上完成了照明电路系统的研制。在实践中提出电灯的并联连接，直流输电的三线系统，建成了当时功率最大的发电机。1888年起研制电影，1893年建立第一座电影摄影棚。是他最先提出将电影手段用于教育，并用两个班进行试验。他的其它重大发明还有铁镍蓄电池等。

他虽然精于实验研究，对理论却缺乏足够的重视。尽管他于1885年发现热电子发射的“爱迪生效应”，但未能作出相应解释。

1931年10月21日在为他举行葬礼时，人们采用了一种独特而又恰当的方式——停电1分钟，以悼念这位伟大的发明家。这“1分钟”使人们想起他的发明给电气时代和社会生活带来的光

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.[1]

Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures.

His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison developed a system of electric-power generation and distribution[2] to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York.[明，以及他的可贵的学习创造精神。

Edison is remembered most for the electric light, phonograph and his work with motion pictures.

Thomas Edison's major inventions were designed and built in the last years of the eighteen hundreds. However, most of them had their greatest effect in the twentieth century. His inventions made possible the progress of technology.

It is extremely difficult to find anyone living today who has not been affected in some way by Thomas Edison. Most people on Earth have seen some kind of motion picture or heard some kind of sound recording. And almost everyone has at least seen an electric light.

These are only three of the many devices Thomas Edison invented or helped to improve. People living in this century have had easier and more enjoyable lives because of his inventions.

VOICE TWO:

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February eleventh, eighteen forty-seven in the small town of Milan, Ohio. He was the youngest of seven children.

Thomas Edison was self-taught. He went to school for only three months. His teacher thought he could not learn because he had a mental problem. But young Tom Edison could learn. He learned from books and he experimented.

At the age of ten, he built his own chemical laboratory. He experimented with chemicals and electricity. He built a telegraph machine and quickly learned to send and receive telegraph messages. At the time, sending electric signals over wires was the fastest method of sending information long distances. At the age of sixteen, he went to work as a telegraph operator.

He later worked in many different places. He continued to experiment with electricity. When he was twenty-one, he sent the United States government the documents needed to request the legal protection for his first invention. The government gave him his first patent on an electric device he called an Electrographic Vote Recorder. It used electricity to count votes in an election.

VOICE ONE:

In the summer months of eighteen sixty-nine, the Western Union Telegraph Company asked Thomas Edison to improve a device that was used to send financial information. It was called a stock printer. Mister Edison very quickly made great improvements in the device. The company paid him forty thousand dollars for his effort. That was a lot of money for the time.

This large amount of money permitted Mister Edison to start his own company. He announced that the company would improve existing telegraph devices and work on new inventions.

Mister Edison told friends that his new company would invent a minor device every ten days and produce what he called a "big trick" about every six months. He also proposed that his company would make inventions to order. He said that if someone needed a device to do some kind of work, just ask and it would be invented.

VOICE TWO:

Within a few weeks Thomas Edison and his employees were working on more than forty different projects. They were either new inventions or would lead to improvements in other devices. Very quickly he was asking the United States government for patents to protect more than one hundred devices or inventions each year. He was an extremely busy man. But then Thomas Edison was always very busy.

He almost never slept more than four or five hours a night. He usually worked eighteen hours each day because he enjoyed what he was doing. He believed no one really needed much sleep. He once said that anyone could learn to go without sleep.

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VOICE ONE:

Thomas Edison did not enjoy taking to reporters. He thought it was a waste of time. However, he did talk to a reporter in nineteen seventeen. He was seventy years old at the time and still working on new devices and inventions.

The reporter asked Mister Edison which of his many inventions he enjoyed the most. He answered quickly, the phonograph. He said the phonograph was really the most interesting. He also said it took longer to develop a machine to reproduce sound than any other of his inventions.

Thomas Edison told the reporter that he had listened to many thousands of recordings. He especially liked music by Brahms, Verdi and Beethoven. He also liked popular music.

Many of the recordings that Thomas Edison listened to in nineteen seventeen can still be enjoyed today. His invention makes it possible for people around the world to enjoy the same recorded sound.

VOICE TWO:

The reporter also asked Thomas Edison what was the hardest invention to develop. He answered quickly again -- the electric light. He said that it was the most difficult and the most important.

Before the electric light was invented, light was provided in most homes and buildings by oil or natural gas. Both caused many fires each year. Neither one produced much light.

Mister Edison had seen a huge and powerful electric light. He believed that a smaller electric light would be extremely useful.He and his employees began work on the electric light.

VOICE ONE:

An electric light passes electricity through material called a filament or wire. The electricity makes the filament burn and produce light. Thomas Edison and his employees worked for many months to find the right material to act as the filament.

Time after time a new filament would produce light for a few moments and then burn up. At last Mister Edison found that a carbon fiber produced light and lasted a long time without burning up. The electric light worked.

At first, people thought the electric light was extremely interesting but had no value. Homes and businesses did not have electricity. There was no need for it.

Mister Edison started a company that provided electricity for electric lights for a small price each month. The small company grew slowly at first. Then it expanded rapidly. His company was the beginning of the electric power industry.

VOICE TWO:

Thomas Edison also was responsible for the very beginnings of the movie industry. While he did not invent the idea of the motion picture, he greatly improved the process. He also invented the modern motion picture film.

When motion pictures first were shown in the late eighteen hundreds, people came to see movies of almost anything -- a ship, people walking on the street, new automobiles. But in time, these moving pictures were no longer interesting.

In nineteen-oh-three, an employee of Thomas Edison's motion picture company produced a movie with a story. It was called "The Great Train Robbery." It told a simple story of a group of western criminals who steal money from a train. Later they are killed by a group of police in a gun fight. The movie was extremely popular. "The Great Train Robbery" started the huge motion picture industry.

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VOICE ONE:

Thomas Alva Edison is remembered most for the electric light, his phonograph and his work with motion pictures. However, he also invented several devices that greatly improved the telephone. He improved several kinds of machines called generators that produced electricity. He improved batteries that hold electricity. He worked on many different kinds of electric motors including those for electric trains.

Mister Edison also is remembered for making changes in the invention process. He moved from the Nineteenth Century method of an individual doing the inventing to the Twentieth Century method using a team of researchers.

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen thirteen, a popular magazine at the time called Thomas Edison the most useful man in America. In nineteen twenty-eight, he received a special medal of honor from the Congress of the United States.

Thomas Edison died on January sixth, nineteen thirty-one. In the months before his death he was still working very hard. He had asked the government for legal protection for his last invention. It was patent number one thousand ninety-three.

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ANNOUNCER:

This Special English program was written and produced by Paul Thompson. The announcers were Sarah Long and Bob Doughty.

I'm Mary Tillotson. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of America.

In 1871, Edison started a factory and laboratory in Newark, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City. Newark was known at the time for its community of fine machinists, the kind of people Edison needed to build his telegraph equipment. In that same year, he married Mary Stillwell, who worked for his Newark business.

In 1874 Edison had his first big financial success with his quadruplex telegraph system. This was a way of sending more than one message in one direction over a single wire--in this case, two messages in opposite directions simultaneously. Telegraph companies were eager for such a scheme because it let them send more messages over fewer wires, increasing their profits while cutting their costs.

The story goes something like this: Thomas Edison approached the Western Union Telegraph Company with several inventions of his relating to the telegraph, especially the quadruplex telegraph system he had just completed. When asked how much he wanted for the inventions Edison thought of asking for about $2000, but instead he turned the question around and replied, "Well suppose you make me an offer." (6) Edison was amazed when they offered him $40,000! This was a lot of money for those days and it allowed him to fulfill his wish to become a full time inventor.

Edison signed a highly profitable contract with Western Union, took the money to the New Jersey countryside, and built a laboratory complex at Menlo Park, nicknamed "The Invention Factory!

美国著名发明家爱迪生的故事