He was also a prolific inventor that worked tirelessly to help give us the telegraph
Definitely not. The first telegraph was built by Francos Ronalds, about 30 years before Edison’s birth. Gauss/Weber built another one 1833. Morse and Vail introduced electromagnetic relays in 1838, enabling signals to travel beyond short distances.
and the lightbulb.
Arguably. He may made the first commercially viable lightbulb, but not the first overall. Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Warren de la Rue and William Staite all played a role.
"It was Alexander Graham Bell who patented the telephone in 1876. But Edison, with his knack for building upon others’ innovations, found a way to improve Bell’s transmitter, which was limited in how far apart phones could be by weak electrical current. Edison got the idea of using a battery to provide current on the phone line and to control its strength by using carbon to vary the resistance.
To do that, he designed a transmitter in which a small piece of lampblack (a black carbon made from soot) was placed behind the diaphragm. When someone spoke into the phone, the sound waves moved the diaphragm, and the pressure on the lampblack changed. Edison later replaced the lampblack with granules made from coal—a basic design that was used until the 1980s."
He was also a prolific inventor that worked tirelessly to help give us the telephone and the lightbulb.
He’s certainly a controversial man.
Definitely not. The first telegraph was built by Francos Ronalds, about 30 years before Edison’s birth. Gauss/Weber built another one 1833. Morse and Vail introduced electromagnetic relays in 1838, enabling signals to travel beyond short distances.
Arguably. He may made the first commercially viable lightbulb, but not the first overall. Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Warren de la Rue and William Staite all played a role.
Whoops meant to say helped give us the telephone
Specifically was talking about this
"It was Alexander Graham Bell who patented the telephone in 1876. But Edison, with his knack for building upon others’ innovations, found a way to improve Bell’s transmitter, which was limited in how far apart phones could be by weak electrical current. Edison got the idea of using a battery to provide current on the phone line and to control its strength by using carbon to vary the resistance.
To do that, he designed a transmitter in which a small piece of lampblack (a black carbon made from soot) was placed behind the diaphragm. When someone spoke into the phone, the sound waves moved the diaphragm, and the pressure on the lampblack changed. Edison later replaced the lampblack with granules made from coal—a basic design that was used until the 1980s."
https://www.history.com/articles/thomas-edison-inventions