Edison, Thomas A. (d. 1931)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1931 Oct 21 p. 1

Birth date:

text of obituary:

Death Claims World's Greatest Inventor.

Early last Sunday morning Thomas A. Edison, the man whose life work affected in some way almost every person on the American continent as well as in other parts of the world, died at his home in West orange, N. J. Eulogizing this great man and his work, the Topeka Daily Capital last Monday published the following editorial:

Thomas A. Edison

Within the past ten or twelve years there have been numerous questionnaires sent out by college s and universities to many thousand persons in all walks of life asking each person to whom the questionnaire was sent to name ten men and women who in the opinion of the person answering were the most useful and noted of their times.

It is an astounding fact that in practically every one of the lists sent in as answers to these requests was found the name of Thomas A. Edison.

We are not certain that his name led all the rest but our impression is that it did, not even excepting Washington, Lincoln or Jefferson. Where the list was confined to living men and women, Edison's name decidedly led the names of all of his contemporaries.

And yet this most distinguished and remarkable man of his time did not have the advantage of a college or even a high school education.

His mother, who seems to have been a woman of remarkable ability and fair education for a woman of her time — she was a teacher — acted as instructor for her son; but most of his education was gained in the great school of experience. He began his business career as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. Then he learned telegraphy, partly because it offered an opportunity to make fair wages for that time and also because it appealed to his inventive genius.

For more than 50 years Edison conceived ideas and then turned out devices founded upon them. It has been said that an invention was born in the brain of Edison on the average of about one every two weeks. In the course of his life he registered approximately 1,200 patents in the Patent office in Washington which made him the most prolific inventor of his time.

It may be said of Edison that his inventions not only added tremendously to the comfort and convenience of mankind, but did more to enlarge economic possibilities than all the inventions of all the ages that had preceded him.

He found cities and towns poorly lighted either with rather ineffective gas lights or worse still with smoky and ill-smelling coal oil lamps, long before his death he saw not only the large cities and towns brilliantly and beautifully illuminated with incandescent lamps, but even the insignificant villages proudly displaying their "white ways" turning night into day with the power and beauty o their radiance.

He found the power of the waterfall confined in effectiveness to the immediate neighborhood of the cataract and made int possible by his genius to transmit both light and heat and power great distances and turn the wheels of commerce by the mysterious potency of the electric current.

He brought into even the homes of the humble light and joy and comfort as they had ever known. With the phonograph, the dweller in the remotest place, in the wilderness or on the lonesome prairie was made familiar with the artistry of Paderewski, the golden voices of Caruso, John McCormick and the swelling melody of Melba, Galli-Curel and Adelina Patti. Well might it be inscribed on the golden medal presented him by Congress: "He illuminated the path of progress by his inventions" and well deserved were the words of President Coolidge when he made the presentation speech "Noble, kindly servant of the United States and benefactor of mankind."

As long as civilization endures the name of Thomas Edison will continue to illuminate the pages of history.