Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

The Edison Medal

The Edison Medal

In 1904, a trust fund was established in honor of Thomas Edison to award a gold medal each year to an individual with meritorious accomplishments in the fields of electrical science, electrical engineering, or electrical arts. Nomination criteria for this award include patents, leadership and contributions in an individual’s field of endeavor, honors awarded, duration of dominance, and originality. Such prestigious recognition is a testament to Edison, who demonstrated these criteria throughout his lifetime.

Edison secured 1,368 patents between the ages of fourteen and eighty-four, about one patent every two weeks. His patents pertained to numerous inventions in the fields of communications, entertainment, medicine, and various industries. He gained and lost fortunes in some of his endeavors, but he had the unique ability to withstand severe monetary losses and recover quickly. He died a millionaire because he held to the principle of inventing something only if there was a need for it and people would buy it. Edison was cantankerous, disagreeable, and overly competitive. However, he was also an organizer, a visionary, meticulous to detail, and an excellent business promoter. To raise financial backing he made sure his inventions were featured on the front pages of newspapers and often arranged impressive demonstrations. Edison was adept at managing his fame. He capitalized on his reputation as the world’s greatest inventor, which rewarded him financially.

The Edison Medal reflects contributions to society by distinguished and notable individuals. The first award, consisting of a gold medal, a small gold replica, a certificate, and an honorarium, was presented in 1909 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Among past honorees are George Westinghouse, Alexander Graham Bell, and Nikola Tesla. Other awards have been presented for research in microwave and radar remote sensing technology, programmable read-only memory, and broadband optical fiber communications. The medal serves as a symbol for men and women who have turned ideas into reality for the benefit of humankind.


See Also

Samuel Colt

Peter Cooper

George Eastman

Harvey Firestone

Henry Ford

Samuel Insull

Edwin Herbert Land

J. P. Morgan

Samuel F. B. Morse

Isaac Merrit Singer

Cornelius Vanderbilt

George Westinghouse

Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy

Thomas Edison

by Douglas D. Skinner

American inventor and entrepreneur

Edison’s wealth accumulated from investors’ ongoing support, corporate stocks, and the sales of his inventions. Although often impoverished, he eventually gained personal fortune and prosperity through obsessive work habits that resulted in new advances in technology. His inventions revolutionized industry, communications, and business.

Sources of wealth: Patents; sale of products; investments

Bequeathal of wealth: Spouse; children; scholarship

Early Life

Thomas Alva Edison was the seventh and last child of Canadian emigrants Samuel and Nancy Edison. The family was forced to flee Canada and move to Ohio because Samuel supported a failed revolt against the Canadian government. Young Edison developed a keen interest in learning and discovery due to his parents’ scholarly influence. Nancy, a teacher, home-schooled Edison and encouraged his use of the local library, where he was reputed to have read every book in the collection. Of early interest to him were Sir Isaac Newton’s theories of physics. By age fourteen, he was already an entrepreneur, earning more than $10 a day selling snacks at a railroad station and publishing his own newspaper, The Weekly Herald.

In his early twenties, Edison was a freelance inventor while working for the Western Union Telegraph Company in Boston and New York. Ambitious and hardworking, he forged a path that would eventually bring him fame, notoriety, and fortune.

First Ventures

While employed with Western Union, Edison acquired his first patent, for a machine to automatically record the votes of legislative bodies. Financially, the machine was unsuccessful because politicians preferred the roll-call vote, which gave them an opportunity to state their opinions. Edison vowed never again to invent something that would not sell.

Thomas Edison in his laboratory.

ph_0111200193-t_a_edison.jpg

(Library of Congress)

Destitute, Edison borrowed $35 to travel to New York. He repaired a malfunctioning stock ticker machine in an office and was hired there for $300 a month. After Edison sold his redesigned Edison Universal Stock Printer in 1874 for $40,000 (more than $800,000 in 2010), he constructed a laboratory in Newark, New Jersey, to manufacture the machines. In 1876, he moved to his new Edison Laboratory in Menlo Park, where he and five thousand employees would work on more than forty inventions. Edison became known as the Wizard of Menlo Park.

Mature Wealth

Edison took risks, remained optimistic, and was persistent. For him, failure was not permanent but only represented a first unsuccessful attempt. His genius was valued enough at the time to attract willing contributors to fund his projects. In 1875, the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company provided Edison with $13,500, and Western Union supplied another $5,000, so he could continue his work on automatic telegraphy. The gift funded his laboratory in Menlo Park, an enterprising venture requiring considerable backing.

In Menlo Park, Edison invented the carbon-resistance telephone transmitter (1876) and the phonograph (1877). Now regarded as an eminent inventor, he received $10,000 from five investors to establish the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company for further development of the phonograph. In 1879, Edison burned a carbonized sewing thread filament for more than thirteen hours and developed the Edison dynamo, which provided a constant electric current. Edison found wealth and fame with the success of the incandescent lamp when it became commercially viable. In 1878, one share of stock in his Edison Electric Light Company was worth $3,500. A staff physicist, who was hired at $12 a week, sold five shares in the company for $5,000 each.

In 1882, the first commercial central power station using incandescent lamps provided lighting for one square mile of New York City, initiating the electric age. Transportation and industrial markets began to rely heavily on the use of electricity, and night lighting evolved into a twenty-four-hour service. The newly formed Edison General Electric Company merged with other manufacturing companies. Although the company bore his name, Edison was just a partner. J. P. Morgan, members of the Vanderbilt family, and other investors provided the necessary capital. Edison received stock valued at $3.5 million. Eventually, Edison General merged with Thompson-Houston in 1892 and was renamed General Electric Company. General Electric supported Edison with an annual grant of $85,000, far less than the $250,000 he expected. Years later, he learned that his stake in the company was worth about $4 million.

In 1882 and 1883, Edison contracted for power stations in Brockton, Massachusetts, and Sunbury, Pennsylvania. He secured a patent for the “Edison effect,” which effectively regulated the flow of electric current. This revolutionary discovery became the foundation for the manufacture of diodes, radios, televisions, and computer transistors.

In 1887, Edison constructed the first and largest research and development center in West Orange, New Jersey. His newest project was the kinetoscope, the predecessor to a motion-picture camera. The kinetoscope was a crude machine that enabled viewers to see magnified and backlit film moving past a small opening. As with the phonograph, Edison failed to realize the entertainment potential of the kinetoscope to the general public. However, his distributor formulated a successful publicity plan which required Edison to lend his name to the new Vitascope, an early film projector, but to otherwise remain in the background. The first film screening using a Vitascope was held in Los Angeles and attracted twenty thousand viewers, with another ten thousand who showed up but were not admitted. The new industry of film production was born.

The 1890’s was a profitable time for Edison because he established a phonograph and phonograph recording business, capitalizing on the home entertainment market. Coin-in-the-slot phonographs occupied railway stations, arcades, and phonograph parlors throughout the United States; a San Francisco distributor of these products claimed $4,000 in revenue within six months. Edison’s additional inventions included the fluoroscope (an X ray fluorescent screen) and concrete molds for precast buildings. From 1900 until 1910, Edison’s primary and formidable challenge was the development of a storage battery that was suitable for electric vehicles. However, by the time work was completed on the alkaline battery, vehicles had switched to gasoline power. Developing the battery appeared to be a losing proposition, but Edison’s patience paid off. Soon, railway cars, signals, ships, and even miners’ lamps were using the alkaline battery. Edison’s investment compounded, and the alkaline battery proved to be his most lucrative product. In 1911, Edison formed Thomas A. Edison, Inc., which controlled most of his enterprises, including phonographs, records, motion-picture equipment, and batteries.

By age sixty-four, Edison had ceased to work long hours and was entrusting associates to operate his business ventures. Emphasis was placed on improving existing products rather than inventing new ones. With World War I approaching, Edison was appointed to the Naval Consulting Board for scientific work with submarines and related naval operations. Friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone urged Edison to discover an alternate source for rubber automobile tires, but this final project was not completed. In his eighties, he spent more time in his Glenmont, New Jersey, home in declining health. He lingered near death for about two weeks with kidney failure before succumbing on October 18, 1931. Out of respect, President Herbert Hoover asked communities across the country to extinguish all electric lights at ten o’clock in the evening, eastern time, on the day of Edison’s funeral.

Legacy

For Edison, money had value only if it was used to benefit others. Since Edison was not independently wealthy, he relied on associates to support his endeavors. Accordingly, his financial situation ranged from bankruptcy to prosperity depending on the success of his business ventures related to the design and marketing of his inventions. His partnerships with others, however, allowed him to continue his work toward new discoveries and to achieve recognition as “the Napoleon of invention.”

Edison’s wealth provided the creation of the world’s first industrial research laboratory that encouraged staff teamwork and strengthened mass production at unprecedented levels. He invented better communication devices, introduced home entertainment through phonographs and motion-picture cameras, and improved countless industrial commodities.

Further Reading

1 

Baldwin, Neil. Edison: Inventing the Century. New York: Hyperion Books, 1996. Portrait of Edison, a complex and visionary genius who transformed the modern age. Contains much information on his family life, highlighting his two wives and children.

2 

Essig, Mark. Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death. New York: Walker, 2003. In-depth study of a side of Edison not generally known: His invention of the lightbulb led to his involvement in the development of the electric chair. Contains photographs and other illustrations.

3 

Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. New York: Random House, 2003. Narrative of the interaction of three giants of the electric age and their philosophies and battles with each other. Describes the effects of legal and corporate interests in the electric industry. Includes sixteen pages of photographs.

4 

Pretzer, William S. Working at Inventing: Thomas A. Edison and the Menlo Park Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Focuses on Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory from 1876 to 1882, when his work centered on communications, the phonograph, and the lightbulb. Contains maps and illustrations.

5 

Stross, Randall. The Wizard of Menlo Park. New York: Crown, 2007. A well-researched book by a university business professor. Provides a summation of Edison’s life, his contributions to society, his career, his associates, and his family. Contains eight pages of photographs.

6 

Wehrwein, Michele Albion. The Florida Life of Thomas Edison. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008. Introspective account of Edison’s home life in Ft. Myers, among the flora and fauna. Details his daily research and recreation habits and his impact on the community.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Skinner, Douglas D. "Thomas Edison." Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy, edited by Howard Bromberg, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLIW_1137369001137.
APA 7th
Skinner, D. D. (2010). Thomas Edison. In H. Bromberg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Skinner, Douglas D. "Thomas Edison." Edited by Howard Bromberg. Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.