Introduction
Edison is credited for contributing to various inventions, including the phonograph, the kinetoscope, the dictaphone, radio, the electric lamp (in particular the incandescent light bulb), the autographic printer, and the tattoo machine. He also greatly improved the telephone by inventing the carbon microphone. Most of these inventions were not completely original but improvements of earlier inventions. Many of his patented inventions were actually made by his employees, but Edison did not share credit with his employees. However, one of Edison's major innovations was the first industrial research and development lab, which was built in Menlo Park and West Orange.
Throughout the 20th century, Edison was the world's most prolific inventor. At the beginning of the century, he held 736 U.S. patents. His final count was 1,093 U.S. patents, including 1084 utility patents (patents for inventions) and 9 artistic design patents. It was not until June 17, 2003 that he was passed by Japanese inventor Shunpei Yamazaki. Yamazaki was subsequently passed by Australian inventor Kia Silverbrook on February 26, 2008.
Read more about this topic: List Of Edison Patents
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“We used chamber-pots a good deal.... My mother ... loved to repeat: “When did the queen reign over China?” This whimsical and harmless scatological pun was my first introduction to the wonderful world of verbal transformations, and also a first perception that a joke need not be funny to give pleasure.”
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“Do you suppose I could buy back my introduction to you?”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Arthur Sheekman, Will Johnstone, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Monkey Business, a wisecrack made to his fellow stowaway Chico Marx (1931)
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—Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)