document_title: Thomas Edison

question_text: when did the first light bulb come out

question_tokens: when did the first light bulb come out

root

text: Thomas Edison

text: Early life

text: Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison Jr. (1804–1896, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871, born in Chenango County, New York).[5] His father, the son of a Loyalist refugee, had moved as a boy with the family from Nova Scotia, settling in southwestern Ontario (then called Upper Canada), in a village known as Shewsbury, later Vienna, by 1811. Samuel Jr. eventually fled Ontario, because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837.[6] His father, Samuel Sr., had earlier fought in the War of 1812 as captain of the First Middlesex Regiment. By contrast, Samuel Jr.'s struggle found him on the losing side, and he crossed into the United States at Sarnia-Port Huron. Once across the border, he found his way to Milan, Ohio. His patrilineal family line was Dutch by way of New Jersey; the surname had originally been "Edeson."[7]

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text: Edison only attended school for a few months and was instead taught by his mother.[8] Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.[9]

text: Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. Around the middle of his career, Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.[10][11]

text: Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined.[12] Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and sold vegetables. He briefly worked as a telegraph operator in 1863 for the Grand Trunk Railway at the railway station in Stratford, Ontario, at age 16. He was held responsible for a near collision. He also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments on the train until he left the job.[13][14]

text: Edison obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers.[14] This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.[15][16]

text: Telegrapher

text: Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J. U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.[17]

text: In 1866, at the age of 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a lead–acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk below. The next morning Edison was fired.[18]

text: One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey, home. Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, U.S. Patent 90,646, which was granted on June 1, 1869.[19]

text: Marriages and children

text: On December 25, 1871, at the age of twenty-four, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell (1855–1884), whom he had met two months earlier; she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:

text:
Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed "Dot"[20]
Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed "Dash"[21]
William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.[22]

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text: Mary Edison died at age 29 on August 9, 1884, of unknown causes: possibly from a brain tumor[23] or a morphine overdose. Doctors frequently prescribed morphine to women in those years to treat a variety of causes, and researchers believe that her symptoms could have been from morphine poisoning.[24]

text: Edison generally preferred spending time in the laboratory to being with his family.[25]

text: On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty-nine, Edison married the 20-year-old Mina Miller (1865–1947) in Akron, Ohio.[26] She was the daughter of the inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution, and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children together:

text:
Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane.[27][28]
Charles Edison (1890–1969), Governor of New Jersey (1941–1944), who took over his father's company and experimental laboratories upon his father's death.[29]
Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics 1923), credited with more than 80 patents.

text: Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.[30][31]

text: Beginning his career

text:
Mary Had a Little Lamb

Thomas Edison reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in 1929.

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text: Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him wider notice was the phonograph in 1877.[32] This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey.[2]

text: His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder. Despite its limited sound quality and that the recordings could be played only a few times, the phonograph made Edison a celebrity. Joseph Henry, president of the National Academy of Sciences and one of the most renowned electrical scientists in the US, described Edison as "the most ingenious inventor in this country... or in any other".[33] In April 1878, Edison traveled to Washington to demonstrate the phonograph before the National Academy of Sciences, Congressmen, Senators and US President Hayes.[34] The Washington Post described Edison as a "genius" and his presentation as "a scene... that will live in history".[35] Although Edison obtained a patent for the phonograph in 1878,[36] he did little to develop it until Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter produced a phonograph-like device in the 1880s that used wax-coated cardboard cylinders.

text: Menlo Park

text: Research and development facility

text: Edison's major innovation was the establishment of an industrial research lab in 1876. It was built in Menlo Park, a part of Raritan Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey (today named Edison in his honor), with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison was not sure that his original plan to sell it for $4,000 to $5,000 was right, so he asked Western Union to make a bid. He was surprised to hear them offer $10,000 ($216,300 in today's dollars.[37]), which he gratefully accepted.[38] The quadruplex telegraph was Edison's first big financial success, and Menlo Park became the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results.

text: William Joseph Hammer, a consulting electrical engineer, started working for Edison and began his duties as a laboratory assistant in December 1879. He assisted in experiments on the telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and other developing inventions. However, Hammer worked primarily on the incandescent electric lamp and was put in charge of tests and records on that device (see Hammer Historical Collection of Incandescent Electric Lamps). In 1880, he was appointed chief engineer of the Edison Lamp Works. In his first year, the plant under General Manager Francis Robbins Upton turned out 50,000 lamps. According to Edison, Hammer was "a pioneer of incandescent electric lighting".[39] Frank J. Sprague, a competent mathematician and former naval officer, was recruited by Edward H. Johnson and joined the Edison organization in 1883. One of Sprague's contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park was to expand Edison's mathematical methods. Despite the common belief that Edison did not use mathematics, analysis of his notebooks reveal that he was an astute user of mathematical analysis conducted by his assistants such as Francis Robbins Upton, for example, determining the critical parameters of his electric lighting system including lamp resistance by an analysis of Ohm's Law, Joule's Law and economics.[40]

text: Nearly all of Edison's patents were utility patents, which were protected for a 17-year period and included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to a 14-year period. As in most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, in contrast, was unprecedented as describing the first device to record and reproduce sounds.[41]

text: In just over a decade, Edison's Menlo Park laboratory had expanded to occupy two city blocks. Edison said he wanted the lab to have "a stock of almost every conceivable material".[42] A newspaper article printed in 1887 reveals the seriousness of his claim, stating the lab contained "eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels ... silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark's teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell ... cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock's tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores ..." and the list goes on.[43]

text: Over his desk, Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous quotation: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."[44] This slogan was reputedly posted at several other locations throughout the facility.

text: With Menlo Park, Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application.[45] Edison's name is registered on 1,093 patents.[25]

text: Carbon telephone transmitter

text: In 1876, Edison began work to improve the microphone for telephones (at that time called a "transmitter") by developing a carbon microphone, which consists of two metal plates separated by granules of carbon that would change resistance with the pressure of sound waves. A steady direct current is passed between the plates through the granules and the varying resistance results in a modulation of the current, creating a varying electric current that reproduces the varying pressure of the sound wave.

text: Up to that point, microphones, such as the ones developed by Johann Philipp Reis and Alexander Graham Bell, worked by generating a weak current. The carbon microphone works by modulating a direct current and, subsequently, using a transformer to transfer the signal so generated to the telephone line. Edison was one of many inventors working on the problem of creating a usable microphone for telephony by having it modulate an electrical current passed through it.[46] His work was concurrent with Emile Berliner's loose-contact carbon transmitter (who lost a later patent case against Edison over the carbon transmitters invention[47]) and David Edward Hughes study and published paper on the physics of loose-contact carbon transmitters (work that Hughes did not bother to patent).[46][48]

text: Edison used the carbon microphone concept in 1877 to create an improved telephone for Western Union.[47] In 1886, Edison found a way to improve a Bell Telephone microphone, one that used loose-contact ground carbon, with his discovery that it worked far better if the carbon was roasted. This type was put in use in 1890[47] and was used in all telephones along with the Bell receiver until the 1980s.

text: It should be noted that the frequency response of the carbon microphone is limited to a narrow frequency range (400 Hz to 4000 Hz), and the device may produce significant electrical noise.

text: Electric light

text: In 1878, Edison began working on a system of electrical illumination, something he hoped could compete with gas and oil based lighting.[49] He began by tackling the problem of creating a long-lasting incandescent lamp, something that would be needed for indoor use. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Alessandro Volta's demonstration of a glowing wire in 1800 and inventions by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others who developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps included Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer,[50] William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan, and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as an extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially.[51]:217–218 Edison realized that to connect a series of electric lights to an economically manageable size and using the necessary thickness of copper wire, he would have to develop a lamp that used a low amount of current. This lamp must have high resistance and use relatively low voltage (around 110 volts).[52]

text: After many experiments, first with carbon filaments and then with platinum and other metals, Edison returned to a carbon filament.[53] The first successful test was on October 22, 1879;[51]:186[54][55][25] it lasted 13.5 hours.[56] Edison continued to improve this design and on November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires".[57] This was the first commercially practical incandescent light.[58]

text: Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways",[57] it was not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized bamboo filament that could last over 1,200 hours. The idea of using this particular raw material originated from Edison's recalling his examination of a few threads from a bamboo fishing pole while relaxing on the shore of Battle Lake in the present-day state of Wyoming, where he and other members of a scientific team had traveled so that they could clearly observe a total eclipse of the sun on July 29, 1878, from the Continental Divide.[59]

text: In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan, Spencer Trask,[60] and the members of the Vanderbilt family. Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."[61]

text: Henry Villard, president of the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company, attended Edison's 1879 demonstration. Villard was impressed and requested Edison install his electric lighting system aboard Villard's company's new steamer, the Columbia. Although hesitant at first, Edison agreed to Villard's request. Most of the work was completed in May 1880, and the Columbia went to New York City, where Edison and his personnel installed Columbia's new lighting system. The Columbia was Edison's first commercial application for his incandescent light bulb. The Edison equipment was removed from Columbia in 1895.[62][63][64][65]

text: Lewis Latimer joined the Edison Electric Light Company in 1884. Latimer had received a patent in January 1881 for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method for the production of carbon filaments for light bulbs. Latimer worked as an engineer, a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights.[66]

text: George Westinghouse's company bought Philip Diehl's competing induction lamp patent rights (1882) for $25,000, forcing the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights and lowering the price of the electric lamp.[67]

text: On October 8, 1883, the US patent office ruled that Edison's patent was based on the work of William E. Sawyer and was, therefore, invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison's electric light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid.[68] To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, whose British patent had been awarded a year before Edison's, he and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to manufacture and market the invention in Britain.

text: Mahen Theatre in Brno (in what is now the Czech Republic), opened in 1882, and was the first public building in the world to use Edison's electric lamps. Francis Jehl, Edison's assistant in the invention of the lamp, supervised the installation.[69] In September 2010, a sculpture of three giant light bulbs was erected in Brno, in front of the theatre.[70]

text: Electric power distribution

text: After devising a commercially viable electric light bulb on October 21, 1879, Edison developed an electric "utility" to compete with the existing gas light utilities.[71] On December 17, 1880, he founded the Edison Illuminating Company, and during the 1880s, he patented a system for electricity distribution. The company established the first investor-owned electric utility in 1882 on Pearl Street Station, New York City. On September 4, 1882, Edison switched on his Pearl Street generating station's electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.[72]

text: In January 1882, Edison switched on the first steam-generating power station at Holborn Viaduct in London. The DC supply system provided electricity supplies to street lamps and several private dwellings within a short distance of the station. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized incandescent electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey.

text: War of currents

text: As Edison expanded his direct current (DC) power delivery system, he received stiff competition from companies installing alternating current (AC) systems. From the early 1880s AC arc lighting systems for streets and large spaces had been an expanding business in the US. With the development of transformers in Europe and by Westinghouse Electric in the US in 1885–1886, it became possible to transmit AC long distances over thinner and cheaper wires, and "step down" the voltage at the destination for distribution to users. This allowed AC to be used in street lighting and in lighting for small business and domestic customers, the market Edison's patented low voltage DC incandescent lamp system was designed to supply.[73] Edison's DC empire suffered from one of its chief drawbacks: it was suitable only for the high density of customers found in large cities. Edison's DC plants could not deliver electricity to customers more than one mile from the plant, and left a patchwork of unsupplied customers between plants. Small cities and rural areas could not afford an Edison style system at all, leaving a large part of the market without electrical service. AC companies expanded into this gap.

text: Edison expressed views that AC was unworkable and the high voltages used were dangerous. As George Westinghouse installed his first AC systems in 1886, Thomas Edison struck out personally against his chief rival stating, "Just as certain as death, Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a system of any size. He has got a new thing and it will require a great deal of experimenting to get it working practically."[74] Many reasons have been suggested for Edison's anti-AC stance. One notion is that the inventor could not grasp the more abstract theories behind AC and was trying to avoid developing a system he did not understand. Edison also appeared to have been worried about the high voltage from misinstalled AC systems killing customers and hurting the sales of electric power systems in general.[75] Primary was the fact that Edison Electric based their design on low voltage DC and switching a standard after they had installed over 100 systems was, in Edison's mind, out of the question. By the end of 1887, Edison Electric was losing market share to Westinghouse, who had built 68 AC-based power stations to Edison's 121 DC-based stations. To make matters worse for Edison, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts (another AC-based competitor) built 22 power stations.[76]

text: Parallel to expanding competition between Edison and the AC companies was rising public furor over a series of deaths in the spring of 1888 caused by pole mounted high voltage alternating current lines. This turned into a media frenzy against high voltage alternating current and the seemingly greedy and callous lighting companies that used it.[77][78] Edison took advantage of the public perception of AC as dangerous, and joined with self-styled New York anti-AC crusader Harold P. Brown in a propaganda campaign, aiding Brown in the public electrocution of animals with AC, and supported legislation to control and severely limit AC installations and voltages (to the point of making it an ineffective power delivery system) in what was now being referred to as a "battle of currents". The development of the electric chair was used in an attempt to portray AC as having a greater lethal potential than DC and smear Westinghouse at the same time via Edison colluding with Brown and Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, to make sure the first electric chair was powered by a Westinghouse AC generator.

text: Thomas Edison's staunch anti-AC tactics were not sitting well with his own stockholders. By the early 1890s, Edison's company was generating much smaller profits than its AC rivals, and the War of Currents would come to an end in 1892 with Edison forced out of controlling his own company. That year, the financier J.P. Morgan engineered a merger of Edison General Electric with Thomson-Houston that put the board of Thomson-Houston in charge of the new company called General Electric. General Electric now controlled three-quarters of the US electrical business and would compete with Westinghouse for the AC market.[79][80]

text: Other inventions and projects

text: Fluoroscopy

text: Edison is credited with designing and producing the first commercially available fluoroscope, a machine that uses X-rays to take radiographs. Until Edison discovered that calcium tungstate fluoroscopy screens produced brighter images than the barium platinocyanide screens originally used by Wilhelm Röntgen, the technology was capable of producing only very faint images.

text: The fundamental design of Edison's fluoroscope is still in use today, although Edison abandoned the project after nearly losing his own eyesight and seriously injuring his assistant, Clarence Dally. Dally made himself an enthusiastic human guinea pig for the fluoroscopy project and was exposed to a poisonous dose of radiation. He later died of injuries related to the exposure. In 1903, a shaken Edison said: "Don't talk to me about X-rays, I am afraid of them."[81]

text: Telegraph improvements

text: This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (December 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph.

text: Motion pictures

text: Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or "Kinetograph". He did the electromechanical design while his employee W. K. L. Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson.[51] In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.[83]

text: In April 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later, he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film.

text: Officially the kinetoscope entered Europe when the rich American Businessman Irving T. Bush (1869–1948) bought from the Continental Commerce Company of Frank Z. Maguire and Joseph D. Baucus a dozen machines. Bush placed from October 17, 1894, the first kinetoscopes in London. At the same time, the French company Kinétoscope Edison Michel et Alexis Werner bought these machines for the market in France. In the last three months of 1894, the Continental Commerce Company sold hundreds of kinetoscopes in Europe (i.e. the Netherlands and Italy). In Germany and in Austria-Hungary, the kinetoscope was introduced by the Deutsche-österreichische-Edison-Kinetoscop Gesellschaft, founded by the Ludwig Stollwerck[84] of the Schokoladen-Süsswarenfabrik Stollwerck & Co of Cologne.

text: The first kinetoscopes arrived in Belgium at the Fairs in early 1895. The Edison's Kinétoscope Français, a Belgian company, was founded in Brussels on January 15, 1895, with the rights to sell the kinetoscopes in Monaco, France and the French colonies. The main investors in this company were Belgian industrialists.[85]

text: On May 14, 1895, the Edison's Kinétoscope Belge was founded in Brussels. The businessman Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki, living in London but active in Belgium and France, took the initiative in starting this business. He had contacts with Leon Gaumont and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. In 1898, he also became a shareholder of the Biograph and Mutoscope Company for France.[85]

text: Edison's film studio made close to 1,200 films. The majority of the productions were short films showing everything from acrobats to parades to fire calls including titles such as Fred Ott's Sneeze (1894), The Kiss (1896), The Great Train Robbery (1903), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1910), and the first Frankenstein film in 1910. In 1903, when the owners of Luna Park, Coney Island announced they would execute Topsy the elephant by strangulation, poisoning, and electrocution (with the electrocution part ultimately killing the elephant), Edison Manufacturing sent a crew to film it, releasing it that same year with the title Electrocuting an Elephant.

text: As the film business expanded, competing exhibitors routinely copied and exhibited each other's films.[86] To better protect the copyrights on his films, Edison deposited prints of them on long strips of photographic paper with the U.S. copyright office. Many of these paper prints survived longer and in better condition than the actual films of that era.[87]

text: In 1908, Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929.

text: Edison said his favorite movie was The Birth of a Nation. He thought that talkies had "spoiled everything" for him. "There isn't any good acting on the screen. They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act. I can sense it more than you because I am deaf."[88] His favorite stars were Mary Pickford and Clara Bow.[89]

text: Mining

text: Starting in the late 1870s, Thomas Edison became interested and involved with mining. High-grade iron ore was scarce on the east coast of the United States and Edison tried to mine low-grade ore. Edison developed a process using rollers and crushers that could pulverize rocks up to 10 tons. The dust was then sent between three giant magnets that would pull the iron ore from the dust. Despite the failure of his mining company, the Edison Ore Milling Company, Edison used some of the materials and equipment to produce cement.[90]

text: In 1901, Edison visited an industrial exhibition in the Sudbury area in Ontario, Canada and thought nickel and cobalt deposits there could be used in his production of electrical equipment. He returned as a mining prospector and is credited with the original discovery of the Falconbridge ore body. His attempts to mine the ore body were not successful, and he abandoned his mining claim in 1903.[91] A street in Falconbridge, as well as the Edison Building, which served as the head office of Falconbridge Mines, are named for him.

text: Battery

text: The Edison Storage Battery Company was founded in 1901. With this company Edison exploited his invention of the accumulator. In 1904 already 450 people worked at the company. The first accumulators were produced for electric cars. But there were several defects. Several Customers were complaining about the products. When the capital of the company was spent Edison paid for the company with his private money. Not until 1910 Edison showed a mature product: A Nickel-Iron-Battery with Lye as liquid.

text: Rubber

text: Edison became concerned with America's reliance on foreign supply of rubber and was determined to find a native supply of rubber. He joined Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford (each contributing $25,000) to create the Edison Botanic Research Corp. in 1927 and constructed a laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida the following year. Edison did the majority of the research and planting, sending results and sample rubber residues to his West Orange Lab. Edison employed a two-part Acid-base extraction, to derive latex from the plant material after it was dried and crushed to a powder.[92] After testing 17,000 plant samples, he eventually found an adequate source in the Goldenrod plant.

text: West Orange and Fort Myers (1886–1931)

text: Edison moved from Menlo Park after the death of his first wife, Mary, in 1884, and purchased a home known as "Glenmont" in 1886 as a wedding gift for his second wife, Mina, in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1885, Thomas Edison bought property in Fort Myers, Florida, and built what was later called Seminole Lodge as a winter retreat. Edison and Mina spent many winters at their home in Fort Myers, and Edison tried to find a domestic source of natural rubber.[93]

text: Due to the security concerns around World War I, Edison suggested forming a science and industry committee to provide advice and research to the US military, and he headed the Naval Consulting Board in 1915.[94]

text: Edison's work on rubber took place largely at his botanic research laboratory in Fort Myers, which has been designated as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.[95] The laboratory was built after Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone pulled together $75,000 to form the Edison Botanical Research Corporation. Initially, only Ford and Firestone were to contribute funds to the project while Edison did all the research. Edison, however, wished to contribute $25,000 as well. After testing over 17,000 plant species, Edison decided on Solidago leavenworthii, also known as Leavenworth's Goldenrod. The plant, which normally grows roughly 3–4 feet tall with a 5% latex yield, was adapted by Edison through cross-breeding to produce plants twice the size and with a latex yield of 12%.[96]

text: Thomas Edison Jr.'s activities

text: Wanting to be an inventor, but not having much of an aptitude for it, Thomas Edison's son, Thomas Alva Edison Jr.. became a problem for his father and his father's business. Starting in the 1890s, Thomas Jr. became involved in snake oil products and shady and fraudulent enterprises producing products being sold to the public as "The Latest Edison Discovery". The situation became so bad that Thomas Sr. had to take his son to court to stop the practices, finally agreeing to pay Thomas Jr. an allowance of $35.00 (equivalent to $953 in 2017[37]) per week, in exchange for not using the Edison name; the son began using aliases, such as Burton Willard. Thomas Jr., suffering from alcoholism, depression and ill health, worked at several menial jobs, but by 1931 (towards the end of his life) he would obtain a role in the Edison company, thanks to the intervention of his brother.[97][98]

text: Final years

text: Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, later lived a few hundred feet away from Edison at his winter retreat in Fort Myers. Ford once worked as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit and met Edison at a convention of affiliated Edison illuminating companies in Brooklyn, NY in 1896. Edison was impressed with Ford's internal combustion engine automobile and encouraged its developments. They were friends until Edison's death. Edison and Ford undertook annual motor camping trips from 1914 to 1924. Harvey Firestone and John Burroughs also participated.

text: In 1928, Edison joined the Fort Myers Civitan Club. He believed strongly in the organization, writing that "The Civitan Club is doing things—big things—for the community, state, and nation, and I certainly consider it an honor to be numbered in its ranks."[99] He was an active member in the club until his death, sometimes bringing Henry Ford to the club's meetings.

text: Edison was active in business right up to the end. Just months before his death, the Lackawanna Railroad inaugurated suburban electric train service from Hoboken to Montclair, Dover, and Gladstone, New Jersey. Electrical transmission for this service was by means of an overhead catenary system using direct current, which Edison had championed. Despite his frail condition, Edison was at the throttle of the first electric MU (Multiple-Unit) train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken in September 1930, driving the train the first mile through Hoboken yard on its way to South Orange.[100]

text: This fleet of cars would serve commuters in northern New Jersey for the next 54 years until their retirement in 1984. A plaque commemorating Edison's inaugural ride can be seen today in the waiting room of Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, which is presently operated by New Jersey Transit.[100]

text: Edison was said to have been influenced by a popular fad diet in his last few years; "the only liquid he consumed was a pint of milk every three hours".[51] He is reported to have believed this diet would restore his health. However, this tale is doubtful. In 1930, the year before Edison died, Mina said in an interview about him, "correct eating is one of his greatest hobbies." She also said that during one of his periodic "great scientific adventures", Edison would be up at 7:00, have breakfast at 8:00, and be rarely home for lunch or dinner, implying that he continued to have all three.[88]

text: Edison became the owner of his Milan, Ohio, birthplace in 1906. On his last visit, in 1923, he was reportedly shocked to find his old home still lit by lamps and candles.[citation needed]

text: Death

text: Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. He is buried behind the home.[101][102]

text: Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at The Henry Ford museum near Detroit. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a memento.[103] A plaster death mask and casts of Edison's hands were also made.[104] Mina died in 1947.

text: Views on politics, religion, and metaphysics

text: Historian Paul Israel has characterized Edison as a "freethinker".[51] Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.[51] Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity."[51] In an October 2, 1910, interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated:

text: Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.[105]

text: Edison was accused of being an atheist for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he clarified himself in a private letter:

text: You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made.[51]

text: He also stated, "I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt."[106]

text: Nonviolence was key to Edison's moral views, and when asked to serve as a naval consultant for World War I, he specified he would work only on defensive weapons and later noted, "I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill." Edison's philosophy of nonviolence extended to animals as well, about which he stated: "Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."[107][108] He was a vegetarian[109] but not a vegan in actual practice, at least near the end of his life.[51]

text: In 1920, Edison set off a media sensation when he told B. C. Forbes of American Magazine that he was working on a "spirit phone" to allow communication with the dead, a story which other newspapers and magazines repeated.[110] Edison later disclaimed the idea, telling the New York Times in 1926 that "I really had nothing to tell him, but I hated to disappoint him so I thought up this story about communicating with spirits, but it was all a joke."[111]

text: Views on money

text: Thomas Edison was an advocate for monetary reform in the United States. He was ardently opposed to the gold standard and debt-based money. Famously, he was quoted in the New York Times stating "Gold is a relic of Julius Caesar, and interest is an invention of Satan."[112]

text: In the same article, he expounded upon the absurdity of a monetary system in which the taxpayer of the United States, in need of a loan, can be compelled to pay in return perhaps double the principal, or even greater sums, due to interest. His basic point was that, if the Government can produce debt-based money, it could equally as well produce money that was a credit to the taxpayer.[112]

text: He thought at length about the subject of money in 1921 and 1922. In May 1922, he published a proposal, entitled "A Proposed Amendment to the Federal Reserve Banking System".[113] In it, he detailed an explanation of a commodity-backed currency, in which the Federal Reserve would issue interest-free currency to farmers, based on the value of commodities they produced. During a publicity tour that he took with friend and fellow inventor, Henry Ford, he spoke publicly about his desire for monetary reform. For insight, he corresponded with prominent academic and banking professionals. In the end, however, Edison's proposals failed to find support and were eventually abandoned.[114][115]

text: Awards

text: The President of the Third French Republic, Jules Grévy, on the recommendation of his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, and with the presentations of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, Louis Cochery, designated Edison with the distinction of an Officer of the Legion of Honour (Légion d'honneur) by decree on November 10, 1881;[116] Edison was also named a Chevalier in the Legion in 1879, and a Commander in 1889.[117]

text: In 1887, Edison won the Matteucci Medal. In 1890, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

text: The Philadelphia City Council named Edison the recipient of the John Scott Medal in 1889.[117]

text: In 1899, Edison was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal of The Franklin Institute.[118]

text: He was named an Honorable Consulting Engineer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's fair in 1904.[117]

text: In 1908, Edison received the American Association of Engineering Societies John Fritz Medal.[117]

text: In 1915, Edison was awarded Franklin Medal of The Franklin Institute for discoveries contributing to the foundation of industries and the well-being of the human race.[119]

text: In 1920, the United States Navy department awarded him the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.[117]

text: In 1923, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers created the Edison Medal and he was its first recipient.[117]

text: In 1927, he was granted membership in the National Academy of Sciences.[117]

text: On May 29, 1928, Edison received the Congressional Gold Medal.[117]

text: In 1983, the United States Congress, pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 140 (Public Law 97—198), designated February 11, Edison's birthday, as National Inventor's Day.[120]

text: Life magazine (USA), in a special double issue in 1997, placed Edison first in the list of the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years", noting that the light bulb he promoted "lit up the world". In the 2005 television series The Greatest American, he was voted by viewers as the fifteenth greatest.

text: In 2008, Edison was inducted in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

text: In 2010, Edison was honored with a Technical Grammy Award.

text: In 2011, Edison was inducted into the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame and named a Great Floridian by the Florida Governor and Cabinet.[121]

text: Tributes

text: Places and people named for Edison

text: Several places have been named after Edison, most notably the town of Edison, New Jersey. Thomas Edison State University, nationally known for adult learners, is in Trenton, New Jersey. Two community colleges are named for him: Edison State College (now Florida SouthWestern State College) in Fort Myers, Florida, and Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio.[122] There are numerous high schools named after Edison (see Edison High School) and other schools including Thomas A. Edison Middle School. Footballer Pelé's father originally named him Edson, as a tribute to the inventor of the light bulb, but the name was incorrectly listed on his birth certificate as "Edison".[123]

text: The small town of Alva just east of Fort Myers took Edison's middle name.

text: In 1883, the City Hotel in Sunbury, Pennsylvania was the first building to be lit with Edison's three-wire system. The hotel was renamed The Hotel Edison upon Edison's return to the city on 1922.[124]

text: Lake Thomas A Edison in California was named after Edison to mark the 75th anniversary of the incandescent light bulb.[125]

text: Edison was on hand to turn on the lights at the Hotel Edison in New York City when it opened in 1931.[126]

text: Three bridges around the United States have been named in Edison's honor: the Edison Bridge in New Jersey,[127] the Edison Bridge in Florida,[128] and the Edison Bridge in Ohio.[129]

text: In space, his name is commemorated in asteroid 742 Edisona.

text: Museums and memorials

text: In West Orange, New Jersey, the 13.5 acres (5.5 hectares) Glenmont estate is maintained and operated by the National Park Service as the Edison National Historic Site, as is his nearby laboratory and workshops including the reconstructed "Black Maria"—the world's first movie studio.[130] The Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum is in the town of Edison, New Jersey.[131] In Beaumont, Texas, there is an Edison Museum, though Edison never visited there.[132] The Port Huron Museum, in Port Huron, Michigan, restored the original depot that Thomas Edison worked out of as a young news butcher. The depot has been named the Thomas Edison Depot Museum.[133] The town has many Edison historical landmarks, including the graves of Edison's parents, and a monument along the St. Clair River. Edison's influence can be seen throughout this city of 32,000.

text: In Detroit, the Edison Memorial Fountain in Grand Circus Park was created to honor his achievements. The limestone fountain was dedicated October 21, 1929, the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the lightbulb.[134] On the same night, The Edison Institute was dedicated in nearby Dearborn.

text: He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1969.[citation needed]

text: A bronze statue of Edison was placed in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol in 2016, with the formal dedication ceremony held on September 20 of that year. The Edison statue replaced one of 19th-century state governor William Allen that had been one of Ohio's two allowed contributions to the collection.[135]

text: Companies bearing Edison's name

text:
Edison General Electric, merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric
Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon
Consolidated Edison
Edison International
Detroit Edison, a unit of DTE Energy
Edison S.p.A., a unit of Italenergia
Trade association the Edison Electric Institute, a lobbying and research group for investor-owned utilities in the United States
Edison Ore-Milling Company
Edison Portland Cement Company
Ohio Edison (merged with Centerior in 1997 to form First Energy)
Southern California Edison

text: Awards named in honor of Edison

text: The Edison Medal was created on February 11, 1904, by a group of Edison's friends and associates. Four years later the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), later IEEE, entered into an agreement with the group to present the medal as its highest award. The first medal was presented in 1909 to Elihu Thomson. It is the oldest award in the area of electrical and electronics engineering, and is presented annually "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts."

text: In the Netherlands, the major music awards are named the Edison Award after him. The award is an annual Dutch music prize, awarded for outstanding achievements in the music industry, and is one of the oldest music awards in the world, having been presented since 1960.

text: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers concedes the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award to individual patents since 2000.[136]

text: Other items named after Edison

text: The United States Navy named the USS Edison (DD-439), a Gleaves class destroyer, in his honor in 1940. The ship was decommissioned a few months after the end of World War II.[137] In 1962, the Navy commissioned USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN-610), a fleet ballistic missile nuclear-powered submarine.[citation needed][138]

text: In popular culture

text: Thomas Edison has appeared in popular culture as a character in novels, films, comics and video games. His prolific inventing helped make him an icon and he has made appearances in popular culture during his lifetime down to the present day. Edison is also portrayed in popular culture as an adversary of Nikola Tesla.[139]

text: "Camping with Henry and Tom", a fictional play based on Edison's camping trips with Henry Ford, written by Mark St.Gemain. First presented at Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York, February 20, 1995.[citation needed]

text: On February 11, 2011, on what would have been Thomas Edison's 164th birthday, Google's homepage featured an animated Google Doodle commemorating his many inventions. When the cursor was hovered over the doodle, a series of mechanisms seemed to move, causing a lightbulb to glow.[140]

text: List of people who worked for Edison

text: The following is a list of people who worked for Thomas Edison in his laboratories at Menlo Park or West Orange or at the subsidiary electrical businesses that he supervised.

text:
Edward Goodrich Acheson – chemist, worked at Menlo Park 1880–1884
William Symes Andrews – started at the Menlo Park machine shop 1879
Charles Batchelor – "chief experimental assistant"
John I. Beggs – manager of Edison Illuminating Company in New York, 1886
William Kennedy Dickson – joined Menlo Park in 1823, worked on the motion picture camera
Justus B. Entz – joined Edison Machine Works in 1887
Reginald Fessenden – worked at the Edison Machine Works in 1886
Henry Ford – engineer Edison Illuminating Company Detroit, Michigan, 1891–1899
William Joseph Hammer – started as laboratory assistant Menlo Park in 1879
Miller Reese Hutchison – inventor of hearing aid
Edward Hibberd Johnson – started in 1909, chief engineer at West Orange laboratory 1912–1918
Samuel Insull – started in 1881, rose to become VP of General Electric (1892) then President of Chicago Edison
Kunihiko Iwadare – joined Edison Machine Works in 1887
Francis Jehl – laboratory assistant Menlo Park 1879–1882
Arthur E. Kennelly – engineer, experimentalist at West Orange laboratory 1887–1894
John Kruesi – started 1872, was head machinist, at Newark, Menlo Park, Edison Machine Works
Lewis Howard Latimer – hired 1884 as a draftsman, continued working for General Electric
John W. Lieb – worked at the Edison Machine Works in 1881
Thomas Commerford Martin – electrical engineer, worked at Menlo Park 1877–1879
George F. Morrison – started at Edison Lamp Works 1882
Edwin Stanton Porter – joined the Edison Manufacturing Company 1899
Frank J. Sprague – Joined Menlo Park 1883, became known as the "Father of Electric Traction".
Nikola Tesla – electrical engineer and inventor, worked at the Edison Machine Works in 1884
Francis Robbins Upton – mathematician/physicist, joined Menlo Park 1878


document_title: Turn the Page (Bob Seger song)

question_text: what is the meaning behind the song turn the page

text: Turn the Page (Bob Seger song)

text: Inspiration[edit]

text: "Turn the Page" is about the emotional and social ups and downs of a rock musician's life on the road. Seger wrote it in 1972 while touring with Teegarden & Van Winkle. Drummer David Teegarden (of Teegarden & Van Winkle and later the Silver Bullet Band) recalls:

text: We had been playing somewhere in the Midwest, or the northern reaches, on our way to North or South Dakota. [Guitarist] Mike Bruce was with us. We'd been traveling all night from the Detroit area to make this gig, driving in this blinding snowstorm. It was probably 3 in the morning. Mike decided it was time to get gas. He was slowing down to exit the interstate and spied a truck stop. We all had very long hair back then – it was the hippie era – but Skip, Mike and Bob had all stuffed their hair up in their hats. You had to be careful out on the road like that, because you'd get ostracized. When I walked in, there was this gauntlet of truckers making comments – "Is that a girl or man?" I was seething; those guys were laughing their asses off, a big funny joke. That next night, after we played our gig – I think it was Mitchell, S.D. – Seger says, "Hey, I've been working on this song for a bit, I've got this new line for it. He played it on acoustic guitar, and there was that line: "Oh, the same old cliches / 'Is that a woman or a man?' " It was "Turn the Page."[1]

text: Tom Weschler, then road manager for Seger, remembers the same incident:

text: "Turn the Page," Bob's great road song, came along in '72, while we were driving home from a gig. I think we were in Dubuque, Iowa, in winter and stopped at a restaurant. We stood out when we entered a store or a gas station or a restaurant en masse. At this restaurant it was particularly bright inside, so there weren't any dark corners to hide in. All these local guys were looking at us like, "What are these guys? Is that a woman or a man?" – just like in the song. ... That was one incident, but there were so many others on the road that led Seger to write that song.[2]

text: Instrumentation[edit]

text: Both Seger's studio and live versions of "Turn the Page" feature a mellotron and a saxophone part played by founding Silver Bullet member Alto Reed. Tom Weschler allegedly helped inspire Reed to create the opening melody. During recording, Weschler told Reed: "Alto, think about it like this: You're in New York City, on the Bowery. It's 3 a.m. You're under a streetlamp. There's a light mist coming down. You're all by yourself. Show me what that sounds like." With that, Reed played the opening melody to "Turn the Page".[2]

text: Jon English cover[edit]

text: Australian singer Jon English released a version of the song in 1974 as the lead single from his second studio album, It's All a Game. The song peaked at number 20 on the Kent Music Report.[3]

text: Metallica cover[edit]

text:
"Turn the Page"

Single by Metallica

from the album Garage Inc.

B-side
"Bleeding Me"/"Stone Cold Crazy"/"The Wait"

Released
November 16, 1998

Format
CD single

Recorded
September–October 1998

Genre
Heavy metal, country rock, alternative rock

Length
6:06

Label
Elektra

Songwriter(s)
Bob Seger

Metallica singles chronology

"Fuel"
(1998)
"Turn the Page"
(1998)
"Whiskey in the Jar"
(1999)

"Fuel"
(1998)
"Turn the Page"
(1998)
"Whiskey in the Jar"
(1999)

Music video

"Turn the Page" on YouTube

text: Of the many cover versions that have been recorded, the most popular might be that of Metallica who released it as the first single from their 1998 Garage Inc. album, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart for 11 consecutive weeks, the highest number of weeks Metallica has ever spent at the top; drummer Lars Ulrich had heard the original song while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge and later commented that he thought it "had James Hetfield all over it".[4] Metallica's rendition is taken at much the same tempo as Seger's, but with a heavier feel; the saxophone part is replaced by a high slide guitar line from Kirk Hammett. The accompanying music video explores a day in the life not of musicians, but a mother (played by Ginger Lynn) that works as an erotic dancer by day, and prostitute by night. MTV refused to air the video due to nudity and a scene depicting abusive sex between the mother and a client.[5] The video was directed by Jonas Åkerlund.[6]

text: Influences[edit]

text: Jon Bon Jovi has claimed that the song was a big influence on him and Richie Sambora when they were writing their 1986 song "Wanted Dead or Alive."[7]

text: The 1995 Bruce Springsteen song Youngstown uses a very similar tune.[citation needed]

text: Awards[edit]

text: In 2014, Seger performed the song on CMT Crossroads with country singer Jason Aldean. The video of the performance won the CMT Music Award for Performance Video of the Year.[8]


document_title: Untouchable (novel)

question_text: who gave foreword to mulk raj anands untouchable

text: Untouchable (novel)

text:
The Untouchable

Title Cover

Author
Mulk Raj Anand

Country
India

Language
English

Genre
Novel

Publication date

1935

Media type
Print

ISBN
978-0-14-018395-5

OCLC
22686185

Followed by
Coolie

text: Untouchable is a novel by Mulk Raj Anand published in 1935. The novel established Anand as one of India's leading English authors.[1] The book was inspired by his aunt's experience when she had a meal with a Muslim woman and was treated as an outcast by her family.[2][3] The plot of this book, Anand's first, revolves around the argument for eradicating the caste system.[4] It depicts a day in the life of Bakha, a young "sweeper", who is "untouchable" due to his work cleaning latrines.

text: Plot summary[edit]

text: Set in the fictional Indian town of Bulashah, Untouchable is a day in the life of a young Indian sweeper named Bakha. The son of Lakha, head of all of Bulashah’s sweepers, Bakha is intelligent but naïve, humble yet vain. Over the course of Bakha’s day various major and minor tragedies occur, causing him to mature and turn his gaze inward. By the end of the novel Mulk Raj Anand, the author, has made a compelling case for the end of untouchability on the grounds that it is an inhumane, unjust system of oppression. He uses Bakha and the people populating the young man’s world to craft his argument.

text: Bakha’s day starts with his father yelling at him to get out of bed and clean the latrines. The relationship between the father and son is strained, in part due to Bakha’s obsession with the British, in part because of Lakha’s laziness. Bakha ignores his father but eventually gets up to answer the demands of a high-caste man that wants to use the bathroom. This man is Charat Singh, a famous hockey player. At first, Singh also yells at Bakha for neglecting his cleaning duties. The man has a changeable personality, however. It isn’t long before he instructs Bakha to come see him later in the day so he can gift the young sweeper with a prized hockey stick. An overjoyed Bakha agrees.

text: High on his good fortune he quickly finishes his morning shift and hurries home, dying of thirst. Unfortunately, there is no water in the house. His sister Sohini offers to go fill the water bucket. At the well, Sohini must wait behind several other outcasts also queued up. Also waiting for water is Gulabo, mother of one of Bakha’s friends and a jealous woman. She hates Sohini and is just barely stopped from striking the young woman. A priest from the town temple named Pundit Kali Nath comes along and helps Sohini get water. He instructs her to come clean the temple later in the day. Sohini agrees and hurries home with the water.

text: Back at home Lakha fakes an illness and instructs Bakha to clean the town square and the temple courtyard in his stead. Bakha is wise to the wily ways of his father but cannot protest. He takes up his cleaning supplies and goes into town. His sweeping duties usually keep him too busy to go into town, and so he takes advantage of the situation by buying cigarettes and candies.

text: As Bakha eats his candies, a high-caste man brushes up against him. The touched man did not see Bakha because the sweeper forgot to give the untouchable’s call. The man is furious. His yelling attracts a large crowd that joins in on Bakha’s public shaming. A travelling Muslim vendor in a horse and buggy comes along and disperses the crowd. Before the touched man leaves he slaps Bakha across the face for his impudence and scurries away. A shocked Bakha cries in the streets before gathering his things and hurrying off to the temple. This time, he does not forget the untouchable’s call.

text: At the temple, a service is in full swing. It intrigues Bakha, who eventually musters up the courage to climb up the stairs to the temple door and peer inside. He’s only standing there for a few moments before a loud commotion comes from behind him. It’s Sohini and Pundit Kali Nath, who is accusing Sohini of polluting him. As a crowd gathers around, Bakha pulls his sister away. Crying, she tells him that the priest sexually assaulted her. A furious Bakha tries to go back to confront the priest, but an embarrassed and ashamed Sohini forces him to leave. Bakha sends his sister home, saying he will take over her duties in town for the rest of the day.

text: Distraught over the day’s events, Bakha wanders listlessly before going to a set of homes to beg for his family’s daily bread. No one is home, so he curls up in front of a house and falls asleep. A sadhu also begging for food comes and wakes him. The owner of the house Bakha slept in front of comes out with food for the sadhu. Seeing Bakha, she screams at him and at first refuses to give him food. She finally agrees to give him some bread in exchange for him sweeping the area in front of her house. As Bakha sweeps, the woman tells her young son to relieve himself in the gutter where Bakha is cleaning so he can sweep that up too. A disgusted Bakha throws down the broom and leaves for his house in the outcasts' colony.

text: Back at home, it’s only Lakha and Sohini. Rakha, Bakha’s younger brother, is still out collecting food. Bakha tells his father that a high-caste man slapped him in the streets. Sensing his son’s anger, Lakha tells him a story about the kindness of a high-caste doctor that once saved Bakha’s life. Bakha is deeply moved by the story but remains upset. Soon after story time, Rakha comes back with food. A ravenous Bakha starts to eat but then is disgusted by the idea of eating the leavings of the high-caste people. He jumps up and says he’s going to the wedding of his friend Ram Charan’s sister.

text: At Ram Charan’s house, Bakha sees his other friend, Chota. The two boys wait for Ram Charan to see them through the thicket of wedding revellers. Ram Charan eventually sees his friends and runs off with them despite his mother’s protestations. Alone, Chota and Ram Charan sense something is wrong with their friend. They coax Bakha to tell them what’s wrong. Bakha breaks down and tells them about the slap and Sohini’s assault. Ram Charan is quiet and embarrassed by Bakha’s tale, but Chota is indignant. He asks Bakha if he wants to get revenge. Bakha does but realizes revenge would be a dangerous and futile endeavour. A melancholic atmosphere falls over the group. Chota attempts to cheer Bakha up by reminding him of the hockey game they will play later in the day. This reminds Bakha that he must go and get his gift from Charat Singh.

text: Bakha goes to Charat Singh’s house in the barracks, but cannot tell if the man is home. Reluctant to disturb him or the other inhabitants, Bakha settles under a tree to wait. Before long, Singh comes outside. He invites Bakha to drink tea with him and allows the untouchable to handle his personal items. Singh’s disregard for Bakha’s supposed polluting presence thrills Bakha’s heart. Thus he is overjoyed when Singh gives him a brand-new hockey stick.

text: Ecstatic about this upswing to his terrible day, Bakha goes into the hockey game on fire. He scores the first goal. The goalie of the opposite team is angry over Bakha’s success and hits him. This starts an all-out brawl between the two teams that ends when a player’s younger brother gets hurt. Bakha picks up the young boy and rushes him home, only to have the boy’s mother accuse him of killing her son. Good mood completely destroyed, Bakha trudges home, where his father screams at him for being gone all afternoon. He banishes Bakha from home, saying his son must never return.

text: Bakha runs away and takes shelter under a tree far from home. The chief of the local Salvation Army, a British man named Colonel Hutchinson, comes up to him. He sees Bakha’s distress and convinces the sweeper to follow him to the church. Flattered by the white man’s attention, Bakha agrees, but the Colonel’s constant hymn singing quickly bores him. Before the two can enter the church the Colonel’s wife comes to find him. Disgusted at the sight of her husband with another “Blackie,” she begins to scream and shout. Bakha feels her anger acutely and runs off again.

text: This time Bakha runs towards town and ends up at the train station. He overhears some people discussing the appearance of Mahatma Gandhi in Bulashah. He joins the tide of people rushing to hear the Mahatma speak. Just as Bakha settles in to listen, Gandhi arrives and begins his speech. He talks about the plight of the untouchable and how it is his life’s mission to see them emancipated. He ends his speech by beseeching those present to spread his message of ending untouchability. After the Mahatma departs a pair of educated Indian men have a lively discussion about the content of the speech. One man, a lawyer named Bashir, soundly critiques most of Gandhi’s opinions and ideas. The other, a poet named Sarshar, defends the Mahatma passionately and convincingly. Much of what they say goes above Bakha’s head, so elevated are their vocabulary and ideas. However, he does understand when Sarshar mentions the imminent arrival of the flushing toilet in India, a machine that eradicates the need for humans to handle refuse. This machine could mean the end of untouchability. With this piece of hope Bakha hurries home to share news of the Mahatma’s speech with his father.

text: Publication history[edit]

text: The book was first published in 1935.[5] Later editions carried a foreword written by E. M. Forster.[2] In 2004, a commemorative edition including this book was launched by Indian then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.[6]


document_title: Tommy (1975 film)

question_text: who played the preacher in the film tommy

text: Tommy (1975 film)

text: Plot[edit]

text: "Prologue 1945". A montage displays the honeymoon of Captain Walker (Robert Powell) and his wife, Nora (Ann-Margret). After his leave ends, Walker goes off to fight in World War II as a bomber pilot, but is shot down in the middle of a battle. "Captain Walker" is listed as missing in action and is presumed dead, although—unknown to his family—the badly burned Walker is in fact alive. Back in England, Nora goes into labour and gives birth to a son, Tommy, on V-E Day. Five years later, Nora has begun a new relationship with Frank (Oliver Reed), a worker she and Tommy meet at Bernie's Holiday Camp. Tommy looks up to his "Uncle" Frank and expresses his desires to run his own camp some day. In the 1950s, Nora and Frank dream of their future, but, late that evening, encounter the returning Captain Walker. He surprises Frank and Nora in bed, leading to a struggle and the Captain's subsequent murder by lamp. Tommy, having followed his father into the room, has witnessed everything. Nora and Frank nervously yell at Tommy, which, along with the trauma of watching his father's murder, puts Tommy into a psychedelia-like "Amazing Journey", in which, outwardly, he cannot seem to see, hear or speak.

text: As time passes, Nora and Frank make several fruitless attempts to bring Tommy out of his state, including a Preacher (Eric Clapton) and his Marilyn Monroe worshipping cult ("Eyesight to the Blind") and a sleazy LSD serving cocotte and self-proclaimed "Acid Queen", (Tina Turner) while also putting him with babysitters such as Tommy's bullying "Cousin Kevin" (Paul Nicholas), and his perverted "Uncle" Ernie (Keith Moon) ("Fiddle About") both of whom abuse him but Tommy refuses to react. Nora and Frank begin to become more and more lethargic and leave Tommy standing at the mirror one night, allowing him to wander off. He follows a vision of himself out of the house and to a junkyard pinball machine. Tommy is recognised by Nora, Frank, and the media as a pinball prodigy, which is made even more impressive with his catatonic state. During a championship game, Tommy faces the "Pinball Wizard" (Elton John) with the Who as the champion's backing band. Nora watches her son's televised victory and celebrates his (and her) success ("Champagne"), but soon has a nervous breakdown upon thinking about the real extremes of Tommy's condition.

text: Later, Frank finds a Specialist (Jack Nicholson) for Tommy. The Specialist, upon testing the boy, concludes that his state is emotional, rather than physically triggered and the only hope is for him to continue to "Go to the Mirror". During the tests, Nora and the Specialist flirt, much to Frank's jealousy. Nora's growing frustration prompts her to "Smash the Mirror" by throwing Tommy through it. This incidentally resurges Tommy from his state and he runs loose ("I'm Free"). Nora finds Tommy and explains what has happened during the time he has missed, while Tommy reveals that his experiences have transformed him and that he wishes to transform the world ("Mother and Son")

text: Tommy, a self-proclaimed "Sensation", goes on lecture tours which resemble glam rock/gospel shows and spreads a message of enlightenment by hang glider, gaining friends and followers everywhere he goes ("Sally Simpson"). Tommy and a more enlightened and elated Nora and Frank "Welcome" converts to their house, which quickly becomes too crowded to accommodate everyone. Tommy opens an extension for his religious campus ("Tommy's Holiday Camp").

text: The converts, confused about Tommy's odd practices and others' commercial exploitation of the compound, wrathfully demand Tommy teach them something useful. Tommy does so, deliberately deafening, muting, and blinding everyone, only to inadvertently invoke a riot. The followers kill Nora and Frank in the riot and destroy the camp in a fire (We're Not Gonna Take It). Tommy finds his parents in the debris and mourns before escaping into the mountains from the beginning of the film. He ascends the same peak where his parents celebrated their honeymoon, celebrating the rising sun (Listening to You)[8].

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Ann-Margret as Nora Walker
Oliver Reed as "Uncle" Frank Hobbs
Roger Daltrey as Tommy Walker

Barry Winch as young Tommy

Alison Dowling as young Tommy's singing voice

Elton John as The Pinball Wizard
Tina Turner as The Acid Queen
Eric Clapton as The Preacher
John Entwistle as Himself
Keith Moon as Uncle Ernie/Himself
Paul Nicholas as Cousin Kevin
Jack Nicholson as The Specialist
Robert Powell as Group Captain Walker
Arthur Brown as The Priest
Pete Townshend as The Narrator/Himself
Victoria Russell as Sally Simpson
Ben Aris as Rev. A. Simpson V. C.
Mary Holland as Mrs. Simpson
Ken Russell as Cripple

text: Production[edit]

text: In his commentary for the 2004 DVD release of the film, Ken Russell stated that the opening and closing outdoor scenes were shot in the Borrowdale valley of the English Lake District, near his own home, the same area that he had used to double for Bavaria in his earlier film Mahler, in which Robert Powell had starred. Much of the film was shot on locations around Portsmouth, including the scene near the end of the film featuring the giant 'pinballs', which were, in fact, obsolete buoys found in a British Navy yard, which were simply sprayed silver and filmed in situ. The Bernie's Holiday Camp ballroom sequence was shot inside the Gaiety Theatre on South Parade Pier. Exterior shots were filmed at Hilsea Lido.[9] The Sally Simpson interior sequence was filmed in the Wesley Hall in Fratton Road, Portsmouth. The exterior intro sequence to the scene, however, shows Sally Simpson buying a badge and entering South Parade Pier.

text: On 11 June 1974, the pier caught fire and was badly damaged while the production was filming there; according to Russell, the fire started during the filming of the scene of Ann-Margret and Oliver Reed dancing together during the "Bernie's Holiday Camp" sequence, and smoke from the fire can, in fact, be seen drifting in front of the camera in several shots; Russell also used a brief exterior shot of the building fully ablaze during the scenes of the destruction of Tommy's Holiday Camp by his disillusioned followers.[10][11] The Pinball Wizard sequence was shot at the Kings Theatre in Southsea, and the two pinball machines used were a 1965 Kings & Queens by Gottlieb—used by Roger Daltrey—and a Gottlieb Buckaroo also from 1965, used by Elton John. The machines' scoring displays were modified from their originals for the scene, to accommodate for large scores.[12] Others on Portsdown Hill, which overlooks Portsmouth and local churches were used. All Saints in Commercial Road was used for the Sally Simpson wedding scene, whilst the meeting in the same sequence was filmed at the Wesley Hall in Fratton Road. The Eyesight to the Blind sequence was filmed at St Andrews Church in Henderson Road in Southsea. The other church featured was Warblington Church near Havant in Hampshire.

text: The famous scene in which Ann-Margret's character hallucinates that she is cavorting in detergent foam, baked beans, and chocolate reportedly took three days to shoot. According to Russell, the detergent and baked bean sequences were "revenge" parodies of real-life TV advertisements he had directed early in his career, although the baked bean sequence also references one of the cover photos and a parody radio ad from The Who's 1967 album The Who Sell Out. Russell also recalled that Ann-Margret's husband, Roger Smith, strongly objected to the scene in which she slithers around in melted chocolate. During the filming, Ann-Margret accidentally struck her hand on the broken glass of the TV screen, causing a severe laceration, and Russell had to take her to hospital to have the wound stitched, although she was back on set the next day.[10] The film also includes a scene in which Mrs. Walker watches a parodic TV advertisement for the fictional product "Rex Baked Beans"; the costumes in this segment were originally made for the lavish masked ball sequence in Richard Lester's version of The Three Musketeers, and the dress worn by the Queen in the Rex ad is that worn by Geraldine Chaplin in the earlier film.[13]

text: Elton John initially turned down the role of the Pinball Wizard and among those considered to replace him was David Essex, who recorded a test audio version of the "Pinball Wizard" song. However, producer Robert Stigwood held out until John agreed to take the part, reportedly on condition that he could keep the gigantic Dr. Martens boots he wore in the scene. Russell also recalled that Townshend initially balked at Russell's wish to have The Who performing behind Elton in the sequence (they did not perform the audio here), and also objected to wearing the pound-note suits, which were in fact stitched together from novelty pound-note tea-towels.[10] On The Who's involvement with the film, members Daltrey played the title character; Moon played, in essence, a dual role as both Uncle Ernie and as himself along with Entwistle and Townshend lip-synching on their respective instruments in the "Eyesight to the Blind" and "Pinball Wizard" segments. About his role as the Specialist, Jack Nicholson stated: "In my whole career there was only one time when a director said to me, 'OK, come right down the pike and just look beautiful, Jack.' That was Ken Russell on Tommy."[14]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: The film currently holds a 76% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 25 reviews, of which 19 are positive. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, and praised Ann-Margret as being "simply great as Tommy's mother". He called the pinball tournament sequence "the movie's best single scene: a pulsating, orgiastic turn-on edited with the precision of a machine gun burst."[15]

text: "Tommy was a great film," said Ol' Dirty Bastard. "A blind, deaf kid who could play pinball. What a very great idea."[16] Perry Seibert of allmovie praised the film for its visuals and gave the film his higher star rating.

text: Awards and nominations[edit]

text:
Award
Category
Recipient(s)
Result

Academy Awards
Best Actress
Ann-Margret
Nominated

Best Original Song Score or Adaptation Score
Pete Townshend
Nominated

Golden Globe Awards
Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Tommy
Nominated

Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical
Ann-Margret
Won

Most Promising Newcomer
Roger Daltrey
Nominated

text: Quintaphonic Sound[edit]

text: The original release of Tommy used a sound system devised by sound engineer John Mosely called "Quintaphonic Sound".[17] At the time that the film was in production various "Quadraphonic" (four speaker) sound systems were being marketed to the domestic HiFi market. Some of these were so-called "matrix" systems which combined the four original channels into two which could be recorded on or transmitted by, existing two-channel stereo systems such as LP records or FM radio. John Mosely used one of these systems (QS Regular Matrix from Sansui) to record front left, front right, back left and back right channels on the left and right tracks of a four-track magnetic striped print of the Cinemascope type. A discrete centre channel was also recorded on the centre track of the print. The fourth (surround) track on the striped print was left unused. In addition, John Mosely used dbx noise reduction on the magnetic tracks.

text: Unlike the usual multiple small surround speakers used in cinemas, the Quintaphonic system specified just two rear speakers, but of the same type as those used at the front.

text: One problem that arose was that by the 1970s the four-track magnetic sound system was largely moribund. Only a few theatres were equipped with the necessary magnetic playback heads and other equipment; of those that did in many cases, it was not in working order. Thus, in addition to installing the extra electronics and rear speakers, John Mosely and his team had to repair and align the basic magnetic playback equipment. Each theatre that showed Tommy using the Quintaphonic system accordingly had to be specially prepared to take the film. In this respect there is a similarity between Tommy and Walt Disney's Fantasia, for which a special sound system (Fantasound) had been devised and required each theatre that showed it in the original release to be specially prepared. Also, like Fantasound, Quintaphonic Sound was never used again (five-channel stereo, in the form of 5.1 surround sound, would eventually make a comeback).

text: Tommy was later released with mono, conventional four-track magnetic and Dolby Stereo soundtracks.

text: Changes from the album[edit]

text: Unlike other filmed rock operas (such as that of Pink Floyd's The Wall), the album is never dubbed over the film; the different actors – including Nicholson and Reed, neither of whom was known for his singing ability (Reed's character's songs were cut from Oliver!, and Nicholson's in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever appeared only in the now-lost roadshow version) – perform the songs in character instead of The Who, with the exception of Daltrey as Tommy and where Townshend sings narration in place of recitative.

text: Because of this, all the songs are rerecorded and the song order is shuffled around considerably; this and the addition of several new songs and links creates a more balanced structure of alternating short and long sequences. A large number of songs have new lyrics and instrumentation, and another notable feature is that many of the songs and pieces used on the film soundtrack are alternate versions or mixes from the versions on the soundtrack album.

text: Differences between 1969 and 1975 versions[edit]

text:
The film opens with a new instrumental, "Prologue – 1945" (partly based on the 1969 "Overture"), which accompanies the opening sequences of Captain Walker's romance and disappearance.
"It's A Boy" is separated from "Overture" and becomes the medley "Captain Walker/It's A Boy"; in the film this medley narrates the aftermath of Walker's disappearance, the end of the war and the birth of Tommy.
A new song, "Bernie's Holiday Camp", which follows "Captain Walker/It's A Boy", portrays Tommy's childhood and his mother's romance with Hobbs (Oliver Reed). The song also features the melody from, and even foreshadows, "Tommy's Holiday Camp".
The story's setting is updated so that the action goes through modern times (modern as of the 1970s). From this, the track "1921" from the album is changed to "1951" and is made a medley, being titled "What About the Boy?" on the soundtrack, in which Capt. Walker dies instead of the lover (Frank, in this context).
"The Amazing Journey" (shortened to three minutes) has almost completely different lyrics, and the "guide" from the album is depicted as Tommy's dead father, rather than the "tall stranger" in a "sparked, glittering gown" from the album. A new introduction is also added in lieu of the "Deaf, dumb, and blind boy; he's in a quiet vibration land..." from the album. The movie version also ends with different fantastic lyrics, going "His eyes are the eyes that transmit all he knows, The truth burns so bright it can melt winter snows. A towering shadow, so black and so high, A white sun burning the earth and the sky.".
The running order of "Christmas" and "Eyesight to the Blind" is reversed; references to pinball are removed from "Christmas" and the character of The Hawker becomes The Preacher (Clapton), leader of the Marilyn Monroe cult. Arthur Brown is cast as the character The Priest in the film, and sings a verse in the song but is not featured on the soundtrack. According to Russell's DVD audio commentary, the concept of people literally worshipping celebrities (in this case Marilyn Monroe) and several other elements in the film were adapted from his pre-existing treatment for a film about false religions, which he had developed prior to Tommy but for which he had never been able to secure financial backing.
The running order of "The Acid Queen" and "Cousin Kevin" is reversed.
"Underture" is removed but parts from it have been re-arranged as "Sparks".
"The Acid Queen", "Cousin Kevin", "Fiddle About", and "Sparks", linked by three renditions of "Do You Think It's Alright?", form an extended sequence depicting Tommy's inner journey and his trials.
A three-minute version of the "Sparks" theme (with, then new, synthesizer orchestration) precedes "Extra, Extra, Extra" and "Pinball Wizard". In the film, it is used behind the sequence of the dazed Tommy wandering into a junkyard and discovering a pinball machine. The music on the film soundtrack (for this and many other songs) is heavily edited, however, and is a noticeably different mix from the version on the soundtrack album.
A new linking theme, "Extra, Extra, Extra", narrates Tommy's rise to fame and introduces the battle with the pinball champ. It is set to the tune of "Miracle Cure" and precedes "Pinball Wizard".
"Pinball Wizard" has extra lyrics and movements. It features guitar and keyboard solos (the guitars are only readily discernible on the soundtrack album), and an outro with a riff reminiscent of the Who's first single, "I Can't Explain".
A new song, "Champagne", which follows "Pinball Wizard", covers the sequence of Tommy's stardom and wealth and his parents' greed. Like many other songs, it features Tommy singing "See Me, Feel Me" interludes: this is the first song with Daltrey singing for Tommy. In the film (but not on the soundtrack), the song is introduced by a mock TV commercial—reminiscent of the Who's early years when they made jingles.
"Go to the Mirror" is shortened, not featuring the elements of "Listening To You", nor the phrase "Go to the mirror, boy."
"I'm Free" is moved earlier, and now follows "Smash The Mirror!" (as was done on the 1971 symphonic album); it covers the lavish psychedelic sequence depicting Tommy's reawakening.
"I'm Free" is followed by a new song, "Mother and Son", which depicts Tommy's rejection of materialism and his vision for a new faith based around pinball.
"Sensation", featuring extra lyrics, is moved forward and covers the spread of Tommy's new religion. In the film it occurs between "Sally Simpson" and "Welcome". (On the soundtrack album, it occurs between "Mother and Son" and "Miracle Cure"—with the extra [narration] lyrics and guitar solo included on the cassette and CD versions, but not the LP version.)
"Sally Simpson" is re-arranged with a Bo Diddley beat and in the film is preceded by "Miracle Cure"—which features an extra verse.
In "Sally Simpson", the album version mentions her father's Rolls-Royce as blue, but the film changes the lyrics to black (the Rolls-Royce in the film is also black).
In "Sally Simpson", the album version describes Tommy giving a lesson. In the film, Tommy gives a lesson, and the lyrics are changed to the words of the lesson.
In the album version of "Sally Simpson", the title character jumps on the stage and brushes Tommy's cheek, but in the movie she is kicked off the stage before she can get close to Tommy.
A new linking piece, "T.V. Studio", is used between "Welcome" and "Tommy's Holiday Camp".
The 1969 album's closing track "We're Not Going To take It" is split into two pieces, "We're Not Gonna take It" and medley "See Me Feel Me/Listening To You";[8] this covers the climactic film sequences of Tommy's fall from grace and his final redemption.
The CD reissue of the soundtrack album opens with a newer, previously unreleased version of "Overture From Tommy", which was not included either in the film or on the original soundtrack LP. Although the track is listed in the CD's song credits as being performed by The Who, it is actually a Pete Townshend solo number with him playing all the instruments (as with "Prologue – 1945" and other tracks) – neither John Entwistle or Keith Moon appears on it, as they do on all other selections on the soundtrack credited to "The Who," regardless of whether Roger Daltrey performs as vocalist.

text: Soundtrack[edit]

text:
Pinball Wizard

Elton John's "Pinball Wizard" from Tommy

Problems playing this file? See media help.

text: Sales chart performance[edit]

text:
Year
Chart
Position

1975
Billboard Pop Albums
2

1975
UK Chart Albums
21