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Sir Joseph Wilson Swan
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan 1828-1914, English chemist and physicist. He made an incandescent lamp using a carbon filament (1860), 20 years before Edison's lamp. Noted for important contributions to photography as well, he devised the first commercially practical process for carbon printing, introduced ...
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Edison
Edison township (1990 pop. 88,680), Middlesex co., NE N.J., inc. 1870 as Raritan Township, renamed 1954. Edison's varied manufactures include light trucks, chemicals, metal products, electrical and electronic equipment, machinery, and instruments. Raritan Center is the largest industrial park east ...
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Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Alva Edison 1847-1931, American inventor, b. Milan, Ohio. A genius in the practical application of scientific principles, Edison was one of the greatest and most productive inventors of his time, but his formal schooling was limited to three months in Port Huron, Mich., in 1854. For several ...
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Fort Myers
Fort Myers city (1990 pop. 45,206), seat of Lee co., SW Fla., on the Caloosahatchee River, near the Gulf of Mexico; founded 1850, inc. 1905. It has a tourist trade and light industry and is a shipping point for citrus fruits, winter vegetables, flowers (especially gladioli), and fish. The city grew...
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Louis Jean Lumière
Louis Jean Lumière , 1864-1948, and Auguste Lumière , 1862-1954, French inventors, brothers. They invented the Cinématographe, which was patented and demonstrated in 1895. This mechanism was the first to photograph, print, and project moving pictures onto a screen where they ...
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Samuel Insull
Samuel Insull , 1859-1938, American public utilities financier, b. London. He arrived in the United States in 1881 and was employed by Thomas A. Edison as a private secretary. He later became prominent in the management of the Edison industrial holdings. By 1907 he overcame competing public utilit...
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Henry Ford
Henry Ford 1863-1947, American industrialist, pioneer automobile manufacturer, b. Dearborn, Mich.
The Inception of the Ford Motor Company
Ford showed mechanical aptitude at an early age and left (1879) his father's farm to work as an apprentice in a Detroit machine shop. He soon returned ...
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Dominica
Dominica , officially Commonwealth of Dominica, republic (2005 est. pop. 69,000) consisting of the island of Dominica (290 sq mi/750 sq km), located in the Windward Islands , West Indies. Roseau is the capital and chief port. The island, of volcanic origin, is mountainous and forested, with a wid...
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Moses Gerrish Farmer
Moses Gerrish Farmer 1820-93, American inventor, b. Boscawen, N.H. He helped build and maintain some of the pioneer telegraph lines of Massachusetts and experimented in multiple telegraphy. He exhibited (1847) an electric train that carried children, invented a process for electroplating aluminum, ...
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Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray 1835-1901, American inventor, b. Barnesville, Ohio. He patented many electrical devices, most of them having to do with the telegraph . His telautograph (1888) for transmitting handwriting and line drawing was widely used. While experimenting in 1875 with the idea of sending musical no...
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