Edison, Thomas Alva, a celebrated American inventor, born at Milan, Ohio; started life as a newsboy; early displayed his genius and enterprise by producing the first newspaper printed in a railway train; turning his attention to telegraphy, he revolutionised the whole system by a series of inventions, to which he has since added others, to the number of 500, the most notable being the megaphone, phonograph, kinetoscope, a carbon telegraph transmitter, and improvements in electric lighting; (b. 1847).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Edinburgh University * Edith