Public domain audiobook
Edison, His Life and Inventions
A detailed biography of Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of such things as the telephone, the microphone, the electric motor, the storage battery, and the electric light. In the words of the authors, "It is designed in these pages to bring the reader face to face with Edison; to glance at an interesting childhood and a youthful period marked by a capacity for doing things, and by an insatiable thirst for knowledge; then to accompany him into the great creative stretch of forty years, during which he has done so much. This book shows him plunged deeply into work for which he has always had an incredible capacity, reveals the exercise of his unsurpassed inventive ability, his keen reasoning powers, his tenacious memory, his fertility of resource; follows him through a series of innumerable experiments, conducted methodically, reaching out like rays of search-light into all the regions of science and nature, and finally exhibits him emerging triumphantly from countless difficulties bearing with him in new arts the fruits of victorious struggle." (written by Justin Barrett, with authors' quote taken from the work itself)
LibriVox recordings are public domain in the United States; copyright status may differ elsewhere.
Chapters
- Chapter 1
Introduction
05:38 - Chapter 2
The Age Of Electricity
13:42 - Chapter 3
Edison's Pedigree
21:43 - Chapter 4
Boyhood At Port Huron, Michigan
45:52 - Chapter 5
The Young Telegraph Operator
30:02 - Chapter 6
Arduous Years In The Central West
51:48 - Chapter 7
Work And Invention In Boston
24:30 - Chapter 8
The Stock Ticker
44:09 - Chapter 9
Automatic, Duplex, And Quadruplex Telegraphy
57:24 - Chapter 10
The Telephone, Motograph, And Microphone
1:07:55 - Chapter 11
The Phonograph
47:12 - Chapter 12
The Invention Of The Incandescent Lamp
51:21 - Chapter 13
Memories Of Menlo Park
52:50 - Chapter 14
A World-Hunt For Filament Material
29:57 - Chapter 15
Inventing A Complete System Of Lighting
58:09 - Chapter 16
Introduction Of The Edison Electric Light
1:04:28 - Chapter 17
The First Edison Central Station
56:06 - Chapter 18
Other Early Stations -- the Meter
59:08 - Chapter 19
The Electric Railway
48:31 - Chapter 20
Magnetic Ore Milling Work
45:44 - Chapter 21
Edison Portland Cement
35:44 - Chapter 22
Motion Pictures
52:48 - Chapter 23
The Development Of The Edison Storage Battery
39:39 - Chapter 24
Miscellaneous Inventions
36:57 - Chapter 25
Edison's Method In Inventing
47:30 - Chapter 26
The Laboratory At Orange And The Staff
45:24 - Chapter 27
Edison In Commerce And Manufacture
44:02 - Chapter 28
The Value Of Edison's Inventions To The World
52:10 - Chapter 29
The Black Flag
1:10:14 - Chapter 30
The Social Side Of Edison
1:10:15 - Chapter 31
Appendix: Introduction
02:17 - Chapter 32
Appendix I. The Stock Printer
14:45 - Chapter 33
Appendix II. The Quadruplex And Phonoplex
32:14 - Chapter 34
Appendix III. Automatic Telegraphy
18:51 - Chapter 35
Appendix IV. Wireless Telegraphy
30:24 - Chapter 36
Appendix V. The Electromotograph
09:22 - Chapter 37
Appendix VI. The Telephone
10:00 - Chapter 38
Appendix VII. Edison's Tasimeter
05:16 - Chapter 39
Appendix VIII. The Edison Phonograph
14:57 - Chapter 40
Appendix IX. The Incandescent Lamp
13:00 - Chapter 41
Appendix X. Edison's Dynamo Work
32:04 - Chapter 42
Appendix XI. The Edison Feeder System
15:57 - Chapter 43
Appendix XII. The Three-Wire System
10:24 - Chapter 44
Appendix XIII. Edison's Electric Railway
17:46 - Chapter 45
Appendix XIV. Train Telegraphy
05:59 - Chapter 46
Appendix XV. Kinetograph And Projecting Kinetoscope
08:38 - Chapter 47
Appendix XVI. Edison's Ore-Milling Inventions
18:14 - Chapter 48
Appendix XVII. The Long Cement Kiln
09:43 - Chapter 49
Appendix XVIII. Edison's New Storage Battery
15:33 - Chapter 50
Appendix XIX. Edison's Poured Cement House
09:26 - Chapter 51
Appendix: List Of United States Patents, part 1
1:05:26 - Chapter 52
Appendix: List Of United States Patents, part 2
47:56 - Chapter 53
Appendix: Foreign Patents
02:30