After Edison's death, his legacy was approximately US$12 million or US$18 million in today's dollars. Edison's inheritance belongs to his three children, and his patents belong to the company. Its company name is General Electric Company of the United States.
General Electric Company is the largest electrical and electronic equipment manufacturing company in the United States and the world. Its output value accounts for about 1/4 of the entire output value of the U.S. electrical industry. General Electric Company is headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. GE is composed of multiple diversified basic business groups. If ranked individually, 13 business groups can be ranked among the Fortune 500.
This company's electrical product technology is relatively mature and has a wide variety of products. It is said that there are more than 250,000 varieties and specifications. In addition to producing consumer appliances and industrial electrical equipment, it is also a huge arms contractor, manufacturing aerospace instruments, jet pilot and navigation systems, multi-warhead ballistic missile systems, radars and space flight systems.
In the 1977 selection of one hundred new products held by the American "Industrial Research" magazine, the new products of the American General Electric Company won the most awards. The world-famous Atlas rocket and Thor rocket that can carry atomic bombs and hydrogen warheads are produced by this company.
Extended information:
Main achievements:
Gramophone
Discovered that the diaphragm in the telephone microphone will vibrate with the sound of speaking phenomenon, I experimented with a short needle and got a lot of inspiration from it. The speed of speaking can cause the short needle to vibrate in different ways. Then, in turn, this vibration must also be able to produce the original speaking sound, so he began to study the problem of sound reproduction.
On August 15, Edison asked his assistant to make a "weird machine" consisting of a large cylinder, a crank, a receiver and a diaphragm according to the drawing. After it was made, Edison took out a piece of tin foil and rolled it. On a metal cylinder engraved with spiral grooves, let one end of the needle rub against the tin foil and rotate, and the other end was connected to the receiver. Then Edison cranked the crank, sang to the receiver, and then put the needle back to its original place, and then Crank the crank, and the machine plays back Edison's voice.
In December, Edison publicly displayed this "tinfoil cylinder phonograph", which caused a sensation all over the world.
Electric light
Contrary to people's common understanding, Edison was not the original inventor of the electric light. Edison improved the electric light. As early as 1801, a British chemist named Humphrey Davy used platinum wire to produce electricity in the laboratory; in 1810, he invented lighting using an arc generated between two energized carbon rods. The "electric candle" is the earliest prototype of electric light.
After nearly 30 years of research, another British electrical engineer, Joseph Swan, made a vacuum light bulb using carbon filaments that emit electricity in December 1878. The reports about Swann's light bulb inspired Edison a lot.
In October 1879, Edison finally succeeded in making an incandescent light bulb with carbonized fiber as the filament, which he called a "carbonized cotton filament incandescent lamp". He then put it into mass production and established a company to set up power stations and power transmission. The Internet and other corresponding infrastructure soon made electric lights widely used in the United States. During this period, he continued to improve his technology and finally decided to use tungsten filament as the filament, which he called the "tungsten lamp" and has been used to this day. Edison also became recognized as the inventor of the electric light. [
Movies:
Movie camera
In 1889, Edison invented a movable movie camera that was driven by a pointed gear. The 19 mm wide tape without holes is driven by the ratchet to move the tape intermittently and punch holes at the same time. This kind of camera is driven by a motor, and the shutter shaft is linked to a phonograph. When the camera is running, the phonograph records the sound and can continuously capture images.
Kinetoscope
Movie projector
In 1891, Edison invented the kinetoscope, an early movie display device that introduced the basic method of movie projection by using an engine in front of a light source to rotate at high speed A strip of motion picture film with a continuous picture, creating the illusion of movement, with a light source projecting the pictures on the film onto the screen. ?
Talkies
In 1910, Edison invented a movie camera that was a combination of a phonograph and a video camera. Under the power of the motor, the camera's light-shielding crankshaft was linked to the phonograph. A phonograph can record sounds while the camera is running. During the screening, the gramophone runs synchronously with the picture, allowing sound and images to appear at the same time.
Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Thomas Alva Edison