Thomas Edison was a man who worked on many different unique and important projects over his life. He is one of the most influential inventors of his age, but one thing that many people do not realize is that the invention he is most known for is not something he created himself. Edison describes inventing as a purely deductive process as opposed to a discovery by accident. He likens the invention of hardened rubber by Charles Goodyear to a lucky accident, such as a man who was walking and “his foot kicks against something, and looking down to see what he has hit, he sees a gold bracelet embedded in the dust (Hubert 226).” Like Goodyear, Edison did not actually do much with the light bulb. He stumbled across a children’s toy that functions in the same manner as a light bulb and he improved it for commercial use. Unlike the light bulb, Edison did invent the phonograph which is almost as important to our world now as the light bulb is. Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio…show more content… Almost 20 years prior to Edison inventing the phonograph, a man by the name of Leon Scot, a French inventor, created the phonoautograph. The phonoautograph was similar to the early phonograph, as it could record sounds using a diaphragm; however, Scot did not know that it was able to play sound as well. This was not the only person who tried to create something like this. After Edison created the first of these, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, created a device that functioned like the phonograph that he called the Graphophone. Both Bell and Edison did not make much money off of either invention so the local distributors of theirs decided to use their devices as a coin operated music device. Edison was not satisfied with this so he spent a lot of time improving upon his phonograph until eventually the phonograph won out and the record and music industries we know today were
