This book traces the life of Thomas Edison, one of the most influential inventors in American history, from his early childhood and education through his sources of inspiration and challenges faced, early successes, and the many inventions for which he is best known.

Follows Edison from his time in school to his career as a full-time inventor, focusing on his groundbreaking creation of the lightbulb.

Brilliant, visionary Nikola Tesla fights an uphill battle to bring his revolutionary electrical system to fruition, then faces thornier challenges with his new system for worldwide wireless energy. The film tracks Tesla's uneasy interactions with his fellow inventor Thomas Edison and his patron George Westinghouse. Another thread traces Tesla's sidewinding courtship of financial titan J.P. Morgan, whose daughter Anne takes a more than casual interest...

Describes how a circus elephant named Topsy was electrocuted in 1903 with 6,600 volts of alternating current as proof that it was much more dangerous than direct current in an ongoing dispute between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

"The epic road trips--and surprising friendship--of John Burroughs, nineteenth-century naturalist, and Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, inventors of the modern age"-- In 1913 an unlikely friendship blossomed between Henry Ford and famed naturalist John Burroughs. When their mutual interest in Ralph Waldo Emerson led them to set out in one of Ford's Model Ts to explore New England, the trip would prove to be the first of many excursions that would take...

"In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of...

On a scorching July afternoon in 1878, at the dawn of the Gilded Age, the moon's shadow descended on the American West, darkening skies from Montana Territory to Texas. This rare celestial event -- a total solar eclipse -- offered a priceless opportunity to solve some of the solar system's most enduring riddles, and it prompted a clutch of enterprising scientists to brave the wild frontier in a grueling race to the Rocky Mountains. Science journalist...

An introduction to the genius with a curious mind who loved to experiment and who invented the phonograph, light bulb, movie camera, and numerous other items.

Inventor, electrical wizard, smybol of the self-made and practical creator.