On New Year's Eve, 1879, Thomas Edison unveiled his newest invention: the electric light. Reporters came from all over the U.S. to see Edison's Menlo Park lab lit up with his incandescent bulbs.

One ad in the Los Angeles Herald promised ... and experimented for years in perfecting the Magno-Electric Vitalizer.”) In reality, Thomas Edison Jr. had very little in common with his famous ...

In February 1881, Thomas Edison established the headquarters of the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City. Edison's goal of electrifying Lower Manhattan had stalled for two years while ...