Thomas Edison

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Which Thomas Edison invention has had the greatest impact on America?

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Explore the choices, cast your vote, and tell us why in the comments. We’ll share the results later this year as part of a special Edison celebration! 🇺🇸

Happy Birthday to Charles Edison!

From serving as Secretary of the Navy and New Jersey’s 42nd governor to leading leading Thomas A. Edison Inc., Charles built an extraordinary legacy of public service, philanthropy, and business leadership.

In 1948, he founded what is now the Charles Edison Fund, ensuring that his father’s legacy would continue to support innovation, education, science, and historic preservation for generations to come.

Please join us in celebrating our founder, whose motto still guides our work today: “When in doubt, do right.” 💡

It's amazing how much of our day depends on a battery. 🔋

Your phone.
Your watch.
Your laptop.
Maybe your car.

They're so ordinary in 2026 that we hardly notice them until one dies.

120 years ago this month, Thomas Edison was trying to make rechargeable batteries better.

Although it never achieved the fame of the light bulb or phonograph, the storage battery became Edison's most profitable invention.

That was because it powered industries that depended on his product’s reliability like railroads, mines, and even delivery trucks.

By 1905, you didn’t have to look very hard to find an Edison powered delivery truck cruising through New Jersey. 👀

More than 250 were already on the road…
though their price tag is what kept them from becoming the norm at the time.

Every great achievement starts with one more try.

Edison is remembered for what he created. His son? For what he refused to let disappear. 🌲

Theodore Edison was born at Glenmont on this day in 1898, the youngest of Thomas Edison's children, who he called his "little laboratory assistant." He inherited his father's inventive streak: an MIT physics degree, 80+ patents, years running R&D for Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

But his lasting legacy isn't a patent at all.

It's Monhegan Island, Maine.

Theodore spent his childhood summers there, in the wilderness off the coast. Decades later, when word spread that the island might be divided up and sold to developers, he acted. Quietly, plot by plot, he began buying up land as it came available, determined to keep it whole.

In 1954, he donated everything he'd purchased to a newly formed trust, the Monhegan Associates, on the condition that it be preserved. That trust still protects roughly three-quarters of the island today, its woods, its headlands, its wildness.

Theodore is buried there now, beside his wife, on the island he spent a lifetime protecting.

Happy birthday, Theodore. A family full of innovation & inspiration! 🌎

Monhegan Associates Inc.

Never stop improving 💡

Edison believed progress shouldn't stop at the museum door.

In 1916, he found himself in the middle of a debate that feels surprisingly modern. Should one of America's most treasured historic homes stay authentic, or become safer?

George Washington's Mount Vernon was still lit by kerosene lamps and candles. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association worried that installing electricity would compromise the historic character they had worked so hard to preserve.

As one member wrote, electricity seemed "most incongruous in this antique home." But others worried about fire hazards.

When Edison visited Mount Vernon in September 1916, he inspected the Mansion and proposed a solution. His company offered to install a battery-powered lighting system, separate from the local power grid, complete with what Edison called a "guarantee of absolute safety."

The following year, Mount Vernon was electrified using an Edison-designed storage battery system. 💡 While that original system has long since been replaced, pieces of it still survive in Mount Vernon's collections today.

Edison's visit wasn't entirely business, though. After touring the grounds and learning about earlier commemorative tree plantings, he asked if he could plant one himself.

Today, historic sites still wrestle with the same question Mount Vernon faced all those years ago...How do you preserve the past while embracing the future?

📸 Thomas Edison at Mount Vernon, September 1916.

Thomas Edison and his son kept score. 🎣

Not of patents.

Not of inventions.

Of fish!

When Edison escaped to Fort Myers, Florida, some of his favorite days were spent on the water with his son Charles.

The rules were simple: whoever caught the most fish, and the greatest variety of species, won.

Years later, Charles still remembered those contests. He recalled that his father preferred catching smaller fish, a detail that may have helped keep the competition interesting.

Of all the places they fished, Charles remembered Yellow Creek most fondly. It was one of his father's favorite spots, where Edison regularly caught bass. Hoping for the same luck, Charles later returned with his wife.

He didn't catch a thing, but his wife caught both a jack and a snook.

A local newspaper once wrote that Edison approached fishing with "the keen zest of a kid playing hooky from school."

It's a surprising image.

One where one of the most famous inventors in history wasn't in a laboratory...

But when he was sitting beside his son, watching the water, hoping for one more fish than the other guy.

10,000 attempts. One breakthrough. 💡

Edison’s greatest invention may not have been a product at all.

It was the modern research lab.

Before him, most inventors worked alone or in small workshops.

Edison imagined something bigger.

At Menlo Park and later West Orange, he brought together some of the world’s best chemists, machinists, engineers, mathematicians, glassblowers, and designers to work side by side solving problems together.

Ideas moved fast, failures were expected, and breakthroughs came from people working together. Even dinner looked like a brainstorming session!

It looked less like history and more like the future:
💻 Apple
🚀 SpaceX
🧠 Silicon Valley

The idea that innovation happens when talented people from different fields work under one roof became a blueprint for how modern technology is developed.