In the late 1800's, Thomas Edison and his fellow inventors were key in the American film industry's boom.This web site provides a podcast and accompanying transcript tracing the roots of the film industry in America. Podcast [21:27]

The first person to make the storage battery practical, with 147 patents, Edison's life is a testimony to invention. This biography, in outline form, is in two parts; go to 1879 site after this.

Thomas Alva Edison was born at Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847, but the family soon after moved to Port Huron, Michigan. He had to earn his living from early boyhood, and was a train boy on a railroad. A station master, whose child's life...