Audiobook · read by volunteers
Edison, His Life and Inventions
Frank Lewis Dyer (1870–1941) · Thomas Commerford Martin (1856–1924)
Read by Justin S Barrett, Alana Jordan, jude kaider, ontheroad, RaySee, Tysto, Heidi Preuss, J. M. Smallheer, Ralph Snelson, Melissa · 53 chapters · 29 h 41
About the book
Thomas Alva Edison was a boy who sold newspapers on a train, a telegraph operator who could not stop tinkering, and, in the end, the man who stood behind the practical electric light, the phonograph and early motion-picture equipment. This large biography, written during his lifetime by two authors who knew his work from the inside, follows him from a boyhood in Ohio and Michigan through years of hardship and discovery to the creation of his laboratories at Menlo Park and beyond. It describes his inventions, his rivalries and his working methods, with the admiration typical of its day. It is a portrait of a man and also of an age of invention. Fifty-three chapters and nearly thirty hours make this a deep look at one of America's great inventors.
Introduction
Thomas Alva Edison is remembered as the inventor of the phonograph, the practical electric light and many other devices, and as the founder of one of the first industrial research laboratories. This biography, Edison, His Life and Inventions, was written by Frank Lewis Dyer, who lived from 1870 to 1941, and Thomas Commerford Martin, who lived from 1856 to 1924. Dyer was a lawyer who had worked with Edison, and Martin was an electrical engineer and editor. It was published in 1910, when Edison was still alive and active.
It is a detailed work. The authors say that they mean to bring the reader face to face with Edison: to look at his childhood, then at a youth marked by a capacity for doing things and an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and then to follow him through some forty years of creative work. The text covers his inventions in telegraphy, lighting, electric power, recorded sound and more, and gives much attention to the technical and commercial sides of his career.
Readers should remember that the book was written by admirers and close associates, and it tends to praise. Later biographers have offered more critical views of Edison and his rivalries. Even so, it remains a valuable source and an engrossing account of the early years of the electrical age.
The recording is by LibriVox volunteers and is divided into fifty-three chapters, beginning with an introduction, for a total of nearly thirty hours. Why listen? To follow the story of invention from the inside, as told by those who were there.
Public domain
Frank Lewis Dyer died in 1941: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
Thomas Commerford Martin died in 1924: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text