3 inventions of Thomas Edison that you didn’t know about 

All of you know of Thomas Edison and his famous invention, the light bulb. But did you know that this was not his only invention? In fact, he has received more than a thousand patents for his other inventions. Thomas Alva Edison, an American inventor and businessman, received his first patent at the age of 21 years his last patent was in 1933, two years after his death. Okay, here’s an interesting nugget of information for you: Edison was also known as The Wizard of Menlo Park? Why? Because he established his laboratory in Menlo Park, a city in California, USA. This earned him this title, as he would conduct many experiments and create inventions in the laboratory! Edison’s biographers even estimated that he received a patent every 2 weeks during his working life! Let’s unravel a few of his lesser-known inventions! 

Pneumatic stencil pen (precursor of tattoo gun) 
The pneumatic stencil pen created by Edison serves as a prototype for the modern tattoo gun. Edison patented this electric pen in 1876, which used a rod topped with a steel needle to pierce paper for printing purposes. It was one of the first devices capable of copying papers efficiently. The first tattoo machine patented in 1891 was inspired by Edison’s stencil pen! It was created by Samuel O'Reilly, an American tattoo artist based in New York, 

A food preservation method 
While working on developing the light bulb during 1879 in New Jersey, Edison was working with glass vacuum tubes. While working, he found another use for these tubes: Preserving fruits and vegetables. So, Edison came up with yet another invention using glass vacuum tubes. He filed a patent for these vacuum tubes in 1881 for preserving fruits, vegetables or other organic items. This is how these tubes worked: The glass jar was filled with the objects that were to be preserved. The vacuum tubes then removed all the air from the jar. Another piece of glass was then used to seal the vessel tube. The oxygen inside the air is one of the reasons that negatively impacts fruits and vegetables. Thus, the material inside the jar was said to be preserved. The vacuum-sealed packaging that we see today is because of Edison’s glass vacuum tubes! 

A concrete house using a wooden mould 
Early in the 20th century, the Wizard of Menlo Park decided to remove urban slums and provide every working-class family with affordable, strong, fireproof homes. How would those houses be constructed? Of course, using the products of Edison Portland Cement Company, a company he founded in 1899 to fulfil this mission. Edison planned to fill large wooden moulds of the size and shape of houses with concrete, let them set in and then take the framework out! This way, a concrete home with plumbing pipes and even a bathtub could be built. According to Edison, these homes would sell for around one-third the cost of a traditionally built home. 

During the beginning of the 1900s, concrete dwellings were widely used in New York City. However, these moulded concrete houses never gained popularity as Edison got only a few investors. The reason being the complexity of the whole process. To create a concrete home, too many moulds would be required (more than 2000) and they needed to be positioned in a specific manner.  

Fun fact 
Spiritualism was regaining popularity in the years following World War I. Many believed that science might one day offer a way to communicate with dead people’s souls. In October 1920, Edison said that he was developing a device that could establish contact with the spirit world based on the is machine would measure the ‘life units’ scattered across the universe after death, Edison told The New York Times.  

However, he never presented any device or its blueprint that he claimed could speak with the dead. As a result, many people assumed he was joking with the reporters about his ‘spirit phone’. 

However, in 2015, a French journalist Phillippe Baudouin did find Edison’s diary at a thrift shop in France. This copy had a missing chapter. The chapter was about his theories regarding the spirit world and how it might be possible to make a contact. Although the world was not much receptive to this piece of information, it was proven that Edison was indeed working on something called a spirit phone!