Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Edison gained world renown for his inventions, including the phonograph; incandescent lighting; and the Kinetoscope, an early motion picture camera. The wealthy entrepreneur was at the height of his career when Abraham A. Anderson, an American artist based in Paris, began this portrait during Edison’s visit to the city for the Universal Exposition of 1889.

Edison’s inventions were the highlight of the exposition’s “Gallery of Machines,” with one pavilion devoted to his electric light and another to his recently improved phonograph, which Anderson chose to picture. The wax cylinders on the table were used for recording. Although Edison patented the first version of the device in 1877, earning himself the title of the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” eleven years passed before he achieved sufficient clarity of sound to make it commercially viable. “When this was done,” he reported, “I knew that everything else could be done which was a fact.”