money he built a new shop where he produced stock market machines and high speed printing telegraphs. He soon asked his father to help him build a new factory in Menlo Park, NJ. He and his two partners devoted all of their time to inventing in their new factory. His first invention was the improvement of the telephone. He wanted to improve on this because people had to shout when on the phone. Edison also invented the phonograph when he was thirty. He invented this by accident while working on telegraphs and telephones. Thomas used tin foil to make the phonograph, which he called a “talking machine”. The first words that he recorded were “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. After he got a patent on his new invention,it was sold to the public from 1878 to 1880 for prices anywhere from ten dollars to two hundred dollars. He worked on improving this invention for over forty years (Compton’s Encyclopedia 73).

Two years after Edison invented the phonograph, he bragged that he would invent a safe and inexpensive electric light before any other scientist. He searched for the best material that would give off light when electricity ran through it. He tried materials like baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, and bamboo. After he spent almost forty thousand dollars, performing twelve hundred experiments, he found that carbonized thread worked. He used sewing thread that had been burned to ash in his light bulb. This light bulb burned for two days. He was now able to turn on and