Edison birthplace, Milan, Ohio

Edison in the 1870s as a young inventor

Employees of the Menlo Park workshop, 1880. Edison is under the central arch, leaning against a pillar, hands in his pockets.

The original Menlo Park workshop, relocated to Greenfield, Michigan by Edison's friend Henry Ford

Early Edison incandescent light bulb

Colorized engraving of the Pearl Street generating station in lower Manhattan, 1882

The Kinetoscope, Edison's first movie machine, 1886

Early Edison phonograph

Containers for cylinders played on early Edison phonographs

Illustration of ladies using earphones to listen to a phonograph in a demonstration on Fifth Avenue in New York, 1889

Advertisement for Edison Concert Phonograph, 1899

Plaque commemorating the showing of the first motion picture by Edison, 1896

Edison in his West Orange, New Jersey, lab, around 1901

Edison at his desk in the West Orange lab, 1913

West Orange lab today, now part of the Edison National Historic Site

Film pioneer George Eastman, left, with Edison and a motion picture camera, 1925

Adjoining Edison and Ford estates, Fort Myers, Florida

Edison estate, Fort Myers

Edison estate, Fort Myers

U.S. postage stamp issued to commemorate the centennial of Edison's birth

Edison in 1922, in Washington, D.C., at the age of seventy-five