Thomas Edison House is a historic house located in the Butchertown neighborhood of

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...

. The house is a shotgun duplex built around 1850.

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...

took up residence in the same neighborhood, possibly even at this location, a part of the time he lived in Louisville from 1866 to 1867. The house features a museum that honors Edison and his inventions.

Edison's time in Louisville

In 1866, at age 19, Thomas Edison, a skilled

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

er, came to Louisville to work for

Western Union The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Denver, Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the co ...

, which at that time had an office on the corner of Main and Second Streets. In August 1866, Edison left briefly, intending to take a trip to

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

but was turned back at

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

because the waterway was shut down. So, he returned to work in Louisville and found lodging in a shotgun duplex on East Washington Street in what is now Butchertown. In 1867, while working the night shift, Edison, already the experimenter, was working with a battery when he spilled

sulfuric acid Sulfuric acid (American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphuric acid (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth spelling), known in antiquity as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen, ...

onto the floor and his boss' desk on the floor below. The next day, he was fired, and left town for good. Sixteen years later, in 1883, one of Edison's new inventions, the

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, also known as an incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe, is an electric light that produces illumination by Joule heating a #Filament, filament until it incandescence, glows. The filament is enclosed in a ...

, was demonstrated in the largest installation to date in Louisville at the Southern Exposition.

References

External links

* 19th-century buildings and structures in Louisville, Kentucky Houses in Louisville, Kentucky Historic house museums in Kentucky Edison, Thomas Museums in Louisville, Kentucky Houses completed in 1850 1850 establishments in Kentucky

House A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air c ...

{{Louisville-struct-stub

Edison's time in Louisville

See also

References

External links