Talk:Thomas Edison

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Dclemens1971 (talk) 22:12, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

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Herald newspaper, published by Thomas Edison for use aboard the Grand Trunk railway between Detroit and Port Huron, Michigan.

• ... that Thomas Edison developed a housing project with three-story houses cast in a single cement mold?

• Source: Baldwin, Neil (1995). Edison: Inventing the Century. Hyperion. ISBN 978-0-226-03571-0. pp 298-300

• • ALT1: ... that Thomas Edison made talking dolls (pictured)? Source: Baldwin, Neil (1995). Edison: Inventing the Century. Hyperion. ISBN 978-0-226-03571-0. pp.196-197
  • ALT2: ... that Thomas Edison started printing a newspaper (pictured) when he was 14? Source: Morris, Edmund (October 22, 2019). Edison. Random House p. 586
  • Reviewed: This nomination is being reviewed collaboratively as part of an academic project supervised by User:Assas CHEUNG, with contributions from User:1922Laurette and User:0194Tamatea. We checked the article’s newness and it fits the DYK timeframe. The length is above the required 1,500 characters. The article is supported by reliable and independent sources, and each paragraph is cited. The tone appears neutral and we did not notice any plagiarism or close paraphrasing issues. The hook is cited and accurately reflects the information in the article. It is short enough and reasonably interesting. Since the hook does not use an image, the picture fields do not apply. QPQ is not required. Overall, the nomination appears to meet the DYK criteria.

• • Comment: Doll image

    

    Edison Phonograph Doll 01

    . On second thought I like the doll one the best

Improved to Good Article status by Czarking0 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Czarking0 (talk) 00:36, 11 December 2025 (UTC).

• Nice work on the promotion to good article status; I had seen you making progress on that on my watchlist for months. Before we begin it's important to mention that this article appeared on the main page in February 2025 for the on this day birth anniversary. I was worried at first that this would make the article ineligible for did you know, but WP:DYKNEW says that it's only when it's in the prose section of Selected anniversaries (OTD) that makes it ineligible, so this is fine.

The hooks need bold links so I've just added them. I've also just corrected the typo "story" to "storey". Anyway ALT0 and ALT1 match the article. ALT3 doesn't; the article says that he was earning a profit when he was 13, not that he started a newspaper when he was 13. I don't have the books for ALT0 and ALT1 so it would be great if you could give me some quotes to verify them. I have the ALT2 book, which says Earning an excellent income of forty to fifty dollars a week... which verifies the profitability but it doesn't say that it was his own newspaper. Page 586 mentions The Weekly Herald which he first published when he was 14.

Just fixed the image. It looks to be out of copyright, yes. As for the doll image, it is the person's own work but I honestly don't know how copyright applies to doll images so I'd have to find someone else to review it. ―Panamitsu (talk) 02:09, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the fixes! My understanding of the doll image is that the likeness of the doll is out of copyright since it is too old so images of it are fair game.Czarking0 (talk) 15:32, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

"Afterward he obtained the exclusive right of selling newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the “Grand Trunk Herald,” which he sold with his other papers." Does this solidify the ALT2? If not we could amend the text from newspaper to newspaper business since one could argue that the profitability did not directly come from the newspaper.Czarking0 (talk) 15:36, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Open access version of the Baldwin book Czarking0 (talk) 15:47, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

@Czarking0: Ok thanks, ALT0 and ALT1 are verified. Yeah it seems that ALT2 still has the issue of a lack of a source saying that the newspaper was started when he was 13 and that it was profitable, so your re-wording idea does sound like a good idea and I'll probably approve once you provide this new wording. ―Panamitsu (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

@Czarking0: I like the new ALT2 but where is the source that says that he started printing his own newspaper at age 13? Page 586 of Morris's book says that Edison published his first newspaper on 3 February 1862, when he was 14 years old. ―Panamitsu (talk) 21:54, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

@Panamitsu: I see. I took 13 from the article I did not recheck the date when I wrote this, so with the way I worded it now it should be 14. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Czarking0 (talk • contribs)

Thank you. Approved. Have just updated the page in the ALT1 source from 584 to 586. ―Panamitsu (talk) 07:17, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 26 June 2026

Correct the typo: Change "Edison and his colleges had the opportunity to get enormously wealthy..." to "Edison and his colleagues had the opportunity to get enormously wealthy" MathyFolk (talk) 01:20, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done Umby 🌕🐶 (talk) 02:00, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Remaining copyedit

@Panamitsu: your editing is absolutely brilliant. I did notice this paragraph in which I more or less said the same thing twice. I am thinking to restate this somehow. By 1907, Edison's cement company was a significant entity in domestic industry, but it remained unprofitable due to high competition. Edison tried to cooperate with other cement producers to jointly encourage the use of cement in construction, but the cement business did not become profitable until 1922. Czarking0 (talk) 14:33, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

@Czarking0 Thanks, nice nice. I'm also wondering if that health section I created is no good -- it feels awkwardly short and doesn't cover much of the deafness (as that's in the early life section). I'm also wondering if the text about Edison's family should be moved to a new article called "Edison family" as the text is definitely important enough to be on Wikipedia, but it's not all about Thomas Edison. (See Musk family, Walton family and Rockefeller family). Panamitsu (talk) 22:50, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

My test for what of the family content should be included on this article is "Did this significantly impact Edison directly". If you agree with the test and think it should be but further, then I'd like to apply that test on a case by case basis. I think the health section is reasonable. @Noleander: may have further insight. Czarking0 (talk) 22:54, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

The article is at 8,300 words, which is still below the 9,000 pseudo-limit of WP:SIZERULE, so more material could be added, if warranted. Family info seems, offhand, relatively unimportant for Edison: if there are 700 words available, surely there are other, more significant, things that could be discussed? To decide: apply WP:PROPORTION which says that the material in the article should roughly mirror how much the major sources devote to it. So if the major biographers spend, say, at most 5% on family & early life, then so too should the article. Noleander (talk) 23:52, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Czarking0 I still haven't finished reading the whole article but I've been slowly building up a few notes that I'm working through:

• I believe Edison spilled some chemical in a train as a teenager and caused a train fire. Add that.
• In the telegraphy section there is the text "but on several occasions his tinkering interfered with his work". Give an example of this if possible.
• What caused Edison invent the phonograph? Was he trying to improve the telephone and came up with the idea?
• Add the amount of filament materials tested, or just the number of light bulb prototypes, and maybe add the famous quote "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." (which I'm not sure if Edison even said)
• Give a further explanation of what the "Village of Light" was
• Explain that Edison and his colleagues had to invent an electrical distribution system to spread the light bulb, because electricity distribution wasn't much of a thing back then
• What does "He addressed lighting as a system." mean?
• In the motion picture section write that motion pictures had already been invented before Edison
• In the motion picture section make it clearer that early motion pictures did not have sound
• In the Menlo Park laboratory there is a caption with (left) and (right) which doesn't work on mobile as the images are stacked on top of each other. Not yet sure how to address this.

Panamitsu (talk) 07:46, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

1. Minor incident. It did not cause a delay in the train and he did get kicked out of the train but this just 13 year old boy messing around

2. I had the example above where he nearly caused a train accident. A lot of the tinkering it not really notable just a guy not doing his job while he messes around with wires.

3. I have not seen an answer to this but I can try to dig some more. Better now?

4. There is no exactly tally of these things

5.  Done

6, 7. Your statement in six is somewhat what I mean by seven. Many sources say something close to this. My understanding is that he was uniquely able to think of all the things that would need to happen from investors to dynamos, wires, customer accounting, pipe digging, static construction of buildings to hold the dynamos, the scaling and quality control of the manufacturing process for the brushes on the dynamos. Systems thinking. I can try to communicate this better in the article but I think it is a difficult point to say exactly without being vague as sources to not state exactly what it means. That is why the rest of the paragraph is there.

8.  Done

9. In fact, Edison was aiming for a bigger prize than a motion picture camera: he wanted a kinetophonograph to capture motion picture and record sounds with synchronized playback. Czarking0 (talk) 08:12, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

@Panamitsu and Noleander: Any thoughts on my update here? Czarking0 (talk) 15:08, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Top overview not written in Wikipedia style?

Reading the top overview is very jarring compared to other articles. Excerpts like "...but Edison was neglectful. She died at 29 years old."; "...drove his staff extremely hard and constantly worked himself and his associates to exhaustion."; and "Edison and his colleagues had the opportunity to get enormously wealthy..." all read less like Wikipedia's "objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice" and more like an emotionally biased biography. Not to mention, not one of the 5 paragraphs is sourced.

May I propose the entire overview be rewritten using sourced materials or at least edited to conform to Wikipedia's standards with references linked? I would do so myself but I do not have confidence in my ability to write in Wikipedia's style and may only add to the problem if I were to try. ~2026-52956-70 (talk) 06:18, 2 October 2026 (UTC)