Thomas Alva Edison was a great American inventor. He invented many things, such as the phonograph, the motion picture camera and the electric light bulb. He also improved on existing inventions, such as the telegraph and telephone. He held 1,093 patents for his inventions in America and Europe. Edison was born in Milan, Ohio in 1847. As a young boy he liked to experiment with electricity and chemistry. At age 12 he started to sell newspapers on trains to help support his family financially. Later he opened a small laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey where he hired some of the best scientists to work with him. His most famous invention is probably the electric light bulb which changed life all over the world forever!