1. edison, thomas alva a celebrated American inventor, born at Milan, Ohio; started life as a newsboy; early displayed his genius and enterprise by producing the firstnewspaper printed in a railway train; turning his attention to telegraphy, he revolutionised the wholesystem by a series of inventions, to which he has since added others, to the number of 500, the most notablebeing the megaphone, phonograph, kinetoscope, a carbon telegraph transmitter, and improvements in electric lighting; b. 1847.