In Our Time - Edison

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the innovations and influence of Thomas Edison. Edison is popularly remembered as the man who made cheap electric light possible, devising the first commercially viable light bulb and power distribution system. He also invented the phonograph and massively improved the telephone, and played a role in the birth of cinema. When he died in 1931 he had patented no fewer than one thousand and ninety-three devices - the most prolific inventor in history. As the creator of the world's first industrial research laboratory he also changed the way in which innovation took place, and is now acknowledged as one of the architects of the modern age. Producer: Thomas Morris.