During his long, enormously productive career, Thomas Alva Edison brought into the world a plethora of life-enhancing values. Edison was a pioneer of breathtaking ambition and ingenuity. A self-educated inventor, he made contributions to the telegraph and telephone, he invented the phonograph and developed the incandescent electric bulb, and he contributed innovations to a host of fields as diverse as mining and movie-making. How did he do it? What underlay Edison's legendary productiveness, his creative ability, his dedication to his goals? This talk, which explores his career through 1884, aims to answer that question.

In this inspiring portrait, Edison's career shows us what a man can make of himself–and how he can go on to remake the world.