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Thomas Edison - Test
Contributed by: Newell
  • 1. What year was Thomas Edison born?
A) 1901
B) 1856
C) 1879
D) 1847
  • 2. In which city was Thomas Edison born?
A) Atlanta, Georgia
B) New York City, New York
C) Boston, Massachusetts
D) Milan, Ohio
  • 3. Which invention is Thomas Edison most famous for?
A) Light bulb
B) Airplane
C) Microwave oven
D) Telephone
  • 4. Which famous inventor was a rival of Thomas Edison?
A) The Wright Brothers
B) Alexander Graham Bell
C) Nikola Tesla
D) Henry Ford
  • 5. What was the first public demonstration of Thomas Edison's light bulb?
A) December 31, 1879
B) January 1, 1900
C) August 8, 1854
D) November 11, 1922
  • 6. Which company did Thomas Edison found in 1892?
A) Ford Motor Company
B) IBM
C) Tesla Motors
D) General Electric
  • 7. What was Thomas Edison's favorite color?
A) Red
B) Blue
C) Yellow
D) Green
  • 8. What was the nickname given to Thomas Edison by the press?
A) The Light Bulb King
B) The Electric Genius
C) The Master Inventor
D) The Wizard of Menlo Park
  • 9. Which famous President did Thomas Edison meet multiple times?
A) George Washington
B) Abraham Lincoln
C) Franklin D. Roosevelt
D) Grover Cleveland
  • 10. What was the name of Thomas Edison's second wife?
A) Sarah Adams
B) Emily Wilson
C) Mary Johnson
D) Mina Miller
  • 11. How many children did Thomas Edison have?
A) 8
B) 2
C) 6
D) 4
  • 12. What was the name of the newspaper founded by Edison?
A) Port Huron News
B) Menlo Park Gazette
C) Edison Daily
D) Grand Trunk Herald
  • 13. At what age did Edison save a child from a runaway train?
A) 12
B) 13
C) 15
D) 18
  • 14. Where did Edison work as a night telegrapher?
A) Port Huron, Michigan
B) Milan, Ohio
C) Stratford Junction, Ontario
D) Menlo Park, New Jersey
  • 15. What did Edison sell to turn a profit at age 13?
A) Newspapers, candy, and vegetables
B) Electrical equipment
C) Patents
D) Phonographs
  • 16. Who taught Edison reading, writing, and arithmetic?
A) His mother
B) A mentor
C) His father
D) A school teacher
  • 17. What was the original coverage focus of the Grand Trunk Herald?
A) International news
B) Local news
C) Financial news
D) National news
  • 18. How many issues did the Grand Trunk Herald run?
A) Fifty
B) Five hundred
C) Twenty-four
D) One hundred
  • 19. How many people subscribed to the Grand Trunk Herald?
A) Five hundred
B) Twenty-four
C) One thousand
D) One hundred
  • 20. What did Edison use his fortune for?
A) Furthering his passion for invention
B) Retiring early
C) Traveling the world
D) Investing in stocks
  • 21. How many US patents did Edison hold?
A) 1,500
B) 1,093
C) 500
D) 2,000
  • 22. Who was Edison's great-grandfather?
A) John Edeson
B) Samuel Ogden Edison Jr.
C) Thomas Edison Jr.
D) Samuel Edison Sr.
  • 23. Where did Edison's great-grandfather flee to in 1784?
A) Nova Scotia
B) Michigan
C) New Jersey
D) Ohio
  • 24. What military unit did Edison's grandfather serve with?
A) Canadian Army
B) Grand Trunk Railway
C) Ohio Militia
D) 1st Middlesex Militia
  • 25. What inspired Edison's thinking throughout his life?
A) Works by Thomas Paine
B) Works by Alexander Graham Bell
C) Works by Nikola Tesla
D) Works by Benjamin Franklin
  • 26. What did Edison do after resigning as a night telegrapher?
A) Worked as a news butcher
B) Became a school teacher
C) Conducted chemical experiments
D) Started a business in Vienna
  • 27. Which company employed Thomas Edison when he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire?
A) Cable & Wireless
B) Western Union
C) American Telegraph Company
D) Bell Telephone Company
  • 28. Where did Thomas Edison live with Ezra Gilliland?
A) New York City
B) Cincinnati
C) Boston
D) Detroit
  • 29. Who allowed Edison to live and work in the basement of his home in Elizabeth, New Jersey?
A) Ezra Gilliland
B) Franklin Leonard Pope
C) Samuel Laws
D) Charles Batchelor
  • 30. What did Edison and Franklin Leonard Pope found in October 1869?
A) Their own electrical engineering company
B) A chemistry research lab
C) A stock brokerage firm
D) A telegraph school
  • 31. Who collaborated with Edison at the factory on improvements to the telegraph?
A) Charles Batchelor
B) Samuel Laws
C) Ezra Gilliland
D) Franklin Leonard Pope
  • 32. How much did Edison receive in 1874 for inventing the first telegraph that could simultaneously transmit four messages through a single wire?
A) $30,000
B) $100,000
C) $50,000
D) $10,000
  • 33. What did Edison invest in with the money received for his telegraph invention?
A) A battery manufacturing business
B) A telegraph company in New York
C) The Port Huron street railway
D) A printing press company
  • 34. In which year was the Menlo Park laboratory established?
A) 1876
B) 1880
C) 1877
D) 1887
  • 35. Where was the Menlo Park laboratory located?
A) California
B) New York
C) Massachusetts
D) New Jersey
  • 36. What invention did Edison's Menlo Park laboratory initially fund?
A) Quadruplex telegraph
B) Light bulb
C) Carbon microphone
D) Phonograph
  • 37. Who was credited with discovering the semiconductor effect before Edison's work was acknowledged?
A) Alexander Graham Bell
B) David Edward Hughes
C) Thomas Edison
D) Emile Berliner
  • 38. What did Edison believe was the worst part of Bell's telephone?
A) The transmitter
B) The wiring
C) The microphone
D) The receiver
  • 39. What publication did Edison fund in 1880?
A) Science
B) Nature
C) Scientific American
D) Popular Science
  • 40. Who took over the journal 'Science' after Edison gave it up?
A) Thomas Edison
B) Emile Berliner
C) David Edward Hughes
D) Alexander Graham Bell
  • 41. Who was hired by Edison in 1878 and later became the general manager?
A) John Ott
B) Francis Robbins Upton
C) Jesse Lippincott
D) Fred Ott
  • 42. Who described Edison as 'the most ingenious inventor in this country... or in any other'?
A) Joseph Henry
B) Hermann von Helmholtz
C) Alexander Graham Bell
D) J. P. Morgan
  • 43. What was the power output of the first steam-generating power station Edison switched on in London?
A) 600 kW
B) 93 kW
C) 110 volts
D) 120 volts
  • 44. What was a novelty of Edison's centralized mining operation in Ogdensburg?
A) Electrically powered seventy ton rollers
B) Solar-powered machinery
C) Steam-powered conveyor belts
D) Manual labor force
  • 45. What did Edison use to improve X-ray images in his experiments?
A) Lye electrolyte
B) Lead acid batteries
C) Calcium tungstate screens
D) Nickel-iron electrodes
  • 46. What was the size of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory after a decade?
A) Half a city block
B) Five city blocks
C) One city block
D) Two city blocks
  • 47. What voltage did Pearl Street Station's electrical power distribution system provide?
A) 120 volts AC
B) 110 volts direct current (DC)
C) 220 volts AC
D) 220 volts DC
  • 48. What type of battery did Edison focus on for electric cars?
A) Alkaline battery
B) Lead acid battery
C) Nickel-cadmium battery
D) Calcium tungstate battery
  • 49. In which year did Edison visit an industrial exhibition in Sudbury, Ontario?
A) 1905
B) 1910
C) 1901
D) 1895
  • 50. How many customers did Pearl Street Station's system have initially?
A) 600 customers
B) 508 customers
C) 1200 customers
D) 1000 customers
  • 51. In what year did Edison lose majority control in the merger that formed Edison General Electric?
A) 1889
B) 1890
C) 1892
D) 1895
  • 52. When were the first successful tests of Edison's prototype film camera publicly seen?
A) 1903
B) April 1896
C) January 15, 1895
D) May 20, 1891
  • 53. Why were customers not accepting iron with significant phosphorus content?
A) It was too expensive
B) It ruined the Bessemer process
C) It was too brittle
D) It was too heavy
  • 54. Who discovered X-rays before Thomas Edison learned about them?
A) Wilhelm Röntgen
B) Henry Ford
C) Lord Kelvin
D) Clarence Dally
  • 55. Where did Edison open a second office to expand influence in New York?
A) Holborn Viaduct
B) 65th Avenue
C) Pearl Street
D) Lynn, Massachusetts
  • 56. What year did Edison demonstrate a mature nickel-iron battery?
A) 1908
B) 1904
C) 1910
D) 1912
  • 57. What was Edison's goal with his system of electrical illumination?
A) Portable lighting
B) Deploy in a large-scale commercial utility
C) Personal home lighting
D) Street lighting
  • 58. In which decade did Thomas Edison become interested in mining?
A) Early 1880s
B) Late 1870s
C) Early 1900s
D) Early 1890s
  • 59. Who did Edison likely know was working on a similar battery design?
A) Clarence Dally
B) Waldemar Jungner
C) Lord Kelvin
D) Charles Dally
  • 60. What combination did Edison's lab eventually settle on for the rechargeable battery?
A) Lye-nickel combination
B) Lead-acid combination
C) Nickel-iron combination
D) Calcium tungstate combination
  • 61. Where were Edison's kinetoscopes first installed for public viewing?
A) Belgian fairs
B) Coney Island
C) Penny arcades
D) Edison's film studio
  • 62. When did Edison first meet Henry Ford?
A) 1908
B) 1901
C) 1910
D) 1896
  • 63. What did Edison do when worried about losing the patent fight?
A) Stopped working on the battery
B) Sued Waldemar Jungner
C) Petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt
D) Sought funding from Henry Ford
  • 64. In what year did Edison first publicly demonstrate the phonograph?
A) 1877
B) 1880
C) 1879
D) 1878
  • 65. On what date did Edison turn on the electrical lighting system for Manhattan?
A) January 27, 1880
B) November 4, 1879
C) September 4, 1882
D) May 1880
  • 66. Which invention was falsely advertised as an Edison invention to boost sales?
A) Kinetograph
B) Vitascope
C) Kinetoscope
D) Kinetophonograph
  • 67. What was one of Edison's attempts during World War I?
A) Designing new naval ships
B) Improving submarine detection
C) Developing new aircraft
D) Creating new naval uniforms
  • 68. What device did Edison invent to measure infrared radiation?
A) Tasimeter
B) Phonograph
C) Electric light
D) Voltaic pile
  • 69. What did Edison use as the semiconductor in his carbon microphone?
A) Glass
B) Copper
C) Specially coated rubber
D) Wood
  • 70. What health issue was beginning to affect Edison in the late 1890s?
A) Arthritis
B) Tuberculosis
C) Heart disease
D) Diabetes
  • 71. What was the first invention by Thomas Edison that gained him wider notice?
A) Tasimeter
B) Phonograph
C) Electric train
D) Electric light bulb
  • 72. Who controlled the new company, General Electric, after the merger?
A) Thomson-Houston board
B) Edison General Electric board
C) J. P. Morgan
D) Henry Villard
  • 73. Which company owned rights to Sawyer's patent and took a market share from Edison by 1889?
A) National Electric Lamp Association
B) Westinghouse
C) General Electric
D) Ediswan
  • 74. What percentage of the US electrical business did General Electric control after the merger?
A) Half
B) One-third
C) Three-quarters
D) One-quarter
  • 75. What project did Edison move on to after deciding to retire from the lighting business?
A) Telegraph project
B) AC power transmission project
C) Iron ore refining project
D) Gas lighting project
  • 76. What material was used for the first phonograph recordings by Edison?
A) Paper
B) Cotton
C) Wax
D) Tinfoil
  • 77. In what year did Edison's phonograph company produce a cheap model for entertainment?
A) 1900
B) 1915
C) 1887
D) 1899
  • 78. What voltage standard did Edison's high-resistance filament lead to in the United States?
A) 220V
B) 50V
C) 110V
D) 240V
  • 79. What was one reason for Edison's anti-AC stance?
A) Edison fully understood AC and its benefits.
B) Edison believed AC was more efficient.
C) Edison could not grasp the more abstract theories behind AC.
D) Edison thought AC was safer than DC.
  • 80. In which year did Thomas Edison head the Naval Consulting Board?
A) 1917
B) 1915
C) 1916
D) 1914
  • 81. Who founded Edison's Kinétoscope Français in Brussels?
A) Edwin S. Porter
B) Leon Gaumont
C) Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki
D) Thomas Armat
  • 82. What was the first commercial application of Edison's incandescent light bulb?
A) Manhattan streetlights
B) London streetlights
C) Edison Electric Light Company
D) Columbia train
  • 83. What was the primary reason high-grade iron ore was scarce on the east coast?
A) Environmental regulations
B) Lack of mining technology
C) High costs due to shipping from the Midwest
D) Political restrictions
  • 84. Where did Edison purchase a mine after his initial venture?
A) Sudbury, Ontario
B) Cleveland, Ohio
C) Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania
D) Ogdensburg, New Jersey
  • 85. How many employees did the Edison Storage Battery Company have by 1904?
A) 1000
B) 600
C) 450
D) 300
  • 86. What was the price of Edison's phonograph in 1900?
A) $20
B) $15
C) $10
D) $5
  • 87. What was the electrolyte used in Edison's mature nickel-iron battery?
A) Lye
B) Sulfuric acid
C) Lead oxide
D) Water
  • 88. Which company formed a joint venture with Edison in Britain to manufacture and market the incandescent electric lamp?
A) General Electric
B) Westinghouse
C) Ediswan
D) National Electric Lamp Association
  • 89. How many AC-based power stations had Westinghouse built by the end of 1887?
A) 100 AC-based power stations
B) 50 AC-based power stations
C) 121 DC-based stations
D) 68 AC-based power stations
  • 90. What system did Edison invent to reduce the copper requirement for electricity distribution?
A) Two-prong wire system
B) Three-prong wire system
C) Four-prong wire system
D) Single-prong wire system
  • 91. What did Edison test to find the best materials for the carbon microphone?
A) 100 materials
B) 150 materials
C) 50 materials
D) 200 materials
  • 92. Who was the president of the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company impressed by Edison's demonstration?
A) George Westinghouse
B) Spencer Trask
C) Henry Villard
D) J. P. Morgan
  • 93. What was Edison's initial idea for a commercial product using the phonograph?
A) Talking dolls
B) Public address systems
C) Home entertainment systems
D) Portable radios
  • 94. What did Edison's assistant Clarence Dally suffer from due to X-ray exposure?
A) Battery-related injuries
B) Electrical burns
C) Mediastinal cancer
D) Lead poisoning
  • 95. Which material did Edison eventually settle on for the filament of his incandescent lamp?
A) Cotton
B) Hemp
C) Cardboard
D) Bamboo
  • 96. Who did Edison fire in 1914?
A) Edwin S. Porter
B) Thomas Armat
C) Leon Gaumont
D) William Kennedy Laurie Dickson
  • 97. What was the name of the motion picture camera patented by Edison in 1897?
A) Vitascope
B) Kinetograph
C) Kinetophonograph
D) Kinetoscope
  • 98. What was Edison's patent for that is considered the first US patent for an electronic device?
A) Phonograph
B) Electric light
C) Voltage-regulating
D) Tasimeter
  • 99. What was the title of Edison's film that showed the electrocution of an elephant?
A) The Kiss
B) The Great Train Robbery
C) Fred Ott's Sneeze
D) Electrocuting an Elephant
  • 100. Who began working on the motion picture camera with Thomas Edison in 1888?
A) Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki
B) William Kennedy Laurie Dickson
C) Edwin S. Porter
D) Leon Gaumont
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