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