1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Edison, Thomas Alva

EDISON, THOMAS ALVA (1847–), American inventor (see 8.946), made great progress after 1910 in perfecting a battery of large storage capacity for propelling vehicles. This proved of great service, for example, in moving baggage trucks at railway stations. He hoped to produce, with Henry Ford, an automobile so propelled. He was specially interested in the cinema, and early in 1913 displayed the first talking pictures, produced by synchronizing the motion-picture and the phonograph. Although as yet unperfected, the inventor believed that such pictures were destined largely to replace text-books in the schools. On the outbreak of the World War he urged "potential preparedness" through mobilizing facilities for research in America, on the ground that "future soldiers will be machinists." In 1915 he was awarded a Nobel prize for physics and the same year was made president of the Naval Consulting Board. After America's entrance into the World War he was in charge of several plants manufacturing chemicals used in warfare. In 1916 he announced a portable searchlight, fed by a storage battery, far more powerful than the acetylene lamp, for use amid smoke in mine rescues, train wrecks, etc.