Tesla claimed that Edison had promised him $ 50, 000 if he succeeded in making improvements to his DC generation plants.

Some sources have claimed that despite their scientific contributions, neither was given the award because of their animosity toward each other ; that each sought to minimize the other's achievements and right to win the award ; that both refused ever to accept the award if the other received it first ; and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it ( although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1915, and Tesla did receive one bid out of 38 in 1937 ).

Thomas Edison is claimed to have attended.

Though Swan had beaten him to this goal, Edison obtained patents in America for a fairly direct copy of the Swan light, and started an advertising campaign that claimed that he was the real inventor.

One of these actions regarded the incandescent bulb, for which Maxim claimed that Edison was credited by means of his better understanding of patenting law ( though in England Joseph Wilson Swan had already obtained the first patent in 1878 ).

He claimed an employee of his ( Maxim's ) had falsely patented the invention under his own name, and that Edison proved the employee's claim to be false, knowing that patent law would mean the invention would become public property, allowing Edison to manufacture the lightbulb without crediting Maxim as the true inventor.

The defense of these companies claimed the Edison patent was void because of the same invention of Henry Goebel 25 years earlier ( Goebel-Defense ).

Edison claimed the nickel – iron design to be, " far superior to batteries using lead plates and acid " ( lead – acid battery ).

Writer and film director David J. Burke claimed that the name " Edison " was derived from its common association with the inventor and business leader Thomas Edison, which led to thoughts of " electricity, power and industry.

Thomas Edison obtained an exclusive license to the Canadian patent.

They also granted Edison an exclusive licence to their equivalent Canadian patent.

Rachmaninoff, in particular, became one of the first composer-performers to record extensively ; he first made several recordings for Thomas Edison in 1919, then became an exclusive Victor artist from 1920 to 1942.

After a few experimental run-throughs, record producer Fred Gaisberg signed Dawson to an exclusive contract to cut discs for the Gramophone Company ( the predecessor of HMV / EMI ) in 1906 ; he continued, however, to record on cylinders for Edison until that company closed its London studios not long before World War I erupted.

In 1907, Insull's two companies formally merged to create the Commonwealth Edison Co. As more people became connected to the electric grid, Insull's company, which had an exclusive franchise from the city, grew steadily.

* 1892 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.

* 1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

Edison was awarded a patent for this invention in 1884.

Since there was no apparent practical use for such a device at the time, the patent application was most likely simply a precaution in case someone else did find a use for the so-called Edison effect.

Edison, however, never attempted to patent these instruments on the other side of the Atlantic, since they relied so greatly on previous experiments and innovations from Britain and Europe.

* 1931 – Thomas Edison submits his last patent application.

The Edison Manufacturing Company's patent lawsuits against each of its domestic competitors crippled the American film industry, reducing American production mainly to two companies: Edison and Biograph, which used a different camera design.

Edison sued to gain control of the patent ; however, after a federal court upheld the validity of the patent in 1907, Edison began negotiation with Biograph in May 1908 to reorganize the Edison licensing system.

Thomas Edison received US patent 180, 857 for " Autographic Printing " on August 8, 1876.

In 1880 Edison obtained a further patent, US 224, 665: " Method of Preparing Autographic Stencils for Printing ", which covered the making of stencils using a file plate, a grooved metal plate on which the stencil was placed which perforated the stencil when written on with a blunt metal stylus.

* 1888 – Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph ( the first movie ).

Bell had married Hubbard's daughter Mabel in 1879 while Hubbard was president of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., and his organization, which had purchased the Edison patent, was financially troubled because people did not want to buy a machine which seldom worked well and proved difficult for the average person to operate.

In 1904, The U. S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio, possibly influenced by Marconi's financial backers in the States, who included Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie.

In Britain, Joseph Swan had been able to obtain a patent on the incandescent lamp ; though Edison had already been making successful lamps for some time, his patent application was incompletely prepared and failed.

After protracted patent litigation, in 1892 a federal court ruled that Edison and not Emile Berliner was the inventor of the carbon microphone.

Edison continued to improve this design and by November 4, 1879, filed for U. S. patent 223, 898 ( granted on January 27, 1880 ) for an electric lamp using " a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires ".

Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including " cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways ", it was not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized bamboo filament that could last over 1, 200 hours.

He then created the North American Phonograph Company to consolidate the national sales rights of both the Graphophone and the Edison Speaking Phonograph.

George Westinghouse's company bought Philip Diehl's competing induction lamp patent rights ( 1882 ) for $ 25, 000, forcing the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights and lowering the price of the electric lamp.

Although George Westinghouse had bought Gaulard and Gibbs ' patents in 1885, the Edison Electric Light Company held an option on the U. S. rights for the Z. B. D.

Swan, who was less interested in making money from the invention, agreed that Edison could sell the lights in America while he retained the rights in Britain.

The rights to the system had been acquired by Raff and Gammon, who redubbed it the Vitascope and arranged with Edison to present himself as its creator.

Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Commission, 447 U. S. 530 ( 1980 ), was a United States Supreme Court decision addressing the free speech rights of public utility corporations under the First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth.

Armat subsequently joined Thomas Edison, to whom he sold the rights to market the projector under the name Vitascope.

They negotiated with Armat to purchase rights to the Phantoscope and approached Edison for his approval.

After the success of " Love Grows ", Burrows left to pursue other projects, and Macaulay sacked the band as they could not play live, and as he owned the rights to the Edison Lighthouse name, assembled another group of musicians to record under the name.

He then created the North American Phonograph Company in 1888 to consolidate the national sales rights of both the Graphophone and the Edison Speaking Phonograph.

Cayton even acquired rights to the first boxing film ever made, a sparring session filmed by Thomas Edison in 1894.