Thomas Edison — Prolific Inventor, Commercialization Genius

**Thomas Alva Edison** was not the greatest inventor of the Industrial Revolution — that distinction arguably belongs to Tesla. He was something more consequential: the greatest commercializer of invention in history, the man who built the system that turned ideas into products, products into industries, and industries into the infrastructure of modern life. Born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, Edison was largely home-schooled by his mother after being expelled from school (his teacher called him "addled"), lost most of his hearing as a child, and turned what might have been disabilities into advantages — his deafness made him an intense focuser, and his lack of formal education freed him from the theoretical constraints that limited university-trained scientists.