1900: West Orange, New Jersey Edison
Through his inventions the new century receives light and music. Everyday life bears the seal of Thomas Alva Edison. His electric lamp illumines the nights and his phonograph preserves and diffuses the voices of the world, no longer to be lost. People talk by telephone thanks to the microphone he has added to Bell's invention, and pictures move by virtue of the projecting apparatus with which he completed the work of the Lumihre brothers. In the patent office they clutch their heads when they see him coming. Not for a single moment has this multiplier of human powers stopped inventing, a tireless creator since that distant time when he sold newspapers on trains, and one fine day decided he could make them as well as sell them - then set his hand to the task. Eduardo Galeano 'Century of the Wind'
