Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor born in 1847 in Ohio. After working as a telegraph operator as a youth, he went on to establish America's first industrial research lab, known as Menlo Park Laboratory, where he invented many devices including the phonograph and incandescent light bulb. Through his innovations with electric power generation at Menlo Park in the late 1870s and early 1880s, Edison emerged as a leading inventor and helped pioneer mass-produced electric lighting and the worldwide commercialization of electricity.