During his lifetime Thomas Alva Edison patented over 1000 inventions. At the age of seventeen, he built the first telegraph transmitter capable of sending more than one message at a time. In 1876, he invented the phonograph, the world's first machine for recording sounds. It transformed sound vibrations into a pattern of grooves on a cylinder, and was the forerunner of our modern recording industry. Another of Edison's great inventions was the light bulb, in 1878, which he developed at the same time as Joseph Swan's.
