Who Was Thomas Alva Edison?By: Margaret Frith, Who HQ Illustrator: John O'Brien Series: Who Was? One day in 1882, Thomas Edison flipped a switch that lit up lower Manhattan with incandescent light and changed the way people live ever after. The electric light bulb was only one of thousands of Edisons inventions, which include the phonograph and the kinetoscope, an early precursor to the movie camera. As a boy, observing a robin catch a worm and then take flight, he fed a