The Man Versus The Myth:   By the age of 15, due to his unique ability to get fired for planning experiments and inventions in his head while on the job, Edison became an itenerant Western Union Tellegrapher-before moving to New York to start his own workshop. In other words he was fired, once again. The telegraph would ultimately inspire many of his first patented inventions. In 1874, at the age of 27, he invented the 'quadriplex telegraph', which allowed telegraphers to send four messages simultaineously, increasing the industry's efficiency without requiring the construction of new telegraph lines.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     He later invented the longer lasting light bulb, not the first, in 1878. He had moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876. The rural area was the perfect site for a new kind of laboratory that reflected its owner's inventive, entrepreneurial spirit: a research and development facility where Edison and his "muckers," as he called them, could build anything their imagination conjured.  Edison continued to improve on the telegraph, and as he worked on a machine that could record telegraphic messages, he wondered if it could record sound too.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             He created a machine that translated the vibrations produced by speech into indentations on a piece of paper. In 1877, now 30, Edison spoke the first two lines of "Mary had a little lamb" into the device and played it back using a hand crank. He had just invented what he called 'The Edison Speaking Phonograph'. That same year, Edison developed an improved microphone transmitter, helping refine the telephone. Edison's phonograph was groundbreaking, but it was primarily seen as a novelty.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            He then moved on to another world-changing concept: the incandescent light bulb.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Finally in 1879, after years of obsessively improving on the concept of light bulbs, he demonstrated a bulb that could last a record-breaking 14.5 hours. When people heard about the bulb, they flocked to Menlo Park, and hundreds of them viewed the laboratory-now brilliant with electric light-in a public demonstration on December 31, 1879. The New York Herald called it " the light of the future." Edison soon established an electric utility and worked toward innovations that would make electric light even more accessible. Edison's system though relied on Direct Current (DC). He believed that Alternating Current (AC) was bad for peoples' health.