Thomas Alva Edison (1847 - 1931). Considered by many as one of the greatest inventors in history, he was born in Milan, Ohio. He obtained patents in such fields as telegraphy, phonography, electric lighting and photography. In 1882, he designed the first hydroelectric plant in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1879, he and Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (in England) simultaneously invented similar carbon filament incandescent light bulbs. Edison improved upon Swan's design and by the end of 1880 had produced a 16-watt light bulb that would last for 1500 hours. As a boy, Edison had only three months of formal schooling. He was taught at home by his mother, a former teacher. He changed the lives of millions of people with such inventions as the electric light bulb and the phonograph. In his lifetime, he patented 1,093 inventions. After the death of his first wife, he married again. He had six children, three by each wife. He valued long, hard work. One of his famous sayings was "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."

Count Alessandro Volta (1745 - 1827). Born in Como, Italy, into a noble family, Count Volta was a physicist and pioneer in the study of electricity. "Volt," named after Count Volta, is a unit of electric potential and electromotive force equal to 1.00034 times the International System unit. Count Volta also made discoveries in electrostatics, meteorology and pneumatics.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955). Born in Ulm, Würelemberg, Germany, he became an American theoretical physicist. He explained the Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect; contributed to the theory of atomic spectra, and formulated the theories of special and general relativity. He enjoyed classical music and played the violin. He supported world government, believing that peace among nations could be maintained in the atomic age only by bringing all people together under a system of world law. In 1933, he joined the staff of the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He accepted this position for life, living there until his death. Einstein is probably familiar to most people for his mathematical equation about the nature of energy, E = MC2.

Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867). Born to a poor family in London, he was extremely curious, questioning everything. He felt an urgent need to know more. At age 13, he became an errand boy for a bookbinding shop in London. He read every book that he bound, and decided that one day he would write a book of his own. He became interested in the concept of energy, or more specifically, force. Because of his early reading and experiments with the idea of force, he was able to make important discoveries in electricity later in life. He eventually became a chemist and physicist. He isolated benzene (a clear, colorless, flammable liquid derived from petroleum and used to manufacture motor fuels). He performed experiments demonstrating discovery of electromagnetic induction. This discovery paved the way for changing mechanical energy into electrical energy.