---
title: "Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937) - IVU - International Vegetarian Union"
description: "Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937): See also: The Vegetarian Museum (USA) U.S. He patented more than a thousand inventions, including the phonograph, the incandescent electric lamp, the microphone and the kinetoscope."
url: "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=article&id=2572:history-northam20a-edison&catid=68"
date: "2026-11-06T00:03:58+00:00"
language: "en-GB"
---

#  Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937)

![Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937)](https://ivu.org/images/legacy/history/banners/history-northam20a-edison.png) See also:
 [The Vegetarian
 Museum](http://www.vegetarianmuseum.com/)
 (USA) U.S. inventor. He patented more than a thousand inventions, including the phonograph, the incandescent electric lamp, the microphone and the kinetoscope.

From the *Vegetarian Messenger* (the magazine of the Vegetarian Society of Great Brtiain), June 1908:

**Mr. Edison a Vegetarian.** - During the recent illness, from mastoiditis, of Mr. Thos. Alva Edison, the famous inventor ceased using meat and went for a thorough course of vegetarianism. Mr. Edison was so pleased with the change of diet that, now he has regained his normal health, he continues to renounce meat in all it's forms.

*- we have no information at this time as to whether he continued with vegetarianism.*

A note on this archive. The history section of this website is drawn from a body of legacy content originally compiled by John Davis, former manager of the International Vegetarian Union. It represents his curation of historical material, and in places includes passages written by him directly.

Over the years, the IVU website has migrated between several different hosting servers. In the course of these migrations, a number of PDF files were unfortunately lost, and **some links to PDF documents may no longer function**. Where this is the case, we have chosen to leave the original link text in place, as it may itself carry information of historical value.

- Hits: 1826

## Schema

```json
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=article&id=2572:history-northam20a-edison&catid=68","url":"https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=article&id=2572:history-northam20a-edison&catid=68","name":"Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937)","inLanguage":"en","isPartOf":[{"@id":"https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html#archive"},{"@id":"https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=article&id=2573:history-northam20a-einstein&catid=68"}],"publisher":{"@id":"https://ivu.org/#organization"},"description":"See also: The Vegetarian Museum (USA) U.S. inventor. He patented more than a thousand inventions, including the phonograph, the incandescent electric lamp, the microphone and the kinetoscope."}]}
```

```json
{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
    "itemListElement": [
        {
            "@type": "ListItem",
            "position": 1,
            "name": "Home",
            "item": "https://ivu.org"
        },
        {
            "@type": "ListItem",
            "position": 2,
            "name": "History of IVU",
            "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html"
        },
        {
            "@type": "ListItem",
            "position": 3,
            "name": "History of the Vegetarian Societies",
            "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=category&id=46"
        },
        {
            "@type": "ListItem",
            "position": 4,
            "name": "history",
            "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=category&id=47"
        },
        {
            "@type": "ListItem",
            "position": 5,
            "name": "northam20a",
            "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=category&id=68"
        },
        {
            "@type": "ListItem",
            "position": 6,
            "name": "Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937)",
            "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html"
        }
    ]
}
```

```json
{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Article",
    "mainEntityOfPage": {
        "@type": "WebPage",
        "@id": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html"
    },
    "headline": "Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937)",
    "description": "Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1937): See also: The Vegetarian Museum (USA) U.S. He patented more than a thousand inventions, including the phonograph, the incandescent electric lamp, the microphone and the kinetoscope.",
    "publisher": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "International Vegetarian Union",
        "logo": {
            "@type": "ImageObject",
            "url": "https://ivu.org/images/logos/logo-ivu-tranparent-background.png"
        }
    },
    "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": "Alex Fernandes",
        "url": "https://ivu.org/international-council.html"
    },
    "datePublished": "2026-10-16T00:00:16+00:00",
    "dateCreated": "2026-05-29T01:55:21+00:00",
    "dateModified": "2026-10-08T00:53:32+00:00"
}
```