Theodore M. Edison; Last Surviving Child of Inventor

Theodore M. Edison, 94, the last surviving child of Thomas Alva Edison and an inventor in his own right. After his father died in 1931, Theodore Edison took over the Edison laboratories in West Orange, N.J. There the son of the man who invented the phonograph, microphone and incandescent electric light bulb obtained a patent in his own name, for a device that eliminated vibration in machinery. He also invented a mapping instrument and became an environmentalist, battling in the 1950s to preserve a stand of bald cypress trees in southwest Florida. In West Orange on Tuesday.