Thomas Robins (inventor) Thomas Robins (inventor) Thomas Robins, Jr. (September 1, 1868 – November 4, 1957) was an American inventor and manufacturer. He was born in September 1, 1868, in West Point, New York to Thomas Robins, Sr. He attended Princeton University. In 1891 he began work on a conveyor belt for carrying coal and ore for Thomas Edison and his Edison Ore-Milling Company in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. His conveyor belt received the grand prize at the Paris Exposition in 1900, and first prizes at the Pan-American Exposition and Saint Louis Exposition. Based on his invention he started the Robins Conveying Belt Company
Thomas Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application. Edison's name is registered on 1,093 patents. Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him wider notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder. Despite its limited sound quality and that