Edison Award Edison Award The Edison Award is an annual Dutch music prize awarded for outstanding achievements in the music industry. It is one of the oldest music awards in the world, having been presented since 1960. The first Edisons — named after the inventor of the phonograph, Thomas Alva Edison — were awarded in October 1960 at the inaugural "Grand Gala du Disque", held at the Kurhaus hall in the coastal resort of Scheveningen. The broadcast, which was a joint venture of TV broadcaster AVRO and the Netherlands' major record companies, featured dozens of acts and went on for hours. In
Thomas Edison depression and ill health, worked at several menial jobs, but by 1931 (towards the end of his life) he would obtain a role in the Edison company, thanks to the intervention of his brother. Historian Paul Israel has characterized Edison as a "freethinker". Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason". Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity." In 1878, Edison joined the Theosophical Society in New