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 often credited with establishing the first industrial research laboratory. Edison was raised in the American midwest and early in his career he worked as a telegraph operator, which inspired some of his earliest inventions. In 1876, he established his first laboratory facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where many of his early inventions would be developed. He would later establish a botanic laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida in collaboration with businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, and a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey that featured the world's first film studio, the Black Maria. He was a prolific inventor, holding