Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He spent just three months in school before his mother began educating him at home (he would later say, "My mother was the making of me."). Arguably one of the greatest inventors of the modern era, Edison received the first of his 1,096 U.S. patents for an electric vote recorder in 1868 when he was just 21. Edison's "invention factories" produced machines and ideas in great volume and variety. Among the creations credited to Edison and his scientists were the phonograph, electric lights, and the motion picture camera as well as improved telegraphs and telephones. His Congressional Medal noted that Edison "...illuminated the path of progress by his inventions."