Born Here: Thomas Edison and America's 250th

As the United States marks 250 years this Fourth of July, the nation has been looking back at the people who built its future. One name keeps rising to the top, and his story begins in a small brick house in Milan, Ohio.

This year, recognition for Thomas Edison has come from nearly every corner of American public life.

Forbes named him the greatest historic innovator of the last 250 years. To launch its yearlong celebration of the country's 250th birthday, Forbes built an entire ranking around the figure it called the quintessential American innovator, and placed Edison at number one. Not simply an inventor, but the model for turning ideas into industries: recorded sound, the practical electric light, motion pictures, and the first true research laboratory.

The White House honored his birthday. This past February, an official America 250 presidential message marked what would have been Edison's 179th birthday, recognizing a life that reshaped how the world lights its homes, records its music, and tells its stories.

The Smithsonian placed his light bulb at the center of its anniversary exhibit, holding it up as a symbol of American progress. It is hard to find a better one.

He was selected for the National Garden of American Heroes, taking his place among the figures the nation is choosing to honor for the milestone.

His life and legacy have also been featured this year by the Library of Congress, by HISTORY, and in Fox News' America 250 series.

Every one of these tributes traces back to the same address.

On February 11, 1847, Thomas Alva Edison was born in a brick cottage at 9 Edison Drive in Milan, Ohio. He would go on to hold 1,093 United States patents and earn the name the Wizard of Menlo Park. But before the phonograph, before the light that changed the world, before any of it, there was a schoolteacher's son in a small Ohio canal town.

That house still stands. It is our museum, preserved by the Edison Birthplace Association and open to visitors today. You can walk through the rooms where his story began, in the house the country's most celebrated innovator first called home.

Two and a half centuries of American ingenuity, and the standard still starts here.

Plan your visit this summer at tomedison.org.