Short answers, pulled from the story.
Deism holds that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a creator God, without reliance on scripture, prophecy, or revelation. Unlike classical theism, some Deists view God as no longer intervening after creating the universe, while theists generally believe in an active, personal God who continues to interact with humanity.
A majority of the Founding Fathers were influenced by Deism to varying degrees, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams, Ethan Allen, Gouverneur Morris, Hugh Williamson, Cornelius Harnett, and possibly Alexander Hamilton. Franklin described himself as "a thorough Deist" in his Autobiography, while Jefferson generally preferred the label Unitarian.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury wrote the first major statement of Deism in English literature, a book called De Veritate, published in 1624. The work laid out five universally accepted religious truths Herbert called Common Notions, including that there is one Supreme God and that God dispenses rewards and punishments in this life and after it.
The Cult of the Supreme Being was a state religion briefly established during the French Revolution based on Maximilien Robespierre's Deistic theological views. It replaced both the Catholic Church and the rival atheistic Cult of Reason, but lasted just under three months. More than five hundred French Revolutionaries were Deists, and over seventy of them believed God had miraculously helped the Revolution win military victories.
Peter Gay places the beginning of Deism's decline as a recognizable movement in the 1730s. Contributing factors included David Hume's argument in his 1757 Natural History of Religion that religion originated in fear rather than reason, Immanuel Kant's questioning of reason's capacity to address metaphysics, the violence of the French Revolution, and the rise of Christian revivalist movements such as Pietism and Methodism.
Edison defended Thomas Paine's scientific Deism and stated in a private letter, "I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt." In a New York Times Magazine interview on the 2nd of October 1910, he described nature as the supreme intelligence rather than the personal God of organized religion.