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Thomas Alvn Eorson L uq A Brief Biography THoMAS Alvn EorsoN l GODFATHER OF INDUSTRY THOMAS AIVN EOISON (( Rur the man whose clothes were always wrinkted, of I-l whs5s hair was always tousled and who fre- The Story quently lacked a shave probably did more than any other one man to influence the industrial civi- a Great American lization in which we live. To him we owe the phonograph and motion picture which spice hours of leisure; the universal electric motor and the f or**r"tNc from Holland, the Edison family nickel-iron-alkaline storage battery with their I orisinallv landed in Elizabethport, New Jer- numberless commercial uses; the magnetic ore J times, they farmed separator, the fluorescent lamp, the basic principles iey, about 1730. In Colonial of modern electronics. Medicine thanks him for a large tract of land not far from West Orange' the fluoroscope, which he left to the public domain New Jersey, where Thomas A. Edison made his without patent. Chemical research follows the field home some 160 years later. Their fortunes fluc- he opened in his work on coaltar derivatives, syn- politics. Like many well-to-do thetic carbolic acid, and a source of natural rub- tuated witli their ber that can be grown in the United States. His landowners of that time, John Edison, a great- greatest contribution, perhaps, was the incandes- grandfather of the inventor, remained a Loyalist cent lamp-the germ from which the sprouted during the revolution, suffered imprisonment and great power utility systems of our day . sentence of execution from which he Although his formal education stopped at the was under age of 12, his whole life was consumed by a pas- was saved only through the eftorts of his own sion for self-education, and he was a moving and his wife's prominent Whig relatives' His force behind the establishment a great scientific of lands were confiscated, however, and the family journal. The number of his patents-l lOO-far to Nova Scotia, where they remained exceeds that of any other inventor. And the 2500 migratetl notebooks in which he recorded the progress of until l8ll, when they moved to Vienna, On- thousands of experiments are still being gleaned tario. Edison's grandfather, Captain Samuel Edi- of unused material. Once, asked in what his inter- son, served with the British in the War of l8 12. ests lay, Edison smilingly responded, 'Everything.' In Ontario. Edison's father, another Samuel, If we ask ourselves where the fruits of his Iife are seen, we might well answer, 'Everywhere."' met and married Nancy Elliott, schoolteacher and daughter of a minister whose family had From Nation's Heritage originally come from Connecticut where her the Edison home, and his public spanking in the grandfather Ebenezer Elliott had served as a cap_ torvn square after he accidentally had set fire tain in Washington's arrny. to his father's barn. The younger Samuel now became involved in When he was seven years old, his family another political struggle-the much later and moved again; this time to Port Huron, Michigan' unsuccessful Canadian counterpart of the Ameri_ But, unlike their earlier migrations by wagon, can Revolution known as the papineau_Mac_ the trip was made by railroad train and lake Kenzie Rebellion. Upon the failure of this move- schooner. ment, he was forced to escape across the border Edison's formal schooling was of short dura- to the United States, and after innumerable dan- tion and of little value to him. To use his own gers and hardships, finally reached the town of words, he "was usually at the foot of the class." Milan, Ohio, where he decided to settle. His teacher did not have the patience to coPe with so active and inquisitive a mind, so his Thomas Ectisorr's Harly Days mother withdrew him from school and capably The brick cottage in which Thomas Alva Edi_ undertook the task of his education herself. In son was born on February ll, 1947, still stands spite of his lack of formal schooling, Edison rec- in Milan, Ohio. Its humble size and simple de_ ognized the great worth of education and, in his sign serve as a constant reminder that in Amer- later years, sponsored the famous Edison schol- ica, a humble beginning does not hamper the rise arships for outstanding high school graduates to success. who were selected each year through a national Even as a boy of pre-school age,...Al', Edison contest. was extraordinarily inquisitive; he wanted to find out things for himself. The story is told of how Young Totn's First Laboratory he tried-unsuccessfully-to solve the mystery Most of Edison's vast knowledge was acquired of hatching eggs by sitting. on them, himself, in through independent study and training. At the his brother-in-law's barn. Among other tales of age of eleven, for example, he had his own chem- his youth in Milan are *ris narrow escape from ical laboratory in the cellar of his Port Huron drowning in the barge canal that ran alongside home and had read such books as Gibbon's "De- 2 cline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Sears' "History of the World," Burton's "Anatomy of FTTX Melancholy," and the "Dictionary of Sciences." At twelve, his parents permitted him to take a job as newsboy and candy "butcher" on the train of the Grand Trunk Railroad running from Port Huron to Detroit. In this, his first job, Edi- son exhibited a knack for business and an am- bition that far exceeded that of the average boy of his years. He maintained a chemical labora- tory in the train's baggage car, which also served to house a printing press on which young Edison ran off copies of "The Weekly Herald," the first newspaper ever edited, published and printed aboard a moving train. In addition, he became \ ;: a middle-man for fresh vegetables and fruit, buy- LJrI ing from the farmers along the route and selling to Detroit markets. When only thirteen years old, he was earning *l several [ffi dollars a day, a tidy sum even for a man "il in that period. Already he was putting into prac- M\ tice a theory followed throughout his life-that ,J hard work and sound thinking recognize no sub- w."4: stitutes. At fourteen, young Tom was selling candy and One of the most widely known stories about newspapers on a train plying between his Edison is the one which attributes his deafness hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, and Detroit. to a quick-tempered trainman who soundly Simultaneously, he was learning telegraphy, in which he scored his earliest successes boxed his ears when Edison's traveling labora- the field as an inventor, and experimenting in his own chemistry laboratory. 4 b tory caused a fire to break out in the baggage car. Only part of the tale is true: the fire broke out and the trainman boxed his ears, but Edison himself never believed his deafness resulted from this incident. He traced it to a later occ'asion when another trainman thoughtlessly picked him up by the ears to help him aboard a train that was pulling out of a station. It was during this period that a dramatic in- W cident occurred which altered the entire course w' of Edison's career and which, therefore, may well have also altered the course of world progress. At Mt. Clemens, Michigan, the young Edison ffi risked his own life to save the station agent's little boy from death under a moving freight car. The grateful father taught him telegraphy as a re_ ward. Edison's association with telegraphy brought to a climax his interest in electricity _a ru word with which the name of Edison was to be- ffi come inseparably associated-and led him into qr-b4{ studies and expenments which *ju resulted in some 7M of the world's greatest rnventions. A Telegrapher at Seventeen Edison was atthe White House in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate one of his early tinfoil Edison's skill as a sender and receiver earned phonographs to President Rutrerford B. Hayes him a job as a regular telegrapher on the Grand when this photograph was taken in April of Trunk line at Stratford Junction, Ontario, when 1878. Edison considered the phonograph his only seventeen years of age. His creative imag- favorite invention. 6 ination, however, proved his downfall in this in- versal Stock Printer. For this device he received stance. He was fired when a supervisor happened $40,000, the first money an invention brought across the secret of one of the young inventor's him. "report- creations-a device for automatically To Edison, the mere possession of money ing in" on the wire in Morse code every hour, meant nothing; its only value rested in its ability when, in actuality, Edison was napping to make to provide the tools and equipment necessary for up for sleep lost in pursuing his studies. further work and experiment. With the $40,000 As a telegrapher, Edison travelled throughout he opened a factory in Newark, New Jersey, in the middle west,always studying and experiment- 1870, where he manufactured stock tickers and ing to improve the crude telegraph apparatus of devoted his energies to invention. the era. Turning eastward, Edison went to Bos- By the time he was twenty-three, his estab- ton where he went to work for Western Union lished methods of hard work and sound thinking as an operator. In his spare time, he created his had catapulted him to a point on the road to first invention to be patented-a machine for success rarely attained by one so young.
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