Thomas Alva Edison is considered to be the greatest inventor of all time. During the course of his lifetime, Edison was awarded more than one thousand three hundred patents- way more than any other person has been awarded in American History. Some of Edison's best-know inventions are the phonograph, automatic telegraphy machine, and a modernized telephone. Edison is known as a genius that could create an amazing arrangement of inventions.
Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847. He was the youngest of seven children. His parents were Samuel and Nancy Edison. When he was seven he moved with his family to port Huron Michigan. There he spent only twelve weeks in a one-room schoolhouse with thirty-nine other students of all ages. His short-tempered teacher lost patience with young Edison's continuous questioning and self-centered behavior. Not knowing the way Thomas' mind worked she said he was mentally unstable or retarded.
English: Light bulb patent application. Photolitho...
Thomas Edison and his early phonograph. Cropped fr...
Historical marker of Edison's birthplaceHis mother hearing this immediately took him out of school and from that point on, home schooled him. There was some evidence that Edison had dyslexia, a disorder that makes reading difficult, but he did learn to read under his mother's teachings. She taught him natural philosophy and other sciences, but he came very interested in chemistry and built a laboratory in the corner of the cellar of the family home. By the time he wan ten he was conducting his own experiments.
Edison was also fantasized with trains and railroads. When he was twelve years old he talked his parent into letting him be a newspapers and candy salesman on the Grand Trunk Railway, which ran between Port Huron and Detroit, Michigan. During layovers in Detroit, Thomas spent his time at the public library. He received permission to use an empty part of the baggage car to set up a small chemistry laboratory. Not long after that, he stared a separate business selling vegetables. Following his vegetable business, he developed a little newspaper called the Weekly Herald. It became the first publication to be typeset, written, and sold on a train.
At about this time, tom got scarlet fever and began to lose his hearing. After that it became nearly impossible for him to obtain knowledge in a controlled educational setting. But in the end learned to use his deafness to enhance his concentration powers. After finally becoming eighty percent deaf in his right ear and completely deaf in the left, the thing he missed most was the sound of singing birds.
In 1860, tomss career of producing and selling newspapers came to an unexpected end, when he and his press were literally thrown off the train by and insensitive associate of the railroad company. Althought upset with the company he continued to visit the station area. One day the station masters child happened to wander onto the tracks in frount of an oncoming boxcar. Thomas leaped into action they both tumbled nearly escaping the oncoming wheels. He and the little boy luckly only were slightly injured. The greatful father offered to teach Tom telegraphy, a way of comunicatimg over a great distance by using coded signals transmitted by wire.
English: Mina Edison, née Mina Miller, second wif...
Thomas Alva Edison photo and signature. 1915. Ру...
Thomas Alva Edison