Thomas Alva Edison was called Alva, or Al by his family. He was a very
curious child. He was always asking questions. Even his mother, who
had once been a schoolteacher could not answer all his questions. He
would experiment to try to find the answers. Once he tried to hatch some
eggs by sitting on them. Another time he accidently burned down the
family's barn.
The teacher told someone she thought there was something
wrong with Alva; that he was "addled".*
He told his mother and they
took him out of the school. He only went to school for 3 months in
his whole life. Afterwards, he was taught at home.
He wanted to experiment. To make money for his experiments, he went to
work at age 12 selling newspapers and candy on a train. When he had
some spare time on the train, he would do experiments in the baggage car.
When he was 16 he went to work for the telegraph* office sending messages.
He became nearly deaf due to an injury to his ears. He later said he
didn't mind being deaf because it helped him to concentrate.
When he was 22 years old he went to New York. He only had $1 in his pocket.
He hunted for a job during the day, and at night he slept in the basement
of a gold company. He watched everything around him very closely.
Some equipment broke down and Edison was able to fix it because he had
been watching it work before he went to sleep each night. The owners
gave him a job. He improved the machine so much the company
paid him $40,000 for his invention. He started the American Telegraph
Works in New Jersey.
He built a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was here with his
employees he made many of his inventions. He would work night after
night, and sometimes he would fall asleep at his workbench. His wife
wouldn't see him for days at a time.
He and his team worked to make a light bulb which would burn for a
long time without burning out. They tried 1,500 materials and nothing
worked well. Finally he tried a new material in the filament* that
burned nearly 200 hours.
After he had made the light bulb, he worked to make a power system
so people could use the bulb. In 1882 he flipped a switch and
85 houses in New York City had electric lights for the first time.
Thomas Edison was probably the world's greatest inventor. He had a
patent on 1,093 inventions. In addition to the electric light, he also
invented the phonograph,* a camera to take motion pictures, a cement mixer,
the automatic* telegraph, and he improved
Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.
This biography by Patsy Stevens, a retired teacher, was written in 2001.