Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison

1847-1931

Thomas Alva Edison is one of Americas most famous inventors. He invented the sound recording device, motion picture, and the light bulb. Thomas Edison was an amazing man who accomplished many historically important successes during his lifetime. Edison obtained 1,o93 United States Patents in telegraphy, phonography, electric lighting and photography. Some of the inventions that Edison Discovered were improvements of other inventions, some were things that he invented himself, some things with other peoples help and some he just stumbled onto. Edison was most proud of his invention of the phonography. Edison tried to invent things that everyone could use. Edison created the first invention factory to invent things.

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio in February 11, 1847 and died on October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison was the seventh and last child of Samuel and Nancy Edison. His parents had no special background. His mother was a former school teacher and his father was a jack-of-all trades. He ran grocery stores to real estate to carpenting. Edison was a very curios child who asked lots of questions. His brother's and sister's were Marion, William, Calie, Harriet, Samuel, and Eliza.

At the age of seven Edison's family moved to Port Haron, Michigan. This is were Edison Began School. After 3 months of going to school Edison's teacher consider him a dull student. Edison's mom pulled him out of school and starting to teach him herself at home. His parents didn't force him to learn things that he didn't enjoy. They encouraged him to learn on his own. They were dedicated in teaching him. They wanted him to learn about things that interested him most. When he was nine years old his mom gave him a elementary science book. It explained how to chemistry experiments at home. Edison did every experiment in the book. Soon he loved chemistry and started spending all of his spare time and money buying and doing chemistry experiments. At the age of ten he had a science lab in his basement. His parents didn't like this. He spent to much time doing this.

Edison was always out working to help support his family and for his experiments. Edison got his first job at the age of twelve as a train boy on the Grand Trunk Railway. Edison sold newspapers and candy to passengers. He also printed a newspaper every week called the Grand Trunk Herald. After about a year he got permission to move his science labatory to an empty train car. One day the train jerked really hard spilling chemicals everywhere and catching them on fire. The train conductor through him off the train. Then he got a job at the train station selling newspapers. Edison had many ear problems throughout his childhood. When he was fifteen he was grabed by the ear really hard and almost became totally deaf. It could of been fixed with an operation but, he would rather be deaf. It would help him concentrate he said. He started reading a lot after this, he went through shelf by shelf reading every book in the Detriot Free Library. He like reading the science books the best. After reading lots of books he realized his future would be in finding ways to make our lives better instead of just learning how something works.

One day while Edison was selling newspapers at the train station something happened that changed his life forever. Edison saved the life of a station officials child. The child had fell onto the tracks of an oncoming train. The child's dad thanked Edison by teaching him how to use the telegraph. This is were it all began, after this Edison started inventing and discovering things all the time.

Edison made a telegraph out of scrap metal to practice the morse code. At the age of sixteen he moved to Toronto, Canada to be a telegraph assistant. His job was to report to Toronto every hour by telegraph signal. He made a transmitter and receiver

for the automatic telegraph.