Edison american wizard sample

Alva Edison American Wizard CRICKET MEDIA... Alva Edison American Wizard CRICKET MEDIA... • Contents •Introduction Chapter One: A Boy Who Couldn’t Learn Chapter Two: Edison’s Gallery o

Alva

Edison

American

Wizard

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Alva

Edison

American

Wizard

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• Contents •

Introduction Chapter One: A Boy Who Couldn’t Learn Chapter Two: Edison’s Gallery of Inventions Chapter Three: Edison, Family Man

Chapter Four: The Idea Business

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Chapter Five: Edison’s Baby

Chapter Six: A Brilliant Idea

Chapter Seven: Battle of the Currents

Chapter Eight: The Birth of Motion Pictures Chapter Nine: The Four Vagabonds

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Chapter Ten: Light’s Golden Jubilee

Chapter Eleven: Final Days

Chapter Twelve: Keeping History Alive

For Further Exploration

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I ntroductIon

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give

oth-ers I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent ”

—Thomas Edison

the lIght bulb, the phonograph, and motion pictures: These are some of the most famous inventions ever, and things

we can’t even imagine living without But they are just part of a long list of the inventions and patents of Thomas Alva Edison During his lifetime he would also experiment with cement houses, making rubber from goldenrod plants, extract-ing iron ore from sand, and creatextract-ing a long-lastextract-ing battery for electric cars And that’s just the short list from a longer list of innovations Edison worked long hours, with little sleep, kept hundreds of pages of notebooks with ideas, and never stopped inventing until his death And he did all of this despite the fact that he was almost totally deaf and had been told as a child that there was something wrong with his brain

Edison once said that “the most important way to succeed is always to try one more time,” and indeed he lived by this motto throughout his entire life Thanks to his philosophy, we have many of the inventions that we can’t even imagine living without

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c hapter o ne

A Boy Who Couldn’t leArn

hIs teacher called hIm “addled” and said that he had something wrong with his brain and would never be able to learn It was true that young Thomas Alva Edison didn’t want to sit still in his one-room schoolhouse classroom and learn the way that the other students learned He would rather draw in his notebook instead of copying down assignments

He had more questions than the teacher wanted to answer, and he didn’t like to sit still To make things worse, young Little

Al (short for Alva, as his parents called him) was often sick and was already losing his hearing, which made it even harder for him to pay attention in the classroom Mr Crawford, his teacher, made fun of him and often sent him to sit in the corner

as a punishment

For many kids, this would have turned them off from learning But young Thomas Edison, who had been born on Febru-ary 11, 1847, was no ordinFebru-ary kid His mother, Nancy, saw this clearly, and when Al came home in tears, telling her what the teacher had said about his ability to learn, she became very, very angry A former schoolteacher herself, she pulled him out

of Mr Crawford’s school and decided that she would teach him herself, at home As Edison later said, “My mother was the making of me She was so true, so sure of me.”

Suddenly the boy who couldn’t learn was devouring books on his own, as fast as he could read them, and then using his curiosity and energy to explore the places around his home in Port Huron, Michigan There were so many questions in his head that young Edison wanted to answer He became interested in science and machines, and how the world worked He wondered if eating like a bird would make it possible for him to fly, so he tried eating a concoction of mashed-up worms… only to end up with nothing more than an upset stomach He collected so many things, such as animal bones and feathers,

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that his mother finally urged him to set up his own laboratory in the basement He built little machines, such as cannon and water mills, and experimented with chemicals, even though his mother warned him about the dangers of mixing them

Al was restless, though, and soon he needed even more distractions to keep him occupied His home was just a few blocks away from the Port Huron train station, and the trains that came and went all day long fascinated Al Eventually his father helped him get a job on one of the trains that ran every day between Port Huron and Detroit Even though he was only 12,

Al began working as a “news butch,” selling things such as newspapers, candy, books, and even fresh vegetables to the passengers on the train It was a three-hour trip each way, and, in between trips, Edison would spend his time reading in a Detroit library He later wrote that it was the “happiest time of my life.” He even wrote and printed his own newspaper, the

Herald, which he sold on the train for 3 cents a copy It was probably the very first newspaper to be printed on a moving

train

He also set up a small laboratory in the baggage car of the train, where he could work on his experiments Unfortunately, this came to an end one day when he accidentally set the car on fire when a bottle of phosphorus fell off a shelf Edison found himself thrown off the train at the next station by the angry conductor, along with all his laboratory equipment De-spite this accident, he did manage to keep his job But young Al was getting restless again He was also losing more of his hearing Years later he would say that he hadn’t heard a bird sing since he was 12 years old But he also found that his increasing deafness actually made it easier for him to concentrate on the many things that appealed to his curiosity

It would be an act of bravery that gave Edison his next opportunity, and one that paved the way for the inventor he would become Edison, who now preferred to be called Tom instead of Al, was fascinated by the telegraph, the first machine that allowed people to communicate with each other over long distances simply by using a series of short and long clicks in Morse code J.U Mackenzie was the stationmaster at the Mount Clemons train station, where Tom liked to spend time He let Tom listen to the telegraph wires and taught him about what was then a brand new technology

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One morning Tom was talking with Mackenzie when he noticed that Mackenzie’s three-year-old son was playing on the railroad tracks, right in the path of an oncoming train Tom quickly moved in and scooped up the little boy to safety Neither

of them was hurt Mackenzie was so grateful that he offered to teach Tom everything about running the telegraph A few months later, Tom was able to get a job as a telegraph operator The Civil War had begun, and there was heavy traffic on the telegraph wires with reports from the battlefronts and lists of casualties For several years, Tom Edison moved around fre-quently, finding different telegraph jobs in different parts of Michigan and nearby states as well He liked working at night, which gave him time to read About this time he also started sleeping less, a habit that he would eventually become famous for Sleeping only a few hours a night gave him more time to work Edison finally found himself working in Boston, Mas-sachusetts, in a much busier telegraph office But he was already starting to become restless again, and soon Thomas Edison, telegraph operator, would start to become Thomas Edison, inventor

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