Biography: Thomas Edison
By WILL
Thomas Alva Edison sculpture under a banyan tree he planted in 1927.
Click on his name (at the end of this sentence) to read Will's report about the hardworking inventor Thomas Edison.
Here's the text:
When you walk into a room, you turn on the light so you can see. When you want to listen to music, you grab a CD. For these things, we have Thomas Alva Edison to thank. He invented the thing we call a light bulb and the first recorder, which led to things like jukeboxes and anything that can record an event. He also improved the telephone.
Thomas Edison was born on Feb. 11, 1847 in Ohio. He had 6 siblings, three of whom died before he was born. His dad's name was Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr., and his mom was Nancy Matthew Eliot. His mind always wandered. And after three months of official schooling, he was taken out of school because his teacher was overheard calling him addled. From then on, his mother taught him and most things he learned then were from R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and his first school, Cooper Union.
Cheat sheet at Edison & Ford Winter Estates.
Thomas Edison is famous for many things, but he is most famous for his inventions. He is known for inventing the light bulb and the phonograph. His first patent came when he was 22 years old. Overall, he received over 1,000 patents in his life, 1,093 to be exact. He was very persistent, and he tried 1,000 different filaments to create the lightbulb. He was so dedicated he even pulled out his own hair with tweezers and tried that. He said, "Inventing something is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." He also said, "We'll make electricity so cheap, only the rich will burn candles."
Thomas Edison was married to a girl named Mary in 1871, and had two kids he nicknamed Dot and Dash, after the characters in Morse code. In 1884, his wife Mary became very sick and died in August. But in 1885, he met another woman named Mina Miller. Her father was an inventor too. A month after they met, he proposed in an unusual way. He tapped out his proposition in Morse code, and she accepted in Morse code.
They had three children together, Madeline, Charles, and Theodore. He loved his family a lot, but he spent most of the time working.
I have a great deal of admiration for Thomas Edison, because he tried over 1,000 ways to find a filament for the lightbulb, which I found impressive. I wonder what he would've done with today's technology?
Over all, Thomas Edison had a prosperous life. He received many patents and had a nice family. He died October 18, 1931. In my opinion, Thomas Edison is one of the greatest inventors of all time.