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Thomas Edison was born in 1847, in the state of Ohio. Early indications tended to suggest that Edison was a rather backward child, unable to cope with the rigours of education. In fact, he was extremely gifted, but the way his imaginative mind worked was particularly unsuited to the strict, unbending style of education for that era. After three months of formal education, Edison’s mother, a teacher herself, decided she could do a better job, so from then on he was taught at home.
She taught her son well; after the condemning of his mental state by schoolteachers, he became grateful to have one who encouraged him, and believed in him as well. Indeed, later in his life the inventor Thomas Edison was to state how important he thought his mother to be in his development.
Edison’s mother also encouraged him to look for employment from an early age. By the time he was twelve, he had a job with the Grand Trunk Railway. Here he set up a laboratory in a disused freight car, and also began to publish a newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, showing how adept he was becoming at doing things by himself.
As a reward for saving the life of a fellow worker’s child from an oncoming train Thomas Edison was shown how to use a telegraph. He became very interested in it, and from the age of fifteen to twenty one, worked as a telegrapher. He also worked on several inventions. Indeed, in 1870 he became a full time inventor due to the success of such creations as the automatic telegraph, the quadruplex, and the Edison Universal Stock Printer. His personal life was also developing as well; he married Mary Stilwell and they were to have three children.
By 1875, although Edison had patented many inventions, he was experiencing financial difficulties. With his father in law’s backing, he built a new lab in New Jersey, where he acquired the nickname ‘the wizard of Menlo Park’ because of his brilliant inventions, such as the carbon button transmitter, which was still being used in telephones well over a hundred years later. He also established the Edison Electric Light Company, and demonstrated the usage of the first incandescent electric light bulb.
1884 was a sad year for Thomas. His wife died at a young age, leaving him to combine his work with looking after the children. Happily, he remarried two years later, so was able to move to a much larger laboratory in New Jersey, and continue his work. He managed sixty staff, and although much of his time was taken up with paperwork, he invented such things as the electric pen and the mimeograph.
Throughout his career Edison received many awards and accolades. Perhaps his finest moment came in 1928, when he was awarded the congressional Gold Medal for ‘development and application of inventions that have revolutionised civilization in the last century’. He died in 1931, having been involved in inventing right up to his last day.
Although he had a brilliant mind, Thomas Edison himself admitted that the majority of his discoveries came about through sheer hard work. He couldn’t understand how other people could give up on a problem so easily. His main ambition in life was to make the world a better place to live in, and he undoubtedly achieved that to a great extent. He was one of the great inventors.
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