Thomas Edison was probably the greatest inventor in history. He was a technologist rather than a scientist. He had only three months of formal schooling, but he changed the lives of millions of people with such inventions as the electric light and record player. Edison patented a total of 1093 inventions. Edison defined genus as, "I percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." He demonstrated this belief by working for days at a time, stopping only for short naps.
Edison was born on February 11th, 1847, at Milan Ohio, U.S.A. He was the seventh and youngest child of Samuel and Nancy Elliott Edison. The greatest curiosity of the youngster led him to ask questions constantly, "how does water put out fire," "how do chickens lay eggs?" and the list goes on. His mother had once been a schoolteacher, but even she could not answer some of his questions. If no one answered his questions, he would try to get the answers, he would try to get the answers by experiments. One day Thomas learned that balloons fly because they are filled with gas, he persuaded another boy to take a triple dose of a carbonated laxative. Thomas was sure that the boy would fly because of the gas in his stomach, instead he laid on the ground ill! Thomas attended school for only three months, in Michigan. When he was 12 years old he began selling newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railway, devoting his spare time mainly to experimentation with printing presses and with electrical and mechanical apparatus. For saving the life of a station official's child,
he was rewarded by being taught telegraphy. While working as a telegraph operator, he made his first important invention, a telegraphic repeating instrument that enabled messages to be transmitted automatically over a second line without the presence of an operator. Thomas was not much of a family man. Both his wives complained that he spent most of his time in the laboratory. Thomas never had any really close friends. He occasionally enjoyed the company of Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and John Burroughs. But he worked too hard and too many hours to have much time for friendships. Throughout his life, his work remained his greatest joy and companion. He was keen on music and had a wonderful ear for music even though he was deaf. He personally supervised 1000's of recordings and could instantly detect a wrong note. He loved practical jokes, although sometimes they backfired.
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