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Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison

U.S. History Since 1865 - HIST 2302
January 21, 2002

Thomas Alva Edison
Picture a world without electric light, the phonograph, or motion pictures. Picture a world without the greatness of Thomas Alva Edison. His most remarkable inventions have altered the lives of millions. Perhaps the greatest genius the world has ever known, Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847, in the small town of Milan, Ohio, to Samuel and Nancy Edison. He was the youngest of seven children and a very mischievous child who loved to play pranks. According to Richards (1984), at the age of six Thomas, whose nickname was "Al," for Alva, set a fire in his father's barn, "just to see what it would do" (p. 82). Al was also stubborn and difficult to raise. His teachers didn't believe he had much intelligence, labeled him as retarded, and expelled him from school. However as history proves, Al was not retarded, but rather had a great curiosity about everything, especially how things worked.
His education can be attributed to independent study, training, and his mother. She sensed his intelligence and educated him with books by Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. When he was nine, she gave him a science textbook, Parker's School of Natural Philosophy, containing chemical experiments, which could be conducted at home (Richards, 1884, p. 83). By age eleven, Edison not only had his own chemical laboratory, but had also read Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Sear's History of the World, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and the Dictionary of Sciences (Hearst Entertainment, 1976).
At the age of twelve, Edison was ready to work and earn a living. His father scarcely made enough to support the family and allowed him to get a job. His first job was with the Grand Trunk Railway Line selling newspapers, candy, fruits, and vegetables on the morning train. The train made a three-hour commute from Port Huron, Michigan to Detroit, would remain in...