Thomas_Edison

Hello, my name is Thomas Edison. My friends call me Tom. I, like most people of this early America, did not grow up with money. I have amassed great wealth, but I worked for it. Rarely did I hold less than two or three jobs. However, this was not merely to gain prosperity, but was also because I was too interested in process and progress to simply sit still. I have no formal education. I know what I know because I wanted to know it. I was born in Milan, Ohio in 1847. I was the youngest of 7 children. My siblings and peers often made fun of my unusually large forehead. No one suspected that my gargantuan noggin held any purpose other than to give people something to focus on with cruel intention. No one thought me to be smart, except in the sense that I frustrated my teachers with my persistent questioning. I was accused by my teachers of being obnoxious and selfish. I would quickly drain their energies and patience. In the future society I would have probably been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hypertension Disorder. Thank goodness Ritalin had not been created. Due to my inability to adapt to the scholastic system, and my mother being convinced that I was particularly intelligent, my mother and father thought it best to take me out of school and educate me at home. While my mother taught me the “3 R’s” and the Bible, my father was determined to educate me in the classics. Although he was not a man of great means, he did pay me 10 cents per classic I read. My parents did their best to sate my great thirst for knowledge. Unfortunately, my thirst soon surpassed their ability to answer. I was encouraged to put to use the public library and its resources. I was 11 years old. At age 12 I realized that the great Isaac Newton’s use of classical aristocratic terms was not necessary and somewhat snobbish, leaving the average student unable to understand what he was reading. I did, however, appreciate most of his teachings. Although I only possessed 3 months of formal education and my hearing was poor, I did not allow this to stop me from self education. It was during this time that I found a great interest for any notion of electricity. Whatever theory I studied, I could not be satisfied until I tested it for myself. I started testing experiments in my basement and needed money for these experiments so I started my own business. My first business was selling fruits and vegetables. This lasted until I was 14, when I decided to start my own newspaper, the “Weekly Herald.” I sold my paper to riders on the train. My circulation grew to an admirable 300 subscribers. As my sales increased, I was able to increase the supplies I needed to perform my experiments in my lab. This perfect situation did not last long, as my mother became increasingly troubled by the odor rising from the basement, not to mention the poisons being stored there. I was forced to move my stuff into my locker on the train. After the fire, I was asked not to sell my paper on the train and only along the track. One day I was selling my papers and noticed a boy playing on the tracks as an on-coming train approached. I was quick to move and saved the boy’s life. His father, the Station Master, rewarded me by giving me a job and teaching me Morse code. This gave me the ability to move away from Ohio to New York to find my fortune. I began to work on and finish my first invention. This machine helped an average person interpret code at his own speed. I also invented a vote recording machine. But no matter how hard I lobbied, politicians did not want this interruption. They understood that by having to hand count votes, this gave the added time needed to anyone behind in the polls for further campaigning. I also invented a Harmonic telegraph. This machine allowed electronic pulses to be sent simultaneously and in different frequencies over several telegraph wires to produce “horn-like” simulations of the human voice. Although I was doing much moonlighting with my experiments and tests, I was not earning any wages. Luckily this changed. My most euphoric memory is of the day, when I was literally starving; I was walking through a bank building and happened upon a crowd of people. They were all gathered around a stock ticker machine that was not performing as it should. Everyone was in a great panic. Many people were gathered around the machine, looking at it, trying to make some sense of it. I pushed my way up front and asked for the opportunity to look at it. Although I did not know the inner workings of the machine previously, it did not take me long to understand it, find the detached spring, reattach it and cause it to start spitting its ever important tongue out at us with great speed. The office manager was so happy he offered me a job on the spot. That day I went from actual starvation, to actual prosperity. I was being paid $300 a month, twice the rate for the top electrician in New York! I still moonlighted. I finally made an invention that someone would buy; the Quadroplex Transmitter. Before this there had only been a duo-transmitter for telegraphs. The company that bought it wrote me a check for $40,000. I stared at that check for days. I did not believe it was real, to the point that I did not think a bank would cash it. I did finally cash it, but sat in my room with the money, counting and re-counting out of fear of theft. A good friend finally recommended I put the money in a bank and forget about it. I put that money to good use. I cared for my parents. My father was growing older and my mother was struggling against the symptoms of insanity. I also opened my first lab in 1874. I was working on an articulating transmitter that would create sound better than Bell’s telephone. (I actually was well on my way to inventing a telephone but Alexander Bell beat me to it.) But, before my transmitter was finished, I created a new technology known as the phonograph. What is funny is that Bell had also been working on the ability to record voice. I guess we sort of traded. Eventually I created other inventions that moved our society and the world forward. I consider the invention of the moving picture to be my favorite creation. But the invention I that gained me the most notoriety is the light bulb, created in 1879. Bringing the world out of darkness and into the light is possibly the best feeling one man can have. I used this as a springboard to start my own company. You see, I created the first centralized power system. We were the only company capable of generating and distributing light, heat and power simultaneously. I named my company General Electric. Perhaps you have heard of it. All of my life I have been known as a man of great intelligence with a passionate thirst for knowledge and a leader in moving the world forward through technologies never before seen. I have been honored with recognitions by my peers and colleagues both nationally and internationally. I would hope that those closest to me will remember me as a kind man with the spirit of a jokester. I have also enjoyed a life of reading and reciting poetry. Now that I am older and my health is starting to fail, I see that I need slow down a bit and learn to enjoy my family. I owe it to them. They have rarely seen me for most of their lives. I have learned enough, finally. I guess 84 is a good age to stop and smell the roses. Sources: thomasedison.com