THE NEWSBOY WHO BECAME A GREAT INVENTOR
One day a boy sat at his desk in an Ohio schoolhouse, trying hard, but
not very successfully, to master his lessons. The boy was Thomas Alva
Edison and from birth he had been in delicate health. He did not get on
very well at school. He was generally at the foot of the class, and one
day, when the inspector was present, he heard the teacher say that “Al”
as he was generally called, was “addled,” and that it almost seemed a
waste of time for his parents to keep him at school.
This remark hurt the lad’s feelings, and when he went home and told his
mother about it, she was very much annoyed and decided that she would
look after the boy’s education herself. She had once been a teacher in
Ontario and she felt sure that her boy had it in him to make good if he
only got a chance. Many years later Edison wrote of this incident: “My
mother was the most enthusiastic champion that a boy ever had and I
determined right then that I would be worthy of her and show that her
confidence in me was not misplaced. My mother was the making of me. She
was so true, so sure of me; and I felt that I had some one to live for,
some one that I must not disappoint.”
Under his mother’s tuition, Thomas Edison made good progress. He
was constantly asking questions. He wanted to know the why and the
wherefore of everything he saw. Sometimes he exhausted the patience of
those around him but his mother seemed as eager to help him as he was
to seek information, and although he missed some things by not being at
school, he gained in other ways. One thing his mother especially taught
him was to love good books and this passion for reading has remained
with him all his life.
When he was eleven years old Thomas Edison became interested in
chemistry. He read a book on physics and at once began to make
experiments on his own. His chum and chief companion at this time
was a Dutch boy named Michael Oates. He persuaded Michael that if he
took a large enough quantity of Seidlitz powders the gases generated
would enable him to fly. Michael tried the experiment with disastrous
results. For a time he suffered agonies and his cries attracted much
attention, and Thomas Edison’s mother found it necessary to use the
“switch” on her son. But his interest in chemistry was very great.
He used the cellar of the house to try his experiments and collected
no less than two hundred bottles from various places. These bottles
contained the chemicals with which he was constantly experimenting and
he marked them all “poison,” so that no one else would touch them.
Most of his spare time he spent in that cellar and whatever little
pocket-money came his way he spent on purchasing chemicals from the
local drug-store.
He felt keenly the need for money wherewith to buy chemicals and after
much coaxing he succeeded in persuading his parents to allow him to
sell newspapers and magazines on the train that ran between Port Huron
and Detroit. The enterprise was his own and besides selling papers he
sold bread, candy and fruit. Although only twelve years of age, he had
an amazing amount of energy and enterprise and soon he made sufficient
money to have all the cash needed for chemical experiments.
One day in 1862, the train on which young Edison was selling
newspapers was doing some shunting at Mount Clemens station. On a
track near he saw the little son of Mr. J. MacKenzie, the station
agent, playing, and a car, without a brakeman, was rapidly approaching.
Edison instantly dropped his papers and made a dash for the child. A
few seconds later and rescue would have been impossible but as it was
he saved the child and jumped from the tracks just as the wheel of
the car struck his heel. As a reward for this, Mr. MacKenzie offered
to teach Edison the art of telegraphy, something which the lad had
long wanted to learn. He eagerly accepted the offer and while he still
sold newspapers on the train, he spent every spare moment learning
telegraphy.
At this time a seemingly unfortunate thing happened. His interest
in chemical and electrical experiments was such that he had secured
permission to use part of a car as a laboratory, and as the train
journeys were long he spent many hours in that car. One day, a
sudden jolting caused a stick of phosphorus to fall from the shelf
to the floor where it burst into flames and set fire to the car. The
conductor, who was a quick-tempered man, boxed Edison’s ears so soundly
that the lad became deaf, an infirmity which has remained with him
throughout life. The conductor was so enraged that he put the boy and
his entire laboratory off at Mount Clemens station.
Edison’s delicate health and his slowness at school had seemed a severe
handicap. Added to this now was a deafness which threatened to make his
progress in life harder than ever.
His expulsion from the train was a humiliating experience for
Edison but he was by no means discouraged. Once more he fitted up
his laboratory at home and continued his experiments. There were
many protests from some members of the family who feared chemical
experiments but his mother had great faith in him and met objections
by saying: “Al is all right. Nothing will happen to him. God is taking
care of him.”
In 1863, when he was sixteen, Edison got a position as telegraph
operator at Stratford Junction, Ontario, at a salary of twenty-five
dollars a month. He soon found out that the most expert telegraph
operators knew practically nothing about the science of telegraphy and
how it worked. He followed his usual custom of asking all manner of
questions but seldom got much satisfaction. One day an old man gave
him this explanation of the telegraph. He said: “Suppose you had a dog
like a dachshund, long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London. Well,
then, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. The
telegraph is like that.”
One night, while he was working at Port Huron, there was a very
severe storm; the ice-jam broke the telegraph cable and there was no
communication in the usual way for some considerable time. Edison’s
inventive mind got to work and he used the steam whistle of a
locomotive to give the long and short signals of the telegraph code.
The operator on the other side of the river, three-quarters of a mile
away, quickly caught on to the idea and thus messages were sent in
wireless fashion across the ice-floes in the river.
Edison was constantly experimenting and learning new ways of doing
things. Other young men were willing to work along, and as long as they
secured results, did not investigate. Not so with him. He was always
enquiring and making experiments and very soon he had a knowledge of
telegraphy and the underlying principles of electricity, far beyond any
of his workmates.
In 1868, when he was twenty-one years of age, Edison applied for his
first patent for an invention. It was a vote recorder and while it
never became extensively used it marked the beginning of that long list
of inventions which has earned for him the title of “The Wizard of
Invention.”
Soon after this Edison went to New York. When he arrived things did
not look any too bright for him. He knew no one. He was penniless--in
fact, he was in debt. Added to these handicaps was his affliction
of deafness which in itself was sufficient to keep him out of most
jobs. For several weeks he roamed the streets of New York with actual
starvation staring him in the face. One day as he walked along Broadway
he turned into Wall Street and entered the offices of the Law Gold
Reporting Company. He found that the entire plant had just closed down
because of an accident in the machinery which could not be located. The
heads of the firm were annoyed and agitated when the shabbily dressed
youth walked in. Edison was soon acquainted with what had happened and
he mildly remarked that he thought he could put things right. Mr. Law
told him to go ahead and try and young Edison immediately repaired the
trouble, while the little army of repairers looked foolish. Mr. Law
asked him to step into the office and after asking him a few questions
he offered him a salary of three hundred dollars a month.
That was the turning-point in Edison’s career. After that he worked
as hard, if not harder than ever, but he never knew poverty again.
Soon after this he invented an improved stock printer for which he was
handed a $40,000 check. Soon after his name was known all over the
American continent and before long he was almost as well known in other
parts of the world as in America.
Edison believes that his early struggles, severe as they were, did
him a great deal of good and stiffened his backbone. He absolutely
refuses to believe that even his deafness has been a handicap. About
this trouble he once said: “This deafness has been a great advantage
to me in many ways. When in a telegraph office I could hear only the
instrument directly on the table at which I sat, and unlike the other
operators I was not bothered by the other instruments.... Again, my
nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a
country village is to a person with normal hearing.”
No man living has a greater list of inventions to his credit than
Edison. Even to give a list of them would occupy several pages of a
book. While one naturally thinks of such outstanding inventions as the
phonograph yet he has made scores of other important discoveries all of
a useful character.
He believes that his success is chiefly due to his ability to
concentrate. When some one asked him what he considered was the secret
of his success he replied: “The ability to apply physical and mental
energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.” He has
often worked twenty hours a day for days at a time and has actually
toiled at one problem for sixty consecutive hours.
Concentration may be one of the principal reasons for his success,
but it does not account for everything. Edison, as a boy, faced
difficulties and utterly refused to be discouraged. He made them
stepping-stones to success. Any man who can believe that even deafness
has been a help to him surely has the quality of courage which makes
heroes.