When you say the name of Thomas Edison, most people immediately think of the light bulb. It’s a nifty invention that we still use today and I imagine we will use for generations to come. He had a brilliant mind who came up with many different ideas and inventions throughout his life. He never stopped thinking of new and better ways of doing things, and he owns 1,093 patents in the United States alone, with others in countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
Thomas Alva Edison was born in Ohio on February 11, 1847 to an American mother and a Canadian father. The family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, and it was there at school that his teacher labeled Edison “confused.” It seems that young Thomas was using his brain for bigger and better things than he was taught, so Mrs. Edison, having heard enough of that teacher, promptly pulled her son out of school and he was educated ever since. at home. In fact, he only had three months of organized education in his entire life.
It has been widely said that Thomas Edison had a learning disability and it is a fact that he did not read until he was twelve years old. A little later in life he became deaf, possibly due to untreated ear infections and possibly due to exposure to loud noise while working on the railways for years, but no one knows for sure. What the world knows for sure is that he never let anything stop him from dreaming up interesting things and then working on them until they became viable objects.
In addition to the light bulb, he is also the father of the stock ticker, the mechanical vote recorder, and sound and moving image recording devices, variants of which we still use today. In fact, the first time a voice was captured on sound recording was him reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb. Here’s how it worked!
Fourteen companies were founded by Thomas Edison, one of the most famous being General Electric. His son Charles served as Governor of New Jersey from 1941 to 1944 and another son, Theodore, owns 80 patents of his own.
What a life, and all this with an added mind. It just shows you that you can do whatever you want in life as long as you don’t give up. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t, because with work and dedication you can, just like Thomas Edison did.