Contrary to
popular belief, Thomas Edison was not born into
poverty in a backwater
mid-western town. Actually, he was born -on Feb. 11, 1847 - to middle-class parents in the bustling port of Milan,
Ohio, a community that - next to Odessa, Russia - was the largest wheat shipping center in the world. In 1854, his family moved to
the vibrant city of Port Huron, Michigan, which
ultimately surpassed the commercial preeminence of both Milan and Odessa....
At age seven - after spending 12 weeks in a noisy one-room schoolhouse with 38 other students of all ages - Tom's overworked
and short tempered teacher finally lost his patience with the child's persistent
questioning and seemingly self centered
behavior.
Noting that Tom's forehead was unusually broad and his head was considerably larger than average, he made no secret of his belief that the
hyperactive youngster's brains were "addled" or scrambled.
If modern psychology had existed back then, Tom would have probably been deemed
a victim of A D S (attention deficit syndrome) and proscribed a hefty dose of
the "miracle drug" Ritalin. Instead, when his beloved mother - whom he recalled "was
the making of me... [because] she
was always so true and so sure of me and
always made me feel I had someone to live for and must not
disappoint." - became aware of the situation, she promptly withdrew him
from school and began to "home-teach" him. Not surprisingly, she
was convinced her
son's slightly unusual demeanor and physical appearance were merely
outward signs of his remarkable
intelligence.
A descendant of the distinguished Elliot family of New England, New York
born Nancy Edison was the devout and attractive daughter of a
highly respected Presbyterian minister and an accomplished educator in her own right.
After the above incident, she commenced teaching her favorite son
the "Three Rs" and the Bible. Meanwhile, his rather
"worldly" and roguish father, Samuel, encouraged him to read the great classics, giving him a ten cents reward for each
one he completed. It
wasn't long thereafter that the serious minded youngster developed a deep interest in
world history and English
literature. Interestingly, many years later, Tom's abiding fondness for Shakespeare's
plays lead him to briefly consider becoming an actor. However, because of his high-pitched voice and
his extreme shyness before
every audience - except those he was trying to influence into helping him finance an invention - he
soon gave up the idea.
Tom
especially enjoyed reading and reciting poetry. His life-long favorite was Gray's Elegy In A
Country Churchyard. Indeed, his favorite lines - which he endlessly
chanted
to himself and any within hearing distance - came from its 9th stanza:
“The
boast of heraldry of pomp and power, All that beauty all that wealth ere gave,
Alike await the inevitable hour. The path to glory leads but to the grave.”At
age 11, Tom's parents tried to appease his ever more voracious appetite for knowledge by
teaching him how to use the resources of the local library. This skill became
the foundation of many factors that gradually caused him to prefer
learning
via independent
self instruction. Starting with the last book on the bottom shelf,
Tom set out to systematically read every book in the stacks.
Wisely, however,
his parents promptly guided him into towards being more selective
in what he read.... By
age 12,
Tom had not only
completed Gibbon's Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Sears' History Of The World, and Burton's Anatomy
Of Melancholy, he had devoured The World Dictionary of
Science and a number of works on Practical Chemistry.
Unfortunately, in spite of their noble efforts, Tom's dedicated parents eventually found themselves incapable of addressing
his ever increasing interest in the Sciences. For example,
when he began to question them about concepts dealing with Physics - such as those contained in Isaac Newton's
great "Principia" - they were
utterly stymied.
Accordingly, they scraped enough money
together to hire a clever tutor to help
their precocious son in trying to understand Newton's complex mathematical principles and unique style....
Unfortunately,
this experience had some negative affects on the
highly impressionable boy. He was so disillusioned by how Newton's sensational theories were written in classical aristocratic
terms -which he felt were unnecessarily confusing to the average person -he overreacted and
developed a hearty dislike for all such "high-tone" language and mathematics....
On
the other hand, the simple
beauty of Newton's physical laws did not
escape him. In fact, they very much helped him
sharpen his own
free wheeling style of clear thinking, proving all things to himself
through his own method of objective
examination and experimentation."
Tom's response to the Principia also enhanced his
propensity towards
gleaning insights from the
writings and activities of other great men and women of wisdom,
never forgetting that
even they might be entrenched in preconceived dogma and mired down
in associated error....
All the while he was cultivated a strong sense of
perseverance, readily
expending whatever amount of perspiration needed to
overcome challenges. This was a characteristic that he later noted was contrary to the way most people respond to stress and
strain on their body.... The key upshot of this attribute was that
his unique mental, and physical, stamina stood him in good stead when he took on the
incredible rigors of a being a successful inventor in the late 19th Century....
Oddly, a factor that shaped Tom's
personality in both a negative and a positive way was his poor hearing.... Even though this
condition -and the fact that he had only three months of formal schooling -
prevented him from taking advantage of the benefits of a secondary education in
contemporary mathematics, physics, and engineering, he never let it interfere
with finding ways of compensating....
More precisely, it
was this his
highly individualistic style of acquiring knowledge that eventually led him to question
scores of the prevailing theories on the workings of electricity.....
Approaching this complex field like a "lone eagle," he used his
kaleidoscopic mind and his legendary memory, dexterity, and patience to perform whatever experiments were necessary to come
up with his own related theories...
As many of his contemporaries continued to indulge
the popular electrical pontifications of the day, he was ever sharpening his now ingrained
style of dispassionate and bold analysis.... "I accept almost nothing
dealing with electricity without thoroughly testing it first." he often declared.
Not surprisingly, by arming his brains with this perspective, he
soon established a
firm foothold in the world of
practical electrical science And of course, at the dawn of
the "Age Of Electric Light And Power," nothing could have
better served his ultimate destiny in the field of invention...
Returning to the story of his youth, by age 12, Tom
had already become an "adult." He had not only talked his parents into letting him go to
work selling newspapers, snacks, and candy on the local railroad, he had started an
entirely separate business selling fruits and vegetables.....
And at
age 14 -during the time of the famous pre-Civil War debates between Lincoln and Douglas -he exploited
his access to the associated news releases that were being teletyped into the
station each day and published them in his own little newspaper.
Focusing upon such
newsworthy "scoops," he quickly enticed over 300 commuters to subscribe
to his splendid little paper: the Weekly
Herald.... Interestingly, because
this was the first such publication ever to be type-set, printed, and sold on a
train, an English
journal now gave him his first exposure to international notoriety when it related
this story in 1860.
After
his hero, Abraham Lincoln, was nominated for president, Tom not only distributed campaign literature on his
behalf, he peddled flattering photographs of "the
great emancipator." (Interestingly, some 25
years later, Tom's associated feelings about abolition caused him to select
Brockton,
Massachusetts as the first place to model the first standardized central power system,
described elsewhere on the Brockton web site.)At
its peak, Tom's mini-publishing venture netted
him more than ten dollars per day. Because this was considerably more than
enough to provide for his own support, he had a good deal of extra income, most
of which went towards outfitting
the chemical laboratory he
had set up in the basement of his home. But hen his usually patient and tolerant mother finally complained about the
odors and danger of all the "poisons" he was
amassing, he transferred most of them to a locked room in the
basement and put the remainder in his locker room on the train.
One day, while traversing a bumpy section of track, the train lurched, causing
a stick of phosphorous to roll onto the floor and ignite. Within moments, the
baggage car caught fire. The conductor was so angry, he severely chastised the
boy and struck him with a powerful blow on the side of his head. Purportedly,
this may have aggravated some of the loss of hearing he may have
inherited and from a later bout he had with scarlet fever.
In any case, the station master penalized him by restricting
him to peddling his newspaper to venues in railroad stations along the
track ....
Remarkably, years later and not long after
he had
acquired the means to have an operation that "would have likely restored
his hearing," he flatly refused to act upon the option.... His rationale was that
he was afraid he
"would have difficulty re-learning how to channel his thinking in an ever
more noisy world." Whatever the cause for this defect, by the time
Tom was 14 years of age, it was virtually impossible for him to acquire knowledge
in a typical educational setting. Amazingly, however, he never seemed to fret
a whole lot over the matter.
Naturally inclined towards accepting his fate in life - and promptly adapting to
whatever he was convinced was out of his control -he always reacted by committing himself to
compensating via alternative methods....
Ultimately, Tom became totally deaf in his left ear, and approximately 80% deaf in his right
ear. Poignantly, he once stated that the worst thing about this condition was that he was unable to
enjoy the beautiful sounds of singing birds. Indeed, he loved the creatures so much, he later amassed an aviary
containing over 5,000 of them.
One day while he was on the train, the stationmaster's very young son happened to wander onto the tracks
in front of an oncoming boxcar. Tom leaped to action. Luckily - as they
tumbled away from its oncoming wheels - they ended up being only slightly
injured.
Now, one of the most significant events in Tom's life occurred when - as a reward for his
heroism - the child's grateful father taught him how to master the use of Morse code and the telegraph.
In
the "age of telegraphy," this was akin to being
introduced to learning how to use a state-of-the-art computer.
By age 15,
Tom had pretty much mastered the basics of this fascinating new career
and obtained a job as a replacement for one of the thousands of "brass pounders" (telegraph operators) who had gone off to serve in the Civil War.
He now had a golden opportunity to enhance his speed and efficiency in sending and receiving
code and performing
experiments designed to improve this
device....
Once the Civil War ended, to his mother's great dismay, Tom decided -
that it was time to "seek his fortune." So, over the next few years, he meandered throughout the
Central States, supporting himself as a "tramp
operator.
At age 16, after working in a variety of telegraph offices, where he performed
numerous "moonlight" experiments, he finally came up with his first
authentic invention. Called an
"automatic repeater," it transmitted telegraph signals between unmanned stations, allowing
virtually anyone to easily and accurately translate code at their own speed and convenience. Curiously, he never patented the initial
version of this idea.
In 1868 - after making a name for himself amongst fellow telegraphers for being a
rather flamboyant and quick witted character who enjoyed playing "mostly harmless" practical jokes - he returned home one day ragged and penniless. Sadly, he found his parents in
an even worse predicament.... First, his beloved mother was beginning to show
signs of
insanity "which was probably aggravated by the strains of an often difficult
life." Making matters worse, his rather impulsive father had just
quit his job and the local bank was about to foreclose on the family homestead.
Tom promptly came to grips with the pathos of this situation and - perhaps for the first time in his life -
also resolved to come to grips with a number of his own immature shortcomings. After a good deal of soul searching, he
finally decided that the best thing he could do would be
to get right back out on his own and try to make some serious money....
Shortly
thereafter, Tom accepted the suggestion of a fellow "lightening slinger"
named Billy Adams to come East and apply for a permanent job as a telegrapher with the relatively prestigious Western Union Company in Boston.
His willingness to travel over a thousand miles from home was
at least partly influenced by the fact that he had been given a free rail ticket by the local street railway company for some repairs he had done for them.
The most important factor, however, was the fact that Boston
was considered to be "the hub of the scientific, educational, and cultural
universe at this time...."Throughout
the mid-19th century, New England had many features that were analogous to today's Silicon Valley in California.
However, instead of being
a haven for the thousands of young "tekkies" - who communicate with each other in computerese
and internet
code of today - it was the home of scores of young telegraphers who anxiously
stayed abreast of the emerging age of electricity and the telephone etc. by
conversing with via Morse
code.
During these latter days of the "age of the telegraph," Tom toiled 12 hours a day and six days a week for Western
Union. Meanwhile, he continued "moonlighting" on his own projects and, within six months, had applied for and received his very first patent. A beautifully
constructed electric vote-recording machine, this first "legitimate" invention
he was to come up with turned out to be a disaster.
When he tried to market it to
members of the Massachusetts Legislature, they thoroughly denigrated it, claiming "its speed in tallying votes would disrupt the
delicate
political status-quo." The specific issue was that - during times of stress - political
groups regularly relied upon the brief delays that were provided by the process of manually counting votes to influence and
hopefully change the opinions of their colleagues.... "This is exactly what we do
not want" a seasoned politician
scolded him, adding that "Your invention would not only destroy the only hope the minority would have
in influencing
legislation, it would deliver them over - bound hand and foot - to the majority."
Although Tom was very much disappointed by this turn of events, he immediately grasped
the implications. Even though his
remarkable invention allowed each voter to instantly cast his vote from his seat - exactly as it was supposed to do -
he realized his idea was so far ahead of its time it was
completely devoid of any immediate sales appeal.
Because of his continuing desperate need for money, Tom now made a critically significant adjustment in his, heretofore,
relatively naive outlook on the world of business and marketing.... From now on, he vowed, he would
"never waste time inventing things that people would not want to buy."
It is important to add here that it was during Tom's 17 month stint in Boston that he was first exposed to lectures at Boston Tech
(which was founded in 1861 and became the Mass. Institute of Technology in
1916) and the ideas of several associates on the state-of-the-art of "multiplexing" telegraph signals. This
theory and related experimental quests involved the transmission of electrical impulses at different frequencies over telegraph wires, producing horn-like simulations of the human voice
and even crude images (the first internet?) via an instrument called the harmonic telegraph.
Not surprisingly, Alexander Graham Bell, who was also living in Boston at the
time, was equally fascinated by this
exciting new aspect of communication science. And no wonder. The principles
surrounding it ultimately led to the invention of the first articulating telephone,
the first fax machine, the first microphone, etc.
During
this epiphany, Edison also became very well acquainted with Benjamin Bredding. The same age as Bell and Edison,
this 21 year old
genius would soon provide critically important assistance to Bell in perfecting
long distance telephony, the first reciprocating telephone, and the magneto
phone. A crack electrician, Bredding, with Watson's assistance, later set up the
world's first two-way long distance telephone apparatus for his close friend
Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time
"knew almost
nothing about electricity."
Copyrighted - never before published - tintype of Bredding and Bell in
October of 1876 on the day they successfully communicated across Boston's
Charles River in the world's first long distance two-way telephone
conversation. i.e., "The world's first practical telephone conversation."
Bredding
had originally worked for the
well known promoter, George B. Stearns, who - with Bredding's help - had beaten
everyone to the punch when he obtained the first patent for a duplex telegraph
line. A device that exploits the fact that electromagnetism and the number and
direction of wire windings associated with a connection between telegraph keys
can influence the current that flows between them, and greatly facilitate two-way telegraphic
communication, it powerfully intrigued Edison....
Stearns, finally sold the patent for this
highly significant cost-cutting invention to Western Union for $750,000. Bredding
(and Edison, of course) wound up getting absolutely nothing from the venture. In
the meantime, however, Bredding provided his pal, Tom Edison, with his first detailed introduction and understanding of the state-of-the-art of the harmonograph and the multiplex transmitter....
Unlike
Edison, Bredding was an extremely modest individual with little taste for aggrandizement
and self promotion... The pathetic upshot of all this was that - while the caprice associated with the rough and tumble world of patenting inventions in the mid-19th century ultimately crushed
Bredding's innately mild and somewhat naive spirit and his extraordinary potential - it merely spurred the
tough-minded Edison on
to not only improve the duplex transmitter, but to later patent the world's first
quadruplex transmitter.... Deeply in debt
and about to be fired by Western Union for "not concentrating on his
primary responsibilities and doing too much moonlighting," Edison now borrowed
$35.00 from his fellow telegrapher and "night owl" pal, Benjamin
Bredding,
to purchase a steamship ticket to the "more commercially oriented city of New York."
During
the third week after arriving
in "the big apple" Tom (seen above) was purportedly "on the verge of starving
to death." At this precipitous juncture, one of the most amazing coincidences in the annals of technological history
now began to unfold.
Immediately after having begged a cup of tea from a street vendor, Tom
began to meander through some of the offices in New |York's financial district. Observing that
the manager
of a local brokerage firm was in a panic,
he eventually determined that a critically important stock-ticker in his office had just broken down....
Noting that no one in the crowd that had gathered around the defective machine
seemed to have a clue on how to fix
it, he elbowed his way into the scene and grasped a momentary opportunity to have a go at addressing
what was wrong himself.... Luckily,
since
he had been sleeping in the basement of the building for a few days - and doing
quite a bit of snooping around -
he already had a pretty good idea of what the device was supposed to do.
After
spending a few seconds confirming exactly how the stock ticker was intended to work in the first place,
Tom
reached down and manipulated a loose spring back to where it
belonged. To everyone's amazement, except Tom's, the device began to run perfectly.
The office manager was so ecstatic, he made an on-the-spot decision to hire Edison to make
all such repairs for the busy company for a salary of $300.00 per
month.... This was not only more than what his pal Benjamin Bredding was making back in Boston
but twice the going rate for a top electrician in New York City. Later in
life, Edison recalled that the incident was more euphoric than anything he
ever experienced in his life because it made him feel as though he had been
"suddenly delivered out of abject poverty and into
prosperity."
Success at
last!
It should come as no surprise that, during his free time, Edison soon resumed his habit of "moonlighting" with the telegraph, the quadruplex transmitter, the
stock-ticker, etc.
Shortly thereafter, he was
absolutely astonished - in fact he nearly fainted - when a corporation paid him $40,000 for
all of his rights to the latter device.
Convinced that no bank would honor the large check he was given for it, which was the first "real" money
he had ever received for an
invention, young Edison walked around for hours in a stupor, staring
at it in amazement.
Fearful that someone would steal it, he
laid the cash out on his bed and stayed up all night, counting it over and over in disbelief. The next day a wise friend told him to deposit it in a bank forthwith and
to just forget about it for a while.
A
few weeks later, Edison wrote a series of poignant letters back home to his father: "How is mother getting along?... I am now in a position to
give you some
cash... Write and say how much....Give mother anything she wants...."
Interestingly, It was at this time that he also repaid Bredding the $35.00 he had borrowed
earlier.
Over the next three years, Edison's progress in creating successful inventions
for industry really took off.... For example, in 1874 - with the money he received from the sale of an electrical engineering firm that held several of his patents -
he opened his first complete testing and development laboratory in Newark, New Jersey.
At age 29, he commenced work on the carbon transmitter, which ultimately
made Alexander Graham Bell's amazing new "articulating" telephone (which by
today's standards sounded more like someone trying to talk through a kazoo than
a telephone) audible enough for practical use.
Interestingly, at one point
during this intense period, Edison was as close to inventing the telephone as Bell was to inventing the phonograph.
Nevertheless, shortly after Edison moved his laboratory to Menlo Park, N.J. in 1876,
he invented - in 1877 - the first phonograph.
In 1879, extremely disappointed by the fact that Bell had beaten him in the race to patent the first authentic transmission of the human voice,
Edison now "one upped" all of his competition by inventing the first commercially practical incandescent electric light bulb...
And if that wasn't enough to forever seal his unequaled importance in technological history,
he came up with an invention that - in terms of its collective affect upon mankind - has had more impact than any other. In 1883 and 1884,
while beating a path from his research lab to the patent office, he introduced the world's first economically viable system of centrally generating and distributing electric light, heat, and power.
(See "Greatest Achievement?")
Powerfully, instrumental in impacting upon the world we know today, even his harshest critics grant that
it was a Herculean achievement that only he was capable of bringing about at this specific point in history.
By 1887, Edison was recognized for having set up the world's first full fledged research and development center in West Orange,
New Jersey. An amazing enterprise, its significance is as much misunderstood as his
work in developing the first practical centralized power system. Regardless,
within a year, this fantastic operation was the largest scientific testing laboratory in the world.
In 1890, Edison immersed himself in developing the first Vitascope, which would
lead to the first silent motion pictures.
And, by 1892, his Edison General Electric Co. had
fully merged with another firm to become the great General Electric Corporation, in which he was a major stockholder.
At the turn-of-the-century, Edison invented the first
practical
dictaphone, mimeograph, and storage battery. After creating the "kinetiscope" and the first silent film in 1904, he went on
to introduce The Great Train Robbery in 1903, which was a ten minute clip that was
his first attempt to blend audio with silent moving images to produce
"talking pictures."
By now, Edison was being hailed world-wide as The wizard of Menlo Park, The father of the electrical
age," and The greatest inventor who ever lived." Naturally, when World War I began, he was asked by the U. S. Government to focus his
genius upon creating defensive devices for submarines and ships. During
this time, he
also perfected a number of important inventions relating to the enhanced use of
rubber, concrete,
and ethanol.
By the 1920s Edison was internationally revered. However,
even though he was personally acquainted with
scores of very important people of his era, he cultivated very few close friendships.
And due to the continuing demands of his career, there were still relatively long periods when he spent a shockingly small amount of time with his family.It
wasn't until his health began to fail, in the late 1920s, that Edison finally began to slow down and, so to speak, "smell the flowers."
Up until obtaining his last (1,093rd) patent at age 83,
he worked mostly at home where, though increasingly frail, he enjoyed greeting former associates and famous people such as Charles Lindberg, Marie Curie, Henry Ford, and President Herbert
Hoover etc. He also enjoyed reading the mail of admirers and puttering around,
when able, in his office and home laboratory.
Thomas Edison died At 9 P.M. On Oct. 18th, 1931 in New Jersey. He was 84 years
of age. Shortly before passing away, he awoke from a coma and quietly whispered
to his very religious and faithful wife Mina, who had been keeping a vigil all night by his side:
"It is very beautiful over there..."
Recognizing
that his death marked the end of an era in the progress of
civilization, countless individuals, communities, and corporations throughout the world
dimmed their lights and, or, briefly turned off their electric power in his honor
on the evening of the day he was laid to
rest at his beautiful estate at Glenmont, New Jersey. Most realized
that, even though he was far from being a flawless human being and may not have
really had the avuncular personality that was so often ascribed to him by
myth makers, he was an essentially good
man with a powerful mission.... Driven by a superhuman desire to
fulfill the promise of research and
invent things to serve mankind, no one did more to help realize our Puritan founders
dream of creating a country that - at its best - would be viewed by the rest of the world as
"a shining city upon a hill."
ADDENDUM
Because
of the peculiar voids that Edison often evinced in areas such as cognition, speech,
grammar, etc., a
number of medical
authorities have argued that he may have been plagued by a
fundamental learning
disability that went well beyond mere deafness.... A few of have conjectured that this
mysterious ailment - along with his lack of a formal
education - may account for why he always seemed to "think so differently"
compared to others of his time: "Always tenaciously clinging to those unique methods of
analysis and experimentation with which he alone seemed to feel so
comfortable...."
Whatever
the impetus for his unique personality and traits, his incredible ability to come up with a meaningful new patent every two weeks throughout his working career
"added more to the collective wealth of the
world - and had more impact upon shaping modern civilization - than the
accomplishments of any figure
since Gutenberg...." Accordingly, most serious science and technology historians
grant that he was indeed "The most influential figure of our millennium."
Notes: In 1929, Edison's close friend, Henry Ford, completed the task of moving Edison's original Menlo Park laboratory to the Greenfield Village museum in Dearborn, Mich.
In 1962 his existing laboratory and home in West Orange, N.J. were designated as National Historic Sites.
Copyright © Gerald Beals June, 1999. All rights
registered and reserved.
Please Note: Absolutely no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form
- or stored by any means in a database or retrieval system - without the prior written and express permission of the author. Infringements
will be (in fact one is currently being) prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Biography Of Thomas Alva Edison
