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
community 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 relatively self centered behavior and persistent
questioning.... Noting that Tom's forehead was exceptionally broad and his
head was 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 remained convinced her son's slightly
unusual physical appearance and demeanor was simply a sign of his
intelligence.
A descendant of
the distinguished Elliot family of Massachusetts, the devout daughter of a
highly respected Presbyterian minister, and an educator in her own right,
Nancy Edison (above) now commenced teaching her favorite
son the "Three Rs"
and the Bible. Meanwhile, his "worldly" and sometimes
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
before 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 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 friends, employees, and himself -
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 ('all earthly') 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 was the
earliest of many factors that gradually led him to prefer
learning through independent self instruction.
Starting with the last book on the bottom shelf, Tom began to
read what he planned would be every book in the stacks. However,
his parents wisely directed him towards being more selective.... 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 found themselves incapable of addressing
his ever increasing interest in the Science. For example,
when he began to question them about concepts dealing with physics - such as
those contained in Isaac Newton's "Principia" - they were utterly
stymied.
Accordingly, they scraped enough money together
to hire a clever tutor to help their
precocious son understand Newton's mathematical principles and unique
style....
Unfortunately, the experience had some negative affects
on the highly impressionable boy. Essentially, 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. They
helped him sharpen
his own free wheeling style of clear and solid
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
great men of wisdom, always keeping in mind that even they
might be entrenched in preconceived dogma and mired down in
associated error....
Meanwhile,
Tom cultivated a strong sense of perseverance, readily expending
whatever amount of perspiration was needed to meet and overcome
all challenges: a characteristic he, would later
note, that was contrary to the way most
people respond to such stress and strain.... Certainly, his
extraordinary 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....
Another factor
that very much shaped Tom's
unique personality was his loss of 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.... In sum,
his "free wheeling" style
of acquiring knowledge eventually led him to question
scores of the prevailing theories on the workings of electricity.....
Approaching the field like a "lone eagle," he used his
kaleidoscopic mind and his legendary memory, dexterity, and patience to
eagerly perform whatever experiments were necessary to come
up with his own theories...
Meanwhile, as most of his contemporaries were
indulging in popular electrical pontifications of the day, he developed
a style of dispassionately questioning them and boldly
challenging them....
Not surprisingly, possessing
such a rigorous overall perspective, enabled Tom to gradually establish
a firm foothold in the world of practical science and
invention. And of course, at the dawn of the "Age Of Light And
Power," nothing would better serve his
destiny...
Returning to the story of his youth,
by age 12, Tom had was
already becoming an "adult." He not only talked his parents
into letting him go to work selling newspapers, snacks, and candy on the
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 "scoops," he ultimately
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 this 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. When his
usually 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
aggravated the loss of hearing he had experienced earlier from a bout
with scarlet fever. In any case, Tom was penalized by being restricted to
peddling his newspaper to venues in railroad stations along the track
....
Late in his 14th
hear, Tom contracted scarlet fever. While it has never been ascertained, some
biographers have surmised that it was the after effects of this condition -
and (or) being struck by the conductor - that destroyed most of his
hearing....
Whatever the
cause - it now became virtually impossible for him to acquire knowledge
in a typical educational setting. Amazingly, however, he did never seemed
to fret a whole lot over the matter.... Naturally inclined towards
accepting his fate in life - and promptly adapting to whatever he
became convinced was out of his control -he simply committed himself to
compensating via alternative methods....
Ultimately,
Tom became totally deaf in his left ear, and approximately 80% deaf in
his right ear. He once said that the worst thing about this condition was that
he was unable to enjoy the beautiful sounds of singing birds. Indeed, he
loved the little creatures so much, he later amassed an aviary of over 5,000
of them.
In the meantime,
he learned to use the silence
associated with deafness to greatly enhance his powers of
concentration.
In fact, 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."
In any event,
Tom's career of producing and selling his newspaper on a train finally came to
an abrupt end when he and his press were permanently thrown off the vehicle by
an irate railroad supervisor. Shaken and confused by the incident, he
continued to frequent the station area. One day, the stationmaster's
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.
One of the most
significant events in Tom's life now occurred when - as a reward for his
heroism - the boy'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 (and one is currently being)
prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
