Biography of Thomas Edison, the American Inventor and Businessman

Thomas Alva Edison, born in Milan, Ohio, is one of the greatest inventors and masterminds of our time. On February 11, 1847, an intellectual hero was born. He will discover and develop what is known as electricity. By far, I believe, this was his most notorious discovery. Thomas lived in Milan for the majority of his childhood. He had six brothers and sisters, three of which died as young children. His mother, Nancy, was a teacher and was known to be a very sweet and gentle person. His father, however, had a hot head and a short temper. This same man rebelled against the Canadian government and was forced to flee the immediate area.

Thomas's middle name Alva was given to him after his father's friend's name. People soon began to call him Al for short. Al was a very intelligent person and concentrated on what he was doing at the time very hard. However, he was very absent-minded and forgot about almost everything quite often. For example, when Al was younger, he and another boy were swimming in a canal. The boy began to scream, for he was drowning, but Al was not paying attention. He went home to bed.

Another case of Al's absent-mindedness was when he went to the bank to cash a forty-thousand-dollar check. He completely forgot his name.

When Al turned seven, he and his family moved to Port Huron. Almost immediately after he had arrived, he came down with Scarlet fever. Because of his extreme illness, he missed school for an entire year. When Al returned to school, he overheard a conversation between two teachers. The teachers said," that Edison boy is addled, he can't learn the next day, his mother went to the school and said I would teach him myself. He won't be coming here anymore!

As Al grew older, he began to experiment with electricity. He attempted to create friction by rubbing two cats together. He did this by putting wires on the cat's legs.

To make a long Biography short, Al had many jobs. When he was 14, he had a job as a newsboy and overheard scores of people talking about the Battle of Shiloh. Al convinced a telegrapher to spread the rumor of a great number of casualties. On an average day, he would procure one hundred papers. This day, however, he bought nearly one thousand. Instead of giving his mom one dollar, he gave his mom nearly one hundred. Al got on a train and sold close to all of the papers for five cents apiece.

It seems as though Al lived a rather comical life. The reason I say this is because Al was partially deaf for the majority of his life. That piece of information there is not humorous but the reason people think he was. Al, being as ambitious as he was, was a candy butcher. On one given day, he was late for the train. The conductor pulled him onto the train by his ear. It is said that he stated that he felt a loud pop.
To make an even longer biography than I thought possible shorter, I am going to attempt to sum this upon April 9, 1871, Al's mother passed away. That same year on Christmas day, shortly after his mother passed on, he married Mary Stillwell.

There is a plethora of information to be told but a dearth of time. So that being said, I will mention a few of his accomplishments and inventions.

The first invention Al patented was a vote-recording machine. This invention was not popular throughout the lawmaking community because they wanted to have Phil busters. His next invention was the quadruple telegraph. This state-of-the-art invention allows two massages to travel each way. He went broke because Western Union and Atlantic Union, as well as the pacific telegraph, fought over whom owned his invention. He ended up not receiving one dollar.

Yet another improvement to an existing invention was to be made by Edison. He improved the telephone, which was invented by Alexander Bell. It was greatly improved by the addition of a black carbon disk which was placed in the telephone. This greatly enhanced the volume.

Those were just some of Edison's inventions. Soon after that, he began to create electric cars. However, they had very short run times and needed to be charged very often.

Al's wife died of typhoid fever in 1844. He had three children with her: Thomas Alva Jr., 8, William, 6, and Marion, 13. Edison soon remarried a woman by the name of Mina Miller.
Edison died on October 18, 1931, of undisclosed reasons.

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