Thomas Alva Edison

“Thomas Alva Edison was born at Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847, but the family soon after moved to Port Huron, Michigan. He had to earn his living from early boyhood, and was a train boy on a railroad. A station master, whose child’s life Edison had saved, taught the boy telegraphy, and in this art Edison quickly became an expert. In 1868 he chanced to be in New York when the indicator of a gold and stock company was broken, and he not only repaired it, but in doing so struck out a new invention, the printing telegraph. He sold his invention in 1876 and established himself at Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he built workshops for carrying out experiments in the application of electricity. It would take a very long paragraph even to name the devices and inventions which have followed, the most far-reaching being, perhaps, his system of electric lighting, his microphone, and the phonograph."—Scudder, 1897

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