This was invented by a man whose hearing was so poor that he thought of himself as "deaf"! He recited the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and the phonograph played the words back to him. In 1877, Edison recorded the first words on a piece of tin foil. The phonograph was the first machine that could record the sound of someone's voice and play it back. He is sometime called the "Wizard of Menlo Park" because he created two of his three greatest works there. They often stayed up all night working with the "chief mucker," Edison himself. These "muckers" came from all over the world to make their fortune in America. There he built his most famous laboratory. Wanting a quieter spot to do more inventing, Edison moved from Newark to Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. They had three children - Marion, Thomas, Jr., and William. He also improved the telegraph, making it send up to four messages at once.ĭuring this time he married his first wife, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day, 1871.
By 1870 his company was manufacturing his stock ticker in Newark, New Jersey. There he improved the way the stock ticker worked. Finally, he decided to invent things himself.Īfter the failure of his first invention, the electric vote recorder, Edison moved to New York City. In his spare time, he took things apart to see how they worked. In the next seven years he moved over a dozen times, often working all night, taking messages for trains and even for the Union Army during the Civil War. Even though he was already losing his hearing, he could still hear the clicks of the telegraph. At the age of 12 he sold fruit, snacks and newspapers on a train as a "news butcher." (Trains were the newest way to travel, cutting through the American wilderness.) He even printed his own newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, on a moving train.Īt 15, Al roamed the country as a "tramp telegrapher." Using a kind of alphabet called Morse Code, he sent and received messages over the telegraph.
He also liked to make experiments in the basement.Īl not only played hard, but also worked hard. Al learned to love reading, a habit he kept for the rest of his life. He did so poorly that his mother, a former teacher, taught her son at home.
"Al," as he was called as a boy, went to school only a short time. In 1854, when he was seven, the family moved to Michigan, where Edison spent the rest of his childhood. Thomas Alva Edison was born Februin Milan, Ohio (pronounced MY-lan). He answered, "Genius is hard work, stick-to-it-iveness, and common sense."
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