It works!!
Oh, hi, I’m Thomas Alva Edison. I was born on February 11th, 1847, in
Milan, Ohio. I was the last of seven children. My parents were Samuel
and Nancy Edison.

While I was little, I was very curious and always got into trouble. I
also kept asking my parents a lot of questions.  

When I was about seven years old, my parents decided to move to Port
Huron, Michigan. Shortly after my family moved, I came down with scarlet
fever, which most likely damaged my hearing.
 

I started school when I was eight years old, but my mom and I were not
satisfied with my teacher. My mom started to home-school me, so I only
went to school three months of my life.

At age 12, I got my first job as a candy butcher on the Grand Trunk
Railway. At age 15 I learned telegraphy and became a telegraph operator.
I was a very skilled telegraph operator if I do say so myself. I decided, at the age of 21, to be an inventor. I received my first patent for the electric vote recorder. This invention was not successful because nobody wanted it.

I was without money until I improved the stock ticker for the Gold and
Stock Telegraph Company. For this, I was paid the impressive sum of
$40,000. During this time, I met a beautiful young lady named Mary
Stillwell and later married her.

After I got married, I was in debt badly and needed money, so I moved
to Menlo Park, New Jersey, where I started the world’s first industrial
laboratory.

Then I made a huge breakthrough in telephone technology, the
carbon-transmitter. It sent messages more clearly than Alexander Graham
Bell’s version.

My next invention made me really famous, the phonograph. It is a
machine that records a human voice and then repeats it. Many royal
people were interested in it, including Queen Victoria of England.

The next invention I made was my most famous invention, the light
bulb. I invented it in the year 1879. After I invented the light bulb, my wife,

Mary (Stillwell) Edison died, so I married Mina Miller. After I got married,
my family moved to West Orange, New Jersey, where I invented the
motion picture. After I invented the motion picture, I started my work

on the storage battery. I worked on it for a long time, but it was not successful.
When I gave up the storage battery, I became head of the Navy Consulting Board during World War I, but none of my inventions were ever put to use.

Afterwards I started to find a natural substitute for rubber, eventually settling on goldenrod. But I went into a coma and died on October 18, 1931.

Last reviewed August 27, 2008