A BIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS ALVA EDISON
Thomas
Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio (pronounced MY-lan). In
1854, when he was seven, the family moved to Michigan, where Edison spent the
rest of his childhood.
"Al,"
as he was called as a boy, went to school only a short time. He did so poorly
that his mother, a former teacher, taught her son at home. Al learned to love
reading, a habit he kept for the rest of his life. He also liked to make
experiments in the basement.
Al
not only played hard, but also worked hard. 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.
At
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.
Even though he was already losing his hearing, he could still hear the clicks
of the telegraph. 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. In his spare time, he took things apart to see how they
worked. Finally,
he decided to invent things himself.
After
the failure of his first invention, the electric vote recorder, Edison moved to
New York City. There he improved the way the stock ticker worked. This
was his big break. By 1870 his company was manufacturing his stock ticker in
Newark, New Jersey. He also improved the telegraph, making it send up to four
messages at once.
During this time he
married his first wife, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day, 1871. They
had three children -- Marion, Thomas, Jr., and William. Wanting a quieter spot
to do more inventing, Edison moved from Newark to Menlo Park, New Jersey, in
1876. There he built his most famous laboratory.
He
was not alone in Menlo Park. Edison hired "muckers" to help him out.
These "muckers" came from all over the world to make their fortune in
America. They often stayed up all night working with the "chief
mucker," Edison himself. He is sometime called the "Wizard of Menlo
Park" because he created two of his three greatest works there.
The phonograph was
the first machine that could record the sound of someone's voice and play it
back. In 1877, Edison recorded the first words on a piece of tin foil. He
recited the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and the
phonograph played the words back to him. This was invented by a man whose
hearing was so poor that he thought of himself as "deaf"!
Starting
in 1878, Edison and the muckers worked on one of his greatest achievements.
The electric light system was more than just the incandescent
lamp, or "light bulb." Edison also designed a system of power plants
that make the electrical power and the wiring that brings it to people's homes.
Imagine all the things you "plug in." What would your life be like
without them?
In
1885, one year after his first wife died, Edison met a 20-year-old woman named
Mina Miller. Her father was an inventor in Edison's home state of Ohio. Edison
taught her Morse Code. Even when others were around, the couple could
"talk" to each other secretly. One day he tapped a question into her
hand: would she marry him? She tapped back the word "yes."
Mina
Edison wanted a home in the country, so Edison bought Glenmont, a 29-room home
with 13-1/2 acres of land in West Orange, New Jersey. They married on February
24, 1886 and had three children: Madeleine, Charles and Theodore.
A
year later, Edison built a laboratory in West Orange that was ten times larger
than the one in Menlo Park. In fact, it was one of the largest laboratories in
the world, almost as famous as Edison himself. Well into the night,
laboratory buildings glowed with electric light while the Wizard and his
"muckers" turned Edison's dreams into inventions. Once, the
"chief mucker" worked for three days straight, taking only short
naps. Edison earned half of his 1,093 patents in West Orange.
But
Edison did more than invent. Here Edison could think of ways to make a better
phonograph, for example, build it with his muckers, have them test it and make
it work, then manufacture it in the factories that surrounded his laboratory.
This improved phonograph could then be sold throughout the world.
Not
only did Edison improve the phonograph several times, but he also worked on
X-rays, storage batteries, and the first talking doll. At West Orange he also
worked on one of his greatest ideas: motion pictures, or
"movies." The inventions made here changed the way we live even
today. He worked here until his death on October 18, 1931, at the age of 84.
By
that time, everyone had heard of the "Wizard" and looked up to him.
The whole world called him a genius. But he knew that having a good idea was
not enough. It takes hard work to make dreams into reality. That is why Edison
liked to say, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."
1. What
tenses are used in the article? (show the proof)
Answer :
Past tenses
Proof: Thomas
Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan,
Ohio (pronounced MY-lan).
In 1854, when he was seven, the family moved
to Michigan, where Edison spent the rest
of his childhood.
2. Restate one sentence in the
article into gerund / to + infinitive
Answer :
Well into the
night, laboratory buildings glowed with electric light while the Wizard
and his
"muckers" turned Edison's dreams into inventions.
3. Show
a use of personal pronouns or possessive pronouns or reflexive pronouns in the
article.
Answer : After the failure of his first invention, the electric vote recorder, Edison moved to
New
York City.
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