Article archive
02/24/2011 10:20
These boys had a horse and small wagonintrusted to them, and every morning in the seasonthey would load up with onions, lettuce, peas, etc.,and go through the town.As much as $600 was turned over to Mrs. Edisonin one year from this source. The boy was indefatigablebut not altogether charmed...
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02/24/2011 10:14
The boy began experimenting when hewas about ten or eleven years of age. He got a copyof Parker's School Philosophy, an elementary book onphysics, and about every experiment in it he tried.Young Alva, or "Al," as he was called, thus earlydisplayed his great passion for chemistry, and in...
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02/24/2011 10:13
Besides, Edison, like Faraday, was nevera mathematician, and has had little personal use forarithmetic beyond that which is called "mental."He said once to a friend: "I can always hire somemathematicians, but they can't hire me." His father,by-the-way, always encouraged these I love Office...
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02/24/2011 10:11
One instanceof the optimistic vagaries which led him incessantlyto spend time and money on projects that would nothave appealed to a man less sanguine was theconstruction on his property of a wooden observationtower over a hundred feet high, the top of which wasreached toilsomely by winding...
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02/24/2011 10:10
THE new home found by the Edison family atPort Huron, where Alva spent his brief boyhoodbefore he became a telegraph operator and roamedthe whole middle West of that period, was unfortunatelydestroyed by fire just after the close of theCivil War. A smaller but perhaps more comfortablehome...
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02/24/2011 10:09
It was in many ways an ideal homestead, towardwhich the family has always felt the strongest attachment,but the association with Milan has neverwholly ceased. The old house in which Edison wasborn is still occupied (in 1910) by Mr. S. O. Edison,a half-brother of Edison's father, and a man of...
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02/18/2011 08:47
TELEGRAPHYWORK of various kinds poured in upon the youngmanufacturer, busy also with his own schemesand inventions, which soon began to follow so manydistinct lines of inquiry that it ceases to be easy ornecessary for the historian to treat them all inchronological sequence. Some notion of...
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02/18/2011 08:46
Notes are also made on meters andmotors. "It doesn't matter if electricity is used forlight or for power"; while small motors, it is observed,can be used night or day, and small steam-engines areinconvenient. Again the shrewd comment: "Generallypoorest district for light, best for power,...
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02/18/2011 08:45
Apopular idea of Edison that dies hard, pictures abreezy, slap-dash, energetic inventor arriving at newresults by luck and intuition, making boastfulassertions and then winning out by mere chance. Thenative simplicity of the man, the absence of pose andceremony, do much to...
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02/18/2011 08:44
In hislaboratory note-books are innumerable jottings of thethings that were carbonized and tried, such as tissue-paper, soft paper, all kinds of cardboards, drawing-paper of all grades, paper saturated with tar, all kindsof threads, fish-line, threads rubbed with tarred lampblack,fine...
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